I've talked about a few app launchers in the past and how they fundamentally change how I use my PC. Specifically, for Windows, I absolutely love Flow Launcher, and on macOS, Raycast is the way to go. And while the Raycast developers are promising a Windows version will come in the future, there are also some cross-platform solutions out there.

We've already talked about Wox, but there's actually yet another cross-platform launcher like this called Ueli. I wanted to give this one a go and see if there's a benefit to using it over the other options I've recommended in the past. And yes, Ueli is a pretty interesting proposition, though there's still some room to grow if it wants to match my favorite alternatives.

A cross-platform experience

Ueli works on everything

The most interesting part of Ueli is that it does, in fact, run on all major desktop platforms. Whether you have a Windows PC, a Mac, or Linux, you can use Ueli, and it will give you a fairly consistent experience across all of those. I haven't tried the Linux version myself, but on both macOS and Windows, Ueli runs and looks almost exactly the same. It's almost a problem because the Mac version labels the Option key as Alt, which might get confusing if you're not aware of these keyboard differences.

Otherwise, though, everything works well across both platforms, and the experience is very consistent. All of the available plug-ins work on both platforms, and the settings window looks exactly the same. There's no option to sync your settings across devices, which I think would make this concept work a bit better, but simply having an experience that feels familiar on different machines is a good enough selling point to begin with.

Customization options

A lot of options, but maybe not enough

Ueli is a highly configurable experience on all platforms, too. The Ueli settings offer a ton of options for different aspects of the experience. Of course, you can customize the theme of the app, resize the search bar, but there's some more interesting stuff, too. You can customize the search engine used for returning results, what browser should be used for web results, customize how frequently queries should be refreshed, and so on.

Each extension also offers its own set of customization options, which lets you tailor the experience to your specific needs. However, there are some shortcomings here that make Ueli slightly less appealing. For example, you can't define different prefixes to launch specific extensions. For example, to perform a web search,m you just have to type the name of the search engine you select, press Enter, and then type your search query. It takes a little bit more time than it could if you could set specific prefixes.

Another example is the Browser bookmarks extension. While searching your browser bookmarks is certainly helpful, you're locked to a few preset options for compatible browsers. A tool like Flow Launcher lets you browse to a bookmarks folder for almost any browser, so it doesn't have to be limited like that. There's some room to grow here.

The extensions

A small ecosystem

The big problem with Ueli right now compared to its competition is the lack of extensions overall. The app ships with around 20 extensions out of the box, most of which are disabled by default so you can use just the ones you need. Unfortunately, there seems to be no way to get extra extensions outside of the ones provided from the get-go, which makes this a far less capable option compared to something like Raycast or Flow Launcher.

To be clear, the extensions that are here are pretty useful. There are things like a calculator, currency converter, options for a custom web search so you can use any search engine you want, and system commands, so you can put your PC to sleep or shut it down using only your keyboard (I really like that one).

But as good as they are, having this limited scope of extensions puts Ueli at a big disadvantage against its rivals that have hundreds of extensions available. Raycast and Flow Launcher have Pokédex extensions, which is something most people won't need, but that makes it all the more impressive. Anyone can make an extension for those tools, so almost anything you can think of exists. The more controlled approach of Ueli is understandable, but it needs to pick up a bit more steam to be truly desirable.

Workflows

Do it all in one go

I do want to shine a spotlight on one of the specific extensions Ueli ships with, though, because it's a very interesting one called Workflows. Workflows let you create custom sets of tasks that you can run all in one go with a custom command. Workflows support launching apps, opening files and URLs, opening terminal windows with specific commands, or just executing commands in the background. You can combine as many actions as you want, and it can really speed up your flow.

For example, I created a workflow that starts my day off by opening all the apps I need: Opera Air, Slack, Beeper, Spark, and Newsify. This makes it that much easier to get started on work and right into my flow. Another workflow checks for app updates on winget and automatically installs them. There's a lot you can do if you put your imagination to work.

I think this feature would benefit from an option to just launch apps, rather than having you find the file path for apps you use, especially because Microsoft Store apps may just not work because of this. On macOS, this is less of a problem since all your apps are in the Applications folder and it's relatively easy to link to them, but Windows is a little more convoluted. It would also be even cooler if you could add specific Ueli commands to the workflow, too. Maybe with the limited set of current extensions this wouldn't have a ton of use cases, but I think there's a lot of potential there.

Ueli isn't quite there, but it is promising

At the end of the day, I think Ueli is a very promising launcher, and it's nice that it's available on every platform with such a consistent experience. It does make things easier when you can use the same app on every platform and PC you own. I also think Workflows are an awesome feature to have built right in, even though I'm sure there are probably some extensions out there that do the same on other launchers.

However, with the current limited scope of extensions and some customization options missing, I have to say Ueli is probably not the app you should be using on either platform. Flow Launcher will serve you better on Windows, and Raycast is the superior option on macOS. But I'm hopeful that Ueli will continue to be supported and grow in usefulness so it can be a true competitor to those tools. Until then, you might want to pass on this one.