Flow.Launcher

Flow Launcher is a keyboard-driven search bar for Windows. Hit a hotkey, type, and instantly open apps, find files, run web searches, or do quick calculations without ever touching the mouse. It's MIT licensed and completely free, with a plugin store for extending it.

Under the hood it taps the Everything search engine and the Windows index for fast file search, and the plugin API (Python, C#, JavaScript, F#) lets the community add things like Spotify control, Steam game launching, and window switching. Install is trivial through the installer, Winget, Scoop, or Chocolatey. No server, no config.

Anyone who used Alfred or Raycast on a Mac and missed that speed on Windows will feel right at home. Raycast now ships a Windows version too, and Flow Launcher is the free, open answer to it there: no AI or cloud sync, but a mature plugin store. Anyone on Windows who lives on the keyboard should install it. No team-size calculus here, it's free for everyone.

Two catches. It's Windows-only, so there's nothing here for Mac or Linux users. And because plugins are community-made, quality and maintenance vary, so a plugin you rely on might go stale.