Flow Beta v0.1.0-beta2

ABOUT

Flow Desktop is a privacy-first YouTube and YouTube Music client - no account, no ads, no analytics, no telemetry. It is the desktop companion to Flow for Android.

A bug-fix release built on beta-tester feedback: Linux startup and packaging, livestreams, the Home feed, the player, subscriptions, search, backups, and downloads - plus a rework of how quickly videos, Shorts and music start playing.

LINUX

• Fixed the AppImage failing to start with a blank screen and "EGL_BAD_PARAMETER" on Arch, CachyOS, Manjaro and Fedora (#40). It shipped its own copies of the Wayland libraries, which conflicted with newer system graphics drivers.
• Fixed Flow refusing to launch on Wayland unless GDK_BACKEND=x11 and WEBKIT_DISABLE_DMABUF_RENDERER=1 were set by hand (#31). Flow now applies what it needs itself, and only falls back further (software compositing, then X11) if a launch actually fails - so working systems keep full GPU rendering. Your own environment variables still win.
• Fixed video staying frozen on the spinner while audio played (#29). The .deb and .rpm now pull in the required decoders, the AppImage carries them, and if one is genuinely missing the player says what to install instead of spinning forever.
• Fixed stuttering audio and the long delay opening Subscriptions.

LIVESTREAMS

• Fixed livestreams endlessly buffering with no picture in installed builds. The packaged app's security policy blocked the streaming engine that live playback depends on; it worked in development, which is why it slipped through.
• A livestream that genuinely stalls mid-playback now recovers by retrying other sources, and shows a clear error with a Retry button if nothing works - instead of spinning forever. Slow live start-up is left alone and no longer mistaken for a stall.

HOME FEED

• Fixed the Home feed permanently stopping its auto-loading on scroll after a while, with "Load More" sometimes doing nothing or adding only a couple of videos (#33). Restarting the app did not help, because the feed's search rotation had painted itself into a corner and remembered it; that is fixed too.
• Clicking "Load More" now always responds, and later pages keep delivering a full batch instead of thinning out.
• Fixed the row of videos above "Continue watching" splitting onto a second line after changing the videos-per-row setting. It now always shows exactly the number you picked, and drops to fewer only when the window is genuinely too narrow for them.

SUBSCRIPTIONS

• Removed two placeholder channels (Fireship, Linus Tech Tips) that appeared pre-subscribed on fresh installs and led to a blank page when clicked. Existing installs are cleaned up automatically.
• The sidebar subscription list finally shows a scrollbar, the section header has a working collapse arrow that is remembered between sessions, and a long expanded list scrolls in its own pane so "Show less" is always reachable.
• Channel avatars in the sidebar now load on their own instead of requiring a visit to the Subscriptions page first, and a broken avatar shows a placeholder instead of a broken image.
• A channel that fails to load now shows a "Channel unavailable" page with Retry instead of a blank screen.

PLAYBACK SPEED

• Videos start much sooner. Flow used to load the title, channel, suggested videos, comments and dislike counts alongside the stream itself, all fighting over the same connection; the stream is now resolved first and everything else fills in once the video is actually playing.
• Opening a video from a link, a notification or a page reload no longer waits for its details before the player appears - playback starts from the link alone and the title fills in a moment later.
• Clicking a video starts resolving it straight away, while the page is still opening, instead of afterwards.
• Flow no longer looks the same video up twice on every open, and a video you just left plays immediately when you come back to it.
• Swiping through Shorts is faster: the next Shorts are resolved ahead of the swipe instead of queueing one behind another.
• The next song is prepared while the current one plays, so tracks change without the pause in between. The same now applies to the next video when autoplay is on.
• Removed two YouTube Music lookups that ran every time you opened any video and were never shown anywhere.

PLAYER

• Fixed fullscreen video not filling the screen, leaving black bars and a white strip at the bottom (#32). Leaving fullscreen through the system (F11, window manager) no longer confuses the player either.
• Keyboard shortcuts no longer swallow Ctrl combinations: Ctrl+K focuses search without pausing the video, and Ctrl+J/L/M/F/T behave as expected.
• Fixed the subtitle font-size slider and Bold toggle snapping back instantly instead of applying.
• Switching resolutions no longer lets the audio run ahead of a still-buffering picture, and no longer occasionally freezes the video until you pause and resume.
• Fixed the whole player shifting and jittering while scrolling the watch page, in both normal and theatre mode.
• The timestamp pill now follows the cursor instantly while scrubbing instead of trailing behind.
• The Share button works: it copies the video link to the clipboard.
• Links in video descriptions and comments now open in your browser.
• Dislike counts (Return YouTube Dislike) now appear in installed builds; they were blocked by the app's security policy and only worked in development.
• Fixed external audio dropping out after seeking, pausing, or changing quality.
• The suggested-videos panel on the watch page scrolls independently of the video, description, and comments.
• The suggested-videos panel no longer shows a scrollbar down its side.
• Downloaded music now plays fully offline. The cover art and lyrics already saved with each download are used instead of being fetched again, so tracks start promptly and still show artwork and lyrics with no connection.
• Smoother scrolling on Home and Subscriptions.

SHORTS

• Fixed the Shorts feed coming up empty.
• Fixed Shorts audio going silent after the first swipe.
• Fixed heavy stuttering when swiping: every Short was reloading its video on each swipe.

SEARCH

• More filters on the results page: sort by rating, "Last hour" and "This year" upload windows, a 4-20 minute length option, and a features filter (HD, 4K, Subtitles/CC, Creative Commons, HDR).
• Fixed the search box offering suggestions for something other than what you had just typed. Any query containing an accent or a non-Latin script failed to load suggestions at all, silently leaving the previous query's list on screen; a slow reply could also overwrite a newer one.
• Suggestions can now be moved through with the arrow keys, chosen with Enter and dismissed with Escape, and a long list scrolls instead of running off the screen.

MUSIC

• The mini-player timeline thickens under the cursor and shows a position dot, making it comfortable to scrub.
• Shuffle and repeat now clearly show when they are on. The button fills with a colour drawn from the current artwork instead of only recolouring the icon, which was easy to miss - and on some tracks invisible against the background.
• New Music Player Background setting with four styles - Blur + Gradient, Blurred Artwork, Palette Gradient and Default Surface - matching Flow for Android.

INTERFACE

• Hovering a card now grows its artwork colour outward from the centre rather than simply switching it on, with a softer, springier transition.
• That artwork-coloured hover reaches the cards that never had it: playlists, music albums and artists, channels, and the videos listed inside a playlist.
• Fixed the hover colour being clipped at the edges of shelves and rows - noticeably on the first card of a row - on Home, History, Library, the music and artist pages, and the suggested-videos panel.
• Every shelf now has left and right arrows for moving through it. The music, Library and Subscriptions shelves had none, and the ones that did have them did not all look the same.
• Toggle switches have been redesigned: larger, with a tick when on and a cross when off, and they react to being pressed.
• Buttons across the app now respond to a click the way the player's controls always have.
• Volume, the equaliser and the music player's seek bar use a new slider design with a thicker track and a slim handle. If you prefer the old one, turn off Settings > Appearance > Expressive sliders. The video, Shorts and mini-player seek bars are unchanged.

BACKUPS AND DATA

• Backups now actually contain your data. Previously a Flow backup file held only settings - watch history, subscriptions, playlists, likes, and the recommendation brains were silently left out, which is why restores came back crippled. The App data / Brain / Everything choice now does exactly what it says, and restoring shows a summary of what came back.
• Fixed restoring a backup being able to leave Deep Flow silently stuck on forever, which stopped watch-history recording and FlowNeuro learning without any visible sign.
• The Reset Brain confirmation now appears centred on screen instead of buried in the middle of the page.
• The Import data page was rebuilt to match the rest of Settings, and its in-page back button removed now that the top bar handles going back.

DOWNLOADS

• New thumbnail options in Settings: turn artwork saving on or off, and choose between a separate image file, embedding it in the media file, or both. Music and audio downloads embed cover art directly; video downloads always use a separate file.

DIAGNOSTICS AND PRIVACY

• Fixed log export from Settings. Diagnostics now offers "Save logs" and "Open logs folder" and shows where the logs live, so they can always be attached to a bug report.
• Flow no longer writes your learned topic profile or recommendation...

Flow Beta v0.1.0-beta

FLOW DESKTOP CHANGE LOG
VERSION: 0.1.0
DATE: 2026-07-16
STATUS: PRE-RELEASE

ABOUT
Flow Desktop is a privacy-first YouTube and YouTube Music client - no account, no ads, no analytics, no telemetry. It is the desktop companion to Flow for Android.

WHAT IT DOES

• Watch YouTube videos and Shorts with native playback (no embedded web player)
• Browse a full YouTube Music experience: home, explore, charts, artists, albums and lyrics
• Download videos and music for offline use with a built-in muxer (no ffmpeg required)
• Skip sponsors and intros automatically via SponsorBlock, DeArrow and Return YouTube Dislike
• Get on-device recommendations from two local engines: FlowNeuro (video) and MusicBrain (music)
• Sync your library, likes and history with Flow for Android over your local network (peer-to-peer, no cloud)
• Follow channels, receive new-upload notifications, and manage playlists and watch history
• Update automatically through the built-in, signature-verified updater

SUPPORTED DEVICES

• Windows 10/11 (x64 and ARM64)
• macOS 13+ (Intel and Apple Silicon)
• Linux (x64 and ARM64 - AppImage, .deb, .rpm)

NOTES

• First public build. No account is ever required and nothing is tracked.
• Download the installer for your operating system and architecture below.