Move and Dock the Flow Bar on Desktop

The Flow Bar is a small floating bubble showing your dictation status: resting, recording, or processing. On new installs it stays hidden at rest until Flow's initial setup finishes, then appears automatically.

Show the Flow Bar

1. Open Settings → System in Flow.

2. Turn on Show Flow Bar at all times to restore the bar and end any one-hour hide.

Where the bar appears

• Multiple displays: The bar follows your cursor's display, not the focused window.

• Mac: The bar stays clear of the menu bar and of a Dock placed at the bottom, left, or right, and reclaims that space when the Dock is hidden. It stays put when you switch Spaces, and in a full-screen Space it sits flush against the screen edge and stays put while you switch apps with Cmd+Tab, then returns beside the Dock when you leave full screen. It stays visible when the Dock shows or hides — such as hovering an auto-hide Dock — and hides briefly only when a Dock change requires it to move.

• Windows: The bar stays clear of the taskbar and leaves a bottom gap so an auto-hide taskbar can appear.

• Menus and pickers: These open from the docked side and stay within the usable screen area.

• Temporary changes: Full-screen apps and meeting reminders can relocate the bar temporarily. A calendar reminder appears at bottom-center when the bar is hidden indefinitely or snoozed and no meeting is in progress.

Hide the bar

Turn off Show Flow Bar at all times in Settings → System to hide the resting bar indefinitely. The menu-bar and system-tray menus have no Flow Bar show, hide, or move control.

For a one-hour hide, use the bar's right-click menu, which opens only when the bar is at rest and you're hovering over it — not during dictation or processing, while showing an error, or while hidden.

1. Right-click the resting Flow Bar while hovering over it.

2. Choose Hide for 1 hour.

During a one-hour hide, the Show Flow Bar at all times toggle is off and reads “Hidden for one hour.” The resting bar returns when the hour ends unless it is also hidden indefinitely.

Screen sharing and privacy

The Notepad and Flow Bar appear in screen shares and screenshots by default.

1. Open Settings → Notetaker in Flow.

2. Turn on Don't show Notepad and Flow Bar in screen capture, in the While Notetaker is active section.

With the setting on, the Notepad is excluded from capture at all times. The Flow Bar is excluded only while a meeting is recording or reconnecting; it appears in captures before recording starts and after it stops, including during post-recording processing.

On Windows, complete capture exclusion requires Windows 10 version 2004 or newer; older versions show a blank window instead. Exclusion also requires Windows' Desktop Window Manager to be running, and does not prevent someone photographing your screen.

Still stuck?

Contact support if the Flow Bar doesn't appear after initial setup, or if it doesn't return when the one-hour hide ends. Include your platform and the steps you tried.