Command Reference

This is the complete, annotated list of every flow command — what it does, what arguments it takes, and (where relevant) the default hotkey it’s bound to in flow.ahk. For the guided tour, see the README’s Getting started.

How a keypress reaches the daemon

Every hotkey in flow.ahk is a thin wrapper: it runs flow dispatch <command>, which sends a single message over a Windows named pipe to the flowd daemon. The daemon owns the whole layout pipeline (mutate → project → animate); the CLI only chooses which message to send. So anything that can run a command on a keypress — AutoHotkey, whkd, PowerToys — can drive FlowWM.

flowchart LR
  K[Keypress] -->|"flow dispatch focus right"| CLI["flow CLI"]
  CLI -->|"named pipe"| D[flowd daemon]
  D --> L[mutate → project → animate]

The modifier is configurable. The default flow.ahk holds every chord with Alt. That’s a single ModKey line at the top of the file — change it and every chord below follows. The hotkey column below assumes the default Alt; your setup may differ. (If Alt clashes with an app’s menu shortcuts, see the README’s Can I use the Win key? section.)

Default hotkey map (quick reference)

Commands with no default hotkey (run them from the terminal, or bind them yourself): swap-column, swap-workspace.

Focus & navigation

focus <direction>

Move focus to the neighbouring window.

• focus left / focus right — move focus to the adjacent column (or to the first/last window when at the canvas edge).
• focus up / focus down — move focus to the window above/below within the current column.

flow dispatch focus right
flow dispatch focus up

Default hotkey: Alt + h/j/k/l (vim-style: h=left, j=down, k=up, l=right).

Moving & rearranging windows

move-window <direction>

A semantic “move” — the daemon decides the concrete effect from the focused window’s state and the direction:

• tiled, left/right → swap the focused column with its neighbour;
• tiled, up/down → swap the focused window with the one above/below inside the same column;
• floating → pixel nudge (deferred).

flow dispatch move-window left
flow dispatch move-window down

Default hotkey: Alt + Shift + h/j/k/l.

swap-column <direction>

Swap the entire focused column with its left or right neighbour. direction is left or right only (columns are a horizontal axis).

flow dispatch swap-column right

No default hotkey — bind it if you use it. (For single windows, prefer move-window.)

merge-column <direction>

The signature scroll move. Detach the focused window from its column and append it as a new bottom row of the adjacent column, then redistribute both columns’ row heights. This is how you stack several windows into one column — the niri / Hyprland move that makes scrolling feel better than a fixed grid.

flow dispatch merge-column right

Default hotkey: Alt + Ctrl + h (left) / Alt + Ctrl + l (right).

promote <direction>

Pull the focused window out of its column and place it as a new, single-window column on the chosen side. No-op when the window is already alone in its column.

flow dispatch promote right

Default hotkey: Alt + Ctrl + Shift + h (left) / Alt + Ctrl + Shift + l (right).

Column sizing & the viewport

expand-column

Widen the focused column to the next column_width boundary and animate. Every column to its right slides further along the canvas.

flow dispatch expand-column

Default hotkey: Alt + .

shrink-column

Narrow the focused column to the previous column_width boundary and animate.

flow dispatch shrink-column

Default hotkey: Alt + ,

center

Slide the viewport so the focused column lands at the monitor midpoint. Uses the variable-width prefix sum, so it stays correct even with expanded or shrunk columns.

flow dispatch center

Default hotkey: Alt + c

Window mode (float ↔ tile)

set-window <mode>

Change the focused window’s tiling mode. mode is one of:

• float — detach the window from the layout and let it float freely.
• tile — insert the window into the scrolling column layout.
• cycle — toggle between float and tile (the most common choice).

FlowWM remembers your decision: it writes the app’s tile/float choice to history-flow-rules.toml, and the next time you open that app it tiles (or floats) automatically. See Classification & Learned Rules.

flow dispatch set-window tile
flow dispatch set-window cycle

Default hotkey: Alt + t (cycle).

Workspaces

Workspaces are niri-style virtual desktops, stacked vertically; each one holds its own horizontal scrolling canvas. swap-workspace is wired into the protocol but the animation is still being finalised, so the daemon currently returns a “not yet implemented” error for it.

switch-workspace <id>

Switch the active workspace. The requested workspace slides into the viewport while the previously active one parks above or below it, in one coordinated animation. <id> is a positive integer (1-based).

flow dispatch switch-workspace 2

Default hotkey: Alt + 1…9, 0 (0 = workspace 10).

swap-workspace <id>

Exchange the positions of the active workspace and workspace <id> in the vertical stack, with focus following the originally active workspace.

Status: stub. The protocol shape is locked in so keybindings can stabilise; the daemon returns “not yet implemented” until the animation lands.

flow dispatch swap-workspace 3   # not yet implemented

No default hotkey.

move-to-workspace <id>

Move the focused window to workspace <id>. The window is detached from the active workspace (with local focus succession — no OS foreground push) and re-inserted into the target workspace after its focused column. Focus stays on the source workspace.

flow dispatch move-to-workspace 4

Default hotkey: Alt + Shift + 1…9, 0 (0 = workspace 10).

Window & daemon lifecycle

close-window

Ask the focused window to close itself gently via Win32 WM_CLOSE — the same message Windows sends when you click the window’s ✕ button — so the application runs its normal shutdown logic (prompt to save, release resources, etc.). The window is removed from the layout automatically once Win32 reports its destruction.

flow dispatch close-window

Default hotkey: Alt + q

Beyond dispatch — the rest of the CLI

Everything above lives under flow dispatch … (the actions that change layout). A few other top-level commands are worth knowing:

Browse them any time with flow --help, and the dispatch surface with flow dispatch help.

For the daemon’s internal handling of these — the named-pipe protocol, the foreground-lock grant, crash recovery — see IPC & Watchdog.