The Secret New Windows Tool Nobody Is Talking About

[@ThioJoe]

What might you be using this for 👀👀

[@Skradgee]

Shenanigans

[@sfoxj]

Second

[@Psofos]

Trolling people on anydesk, whether that would be a screensharer or some tech support scam

[@gamepunk7963]

batch with no batch because i usually code in batch witch is complicated for the if, gotos, ipconfig.

[@DarkGamerA]

hehheehe

[@AntVenom]

This is awesome actually! My inner macro nerd brain is probably gonna go nuts with this feature.

[@hwqh]

plus i'd imagine it'll will be a lot of people's first foray stuff like this

[@MFLP1998]

Me with a bunch of 3rd party macro scripts be like

[@zenvio]

ill probably use it too if i had any ideas

[@itsfellow17]

Whoa antvenom is here

[@mrdiamond64]

wow

[@czebosak]

When I first saw this I thought "Oh, cool", but after seeing all of the features I can see how advanced this really is, you can create some really cool stuff with this

[@monad_tcp]

It immediately remembered me of auto-hotkeys, seemed less clunky. Gonna give it a try.

[@Perseca]

You can schedule things to run automatically in intervals, you just have to be creative about it. The way I did it was to create a loop that checks whether the current datetime is less than or equal to a variable called ResultedDate, which is created when you use the Date time function "Add to datetime". I did that within a subflow and put the subflow within the loop. It works quite well for my purposes, you just have to make sure you're giving it enough time intervals to finish processing everything. But I was effectively able to create a hot folder using this method.

[@archerpence]

Hello! That's cheeky and I love it. Nice usage and I may use that concept. 👍

[@Korodarn]

That's a good method. An alternative is to use the wait for file option and windows task scheduler to have a simple script create the file it needs to start, ex: createobject("scripting.filesystemobject").createtextfile "c:\users\userid\startitnow"

[@timurtheterrible4062]

Is there something like cron but for Windows?

[@NelCapeTown]

@@timurtheterrible4062 It's called "task scheduler."

[@songokussj4cz]

@@timurtheterrible4062 Nel is right. Task Scheduler is the way to go. It appears to be "more advanced and complicated" but the opposite is the truth. You can set a new task under a minute. And, better than in chrome, you can select from a long list of different options, for example run as admin at startup and so on.

[@Sam_Kush]

This video was the spark to a mind blowing new perspective into software possibilities. In less than a week, I've spent uncountable hours learning and setting up my own flows. My results: - Extract data from web and insert it into a video editor. - Automatically upload videos to KZbin and select all details. -Edit "End Screen" of older videos to match the most recent publication.

[@SystemNumba1]

true

[@davidpocielloquadrado6156]

☠☠ Microsoft: Only buisness can schedule flows. Task scheduler, already in every windows machine: Allow me to introduce myself

[@jakeisconfused]

that was what i was thinking too 💀💀

[@Shywizz]

@@jakeisconfused Autohotkey: 🗿

[@dieSpinnt]

Also: Is it the 100st or the 101st time that this dead horse "Graphical Programming" is beaten? It is not new ... and not good (in the sense of better than anything else). Even a hype pushed by the micromongers won't change that. Guys, have fun. And lets do something less boring than wasting our time with that BS:)

[@TimMonfries]

@@dieSpinnt I bet you're fun at parties.

[@Ironyum99]

XDDDDD

[@TheoWerewolf]

Just for the record, this has been around for a couple of years, but you had to go get it rather than have it just appear. This is basically the Windows answer to MacOS Automator - but in some ways better. The older versions really tried to use the web to store flows, constantly wanted to get you to upgrade to the business/pro version and could be a pain - pity it's still not able to launch a flow automatically.

[@vctrsigma]

Mac OS Automator was the first thing I thought of. Yeah, it does stuff, but too techy for the "normal" people yet any "nerd" would just use a more traditional coding/scripting tool. Maybe this is better, but I think it likely suffers the same issue with lack of a serious audience.

[@hervegeorges]

Yeah Werewolf, that s what I thought. Wait a minute, did Apple have the same thing twenty years ago at least ? Even with copying Apple, it takes them years. lol. On the Linux and unix side, they had the same things since well forever. I am sure they wanted to call it : "the Terminator" but Arny said I ll be back , and they crapped their pants. Power automate, onecloud instead of icloud. They can not even come up with an original name instead of rippoff names. What is interesting about OS nowadays , they are pretty much all based on linux, unix kernel and such which is great. Even windows is pretty reliable now. The last version of windows 11 is pretty good. Even when they are not open source per se, they still do a lot collaboration which is a great concept. They still have problems with drivers. Even good brand computers, there are always a couple of drivers missing when you are upgrading. Some are very tricky to find. Windows is notoriously bad at finding drivers.

[@StarwindIV]

This is exactly what I was thinking too... Like, it's updated, but it's been around.

[@jaystark841]

This has been around in one form or another for a few decades. In my (quite a bit!) younger years we called "batch files" that ran basic commands in "batches." A necessity for running BBS software on PCs. I used it to run tape backups in the middle of the night while I was sleeping. Cool, eh?

[@weirdwordcombo]

@@hervegeorges 20 years ago Apple had AppleScript. that was before mac os X

[@bujin1977]

This is a really cool app. I used it a few months ago to set up a whole load of subscription reports on a report server (SSRS). It probably took me longer to set up the flow than if I would have just manually created all of the subscriptions, but I *hate* doing repetitive tasks! 🤣 I didn't know it was now built into Windows 11.

[@TinyMeatPete]

Honestly this is automation in a nutshell. You spend hours creating a script that will automate something that would take you a few minutes. BUT if you use it daily, you'd techinally be saving minutes every day; so I think its worth the effort 🤣

[@bujin1977]

@@TinyMeatPete Indeed! I created it with the intention of using it again. But I never did! 😁

[@Casonplayz]

Elon musk: introducing Tesla bot

[@doggo_woo]

@@bujin1977 This was basically me creating a program that would automatically update all dates in a word file, spending almost 1 hour doing what would only take me 5-10 minutes. Then never used it because I never ended up needing it.

[@grn1]

Computer Science Engineer: Someone who rather spend hours creating a program to solve a problem that could have been solved in a few minutes by hand. Or something like that, it's something I heard many years ago in college.

[@whamer100]

this is actually really interesting! I might have to give this a try, although I'd prefer an open source version that doesnt force me to log in to use it

[@jessekarn]

I use Event Ghost. It’s free, it’s awesome, and it looks like it can do way more than this app. Scheduling events is included of course, why would anyone pay for that, right?

[@MirrorHall_Clay]

Knowing how Microsoft has been leaning more towards open source software anyway, I was kinda surprised this isn't one of them.

[@ShepherdPr1nce]

This was so smart thio. Great advice for automation.

[@kennethralcock]

The first most useful thing that comes to my mind, is writing a flow for folder synchronization between two physical storage devices. For example if you wanted to back up a segment of your documents folder to a flash drive to take to work with you. And thanks for posting this video by the way I had no idea this feature existed.

[@KenLeeCC]

errr.......u don't have to use this tool to do that simple task. just create a robocopy script (takes just few minutes), add it to task scheduler - on an event (ID:2101) and u r good to go. every time u plug in a USB drive it will run.

[@lonergothonline]

windows XP had this idea of a briefcase, where a folder can act as a folder that only houses things that need to be taken to work, or brought back from work, so it would sync the files in the briefcase folder, to other briefcase folders on things like flash drives. I'm certain windows 10 has something similar but I don't know what it would be called or how to use it.

[@brianmi40]

I was a hero at work some years ago. We had several thousand rows in a spreadsheet, where the content from several cells per row had to be copied and pasted into the separate fields of a network monitoring app. I used a Windows Macro app and carefully coded it to do 5 lines at a time, copying, switching apps, pasting, stepping forward, switch back, move to next row, etc. Bumped it up to do 100 at a time once it was working well and in no time had it all completed. Worked great and saved tons of hours with it mapped to a hotkey to execute. Of course, any macro program like that has "run on startup" commands which could kick off a Flow upon startup...

[@rationalbushcraft]

I think the reason a flow can only be automated by business customers is because I could see how a flow could be created that would say create a folder in temp then disable scanning of that folder in defender then downloading a reverse shell and running it. Or maybe a keystroke logger or whatever.

[@rationalbushcraft]

@sexweed the control is you must be logged in to 365 run a flow. So you can only run flows from your tenant. A flow would be less useful if only you could run it. But if anyone could run it then it could be used like macros are as weapons.

[@ForTheOmnissiah]

Even if that were the case people can already script that up in a heartbeat. Microsoft already provides development tools that are more than enough to make whatever malware you can imagine, and all of that is allowed.

[@bloetsnoe9410]

If you have any malicious code or script on your machine that could do such things, it could also do anything else without automation. Like create that folder, disable scanning and then download anything from the internet. Why would it need automation for this?

[@macoud12]

I have used it for about a year now. I did make two small edits to the flow you shared. One is just personal preference, swapping the "Launch new Google Chrome" actions with "Launch new Microsoft Edge" actions. Second one is setting it up so the browser closes after Excel does.

[@Szklana147]

I use this app weekly for my work. Great time (nad frustration of doing the same thing in a loop) saver!

[@p5udu218]

This tool is awesome and the possibilities are near endless, literally revolutionized my workplace

[@arkfish]

I'm SO glad this was added. It's a lot like the Shortcuts app on iOS. I hope they let you do things such as simulating user input (move mouse, click, type, scroll, etc)

[@nikitademodov3446]

I think it's more like the Shortcuts app on MacOS, which is more in brand with Microsoft copying Apple.

[@697_]

The last thing you want to do is create automations that requires user input as there are so many variables that can cause it to break and start doing things it's not supposed to do.

[@thahrimdon]

This is EXACTLY WHAT I’VE BEEN LOOKING FOR!! I host tons of servers for a game client called Plutonium. They recently added Black Ops zombies to their client, however it is very buggy. One of these bugs is, if you host servers for that specific game, once some join joins and leaves, after about 30 minutes there will be an error where the server is un-joinable until restarted. So instead of manually restarting my servers 4x/day, I’ll just use this! Thank you ThioJoe!

[@FlorianWendelborn]

Great that Apple Shortcuts has a somewhat competitor now. Let’s hope both companies innovate around this and make it noob-friendly. As a programmer, I’d personally prefer to be able to just write it as code instead but better than nothing I guess. Just pretty annoying that it’s hard to split things up into separate parts. Both Apple Shortcuts and this MS tool basically produce the GUI equivalent of spaghetti-code.

[@sterkriger2572]

I think this is more in line with Apple Automator than shortcuts

[@Samstercraft77]

@@sterkriger2572 isnt shortcuts automator's sucessor

[@fredlaxton]

@@Samstercraft77 No, it's in addition to Automator. Macs have so much automation available it's ridiculous. Some built-in (Automator, bash/zsh, Applescript, Shortcuts), some are add-ons (Text Expander, Hazel, Better Touch Tool, Keyboard Maestro). With them you can automate keyboard shortcuts, scripts, TouchBar, and GUI apps to the max, and also run them automatically.

[@PMX]

You can run shell scripts from Automator, as well as from Shortcuts

[@FlorianWendelborn]

@@PMX That’s not the solution at all though, since the hard part isn’t running a shell script, but using a shell script to control everything that Shortcuts can. For example, HomeKit/Matter devices. Also, this makes the shortcut incompatible with iOS

[@curiouslyt2123]

Great video and thanks for talking about saymine! I always wondered what companies have my info.

[@AmilcarPino]

As a programmer that is Very Usefull Thank You !!

[@chezchezchezchez]

Please tell us what you’re going to make with it. I’m a programmer also.

[@wasabithumbs6294]

I would honestly rather make my own program to do what I want than be forced to use Windows 😂

[@rafal-z2d]

@@wasabithumbs6294 🤓

[@wasabithumbs6294]

@@rafal-z2d Well, imagine you had the ability to create a program to execute any simple macro that you want in 15 minutes, and that you use Linux for 99% of your computing needs. Would you code the macro and use it in Linux, or switch over to Windows every single time you want to do this particular function

[@rafal-z2d]

@@wasabithumbs6294 🤓

[@Daniel_VolumeDown]

It's funny that I was also looking for a program to automate things today and found an open source application called "Actiona" (although maybe there are better applications). But "Power Automate" seems to have more easy to use options than "Actiona" (but I think "Actiona" also allows for some more advenced things)

[@Heeter]

You could have just recorded yourself clicking "show more results" instead of find a JavaScript code that finds the button and clicks it :/

[@coresnap]

would it recognize that without error every single time and in a new instance of the store window being up? If so, then yeh much easier. That's just my thought on it is that recording it locally would somehow just behave differently than a script designed for said task to know how/what to look for. I'm also not a programmer, so I'm prolly wrong AF! lol

[@yasirrakhurrafat1142]

​@@coresnap yep, you're right. Also, if you are capable of programming. And intend to do automated tasks as unattended as possible. You'd be much more appreciative if those softwares give you low level access to their functions through api. Probably gonna be even more reliable than what this video is showing. But even this video can help, probably tremendously.

[@joshfairchild]

I was using this for work and it's awesome. Had Power Automate setup to trigger when we received new employee emails to a DL, converted to PDF, used AI Builder to extract values needed, then parsed those values into PAD via another flow to do the account creation setup and various things on my local PC on the internal network. Took the multi-hours long process and made it

[@petertrex]

At least they included browser extensions for Firefox as well, not only for Chromium based ones

[@angelplayz5783]

I took your advice to heart and now my computer is a beast! All the advice you give is always on point! Thank you, Thio Joe!!! You are amazing!!!! 😂

[@alexis0a]

This is more like Automator than Shortcuts but seems to be really helpful in Windows, once you start using this you can't go back!

[@hmlchy]

It has awesome support for office software automation. Sadly this doesn't have webhook as well as scheduled trigger option. You can however have scheduled and webhook trigger from using cloud flow and cloud flow can run this desktop flow

[@code8986]

This has some pretty cool capabilities, but the limitations you mentioned make it really lame. The fact that it's unusable without tying it to a Microsoft account is a deal-breaker for us.

[@Qwerty-uiop]

Yeah

[@oilbender]

True, was liking it until the point he said it needed a Microsoft account, that's a no thank you. It's even worse that for all that automation you can't make it run on startup.

[@kunjupulla]

Why though?

[@buizelmeme6288]

Privacy reasons.

[@purinnyova]

ya'll got google accounts 🙄

[@Julianpms]

Thanks for your video, which encouraged me to try this feature. I work mainly as a translator and typically work with a translation management program, two digital dictionaries and a set of six web pages. I created a simple flow just to open all of these in one go: a small timesaver, but I use it virtually every day. I like the fact that the flow is accessible from any PC, with no need to recreate it on a second machine, as I use two computers in my work: a more powerful desktop with a larger screen when I am in my home office and a laptop when travelling or onsite with clients.

[@Dicer328]

Joe, you rule. Keep making awesome content.

[@yepee1]

I was actually just hurting for something like this. I upload videos to a media server and there is a specific naming convention I have to follow for each item. Batch renaming is always a pain, but things like Automator make it a breeze. I don't have to code a script to get the job done. Thanks for showing this!

[@Jmcgee1125]

I have a lot of batch files that exist for the sole purpose of copying directories as a backup (e.g. game save data). This would have been a much easier way to do it. Edit: Okay this is a lot more powerful than I thought at first

[@dragoneater2008_]

Yes

[@mirror1766]

Some ideas that may help: store how many entries were found, how many show on default page, and how many show when clicking 'show more'. You can now calculate how many times to click it blindly then do the slower testing if there is more. Microsoft would have to add or delete a lot of programs before you likely see more than +/- a click. If you store the date of when something was first seen as a new entry then you can now sort by date even if you made several runs but didn't review results. You could use third party automation, such as but not limited to autohotkey, to at least get far enough to start your script and then schedule that third party automation on boot/time-of-day/etc.

[@paulstelian97]

Damn, this looks a lot like Automator got ported to Windows. Pretty nice!

[@chiyolate]

I love automating, thanks Thio Joe, I believe this tool will help with my workflow so much! I'm tired of doing the same thing over and over again, let me see if I can automate those!

[@c-LAW]

6:42 "requires you to login, at least it keeps the flows backed up in the cloud." In otherwords, MS can see everything you're doing. We sell privacy for a cheap trick.

[@MFLP1998]

"We totally protect your data, just agree to everything"

[@jamesdolan3046]

This is incredible. I needed to make similar sort of lists from a very user unfriendly website for work in my last job but when I began to even looking at coding it I just gave up on the idea as I'm way too noob. Will hopefully use this in the future!

[@svetievboris]

It is awesome that you can use java script code snipets to press buttons in a web browser. That would have saved me a lot of thinking about workaround solutions when making some of my flows. Edit wrong term for java script

[@mickgibson370]

I was trying it for assembly, then I had a stroke and could not remember languages. I had to relearn English! Anything to do with a processor I have tried, but no luck. It took me 8 years to relearn English and 20 more years, I am still learning English. Thou, I can read it!

[@wasabithumbs6294]

It's JavaScript code, not Java. JavaScript was built for the web, Java was built for desktops and servers. The similar names basically come down to brand recognition. The languages themselves could not be more different. There are actually browser automation tools for Java (playwright comes to mind) and in a way JavaScript (a modified version for desktop called NodeJS) that let you puppet browser windows around. You can use this to do all sorts of cheap tricks. However... the ultimate solution would be to find where the website is getting the data you want from in the first place. Browsers are big heavy slow programs that take data from the internet and makes it human readable; not necessary or efficient at all for a bot. Many services have their own robot-readable APIs in order to be friendly to scrapers, and even the ones that don't can often have an undocumented API meant for internal use. These both can be snuffed out using the "network" tab of your browser's dev tools. If all else fails, you can use libraries like bsoup to scan through the HTML (the first thing your browser downloads, contains the textual content and structure of the page but no styling or logic) of whatever page you want. Cheers

[@svetievboris]

@@wasabithumbs6294 thanks for the correction and the rest of the info. I totally agree with you but for a lay person like me, web scraping here and there like this gets the job done.

[@arthur_camara]

@@wasabithumbs6294 Laughs in japplet.

[@wasabithumbs6294]

@@arthur_camara Oh god.

[@simshady]

Awesome video! A few weeks ago I set up a flow that posts a nice coffee-themed GIF and the message "Time for a coffee!" via MS Teams twice a day.

[@giorgigogashvili2549]

The fact that the flows are not regular files and cannot be launched via keyboard assignments or on schedule is the dumbest thing MS did after windows 8

[@DrWho453]

Wow, interesting. That's a lot like the Automator in Mac. Mac has had this function for a long time except with automator you can make self running flows, service flows (this show up in the context menu under services), and automated folders where when something changes or is added to the folder, it will trigger the automated script to run. I have done this with a special folder that I use to create photos I want to run on my standalone photo frame. The photos have to be a specific size and type to be able to run. So I take any photos that I have and drop them in the folder, it will create an output folder with the new files ready to be send to the photo frame. I also have a couple of folders that can be used to auto rotate the pictures that need rotating. Glad to see windows has finally added a similar function now.

[@prathamray6471]

This guy never dissipoints me

[@prathamray6471]

@@colt_za I have

[@zaxnightcore598]

I like the fact how once this was a satiric channel on how to download more ram, speed up your internet etc... Has actually became a good tech channel with real info on this and that.

[@tramcrazy]

This is interesting. Power automate (web version) has been lurking in sharepoint (which I have to use for work) for ages.

[@tramcrazy]

And yes, you can schedule tasks in the business version of power automate.

[@CChex09]

You can make it search for when steam games go free for limited time because often you can keep the game after that.

[@JoeLahaina]

Thanks, very useful, clear, concise and well presented!

[@dstinnettmusic]

I love how everyone decided this was a useful feature all at the same time. Apple’s Shortcuts is the same thing. I use it to set the wallpaper on my phone every morning and evening

[@moltony]

This is extremely useful, maybe someday I will find a use for it..

[@voidarchon908]

it's so useful, you don't have a use for it

[@davidbonner4556]

I didn't work with this App in particular, but 30 years ago I was a LAN Admin with first OS/2 then NT2000 LANS to work on. With OS/2 I used REXX/2, and with NT2000 I used Perl. As I worked at a 24x7 Telcom Call Center we had a quarterly "churn"... At the beginning a class of new-hires were brought in and needed various accounts set up before beginning training, at the end of the quarter they released the slowest performers. They would come to me, usually on a Friday around quitting time and hand me the list of new users to be created by Monday morning. Using the UI to do one user took about an hour this way. The basic procedure went as follows: 1) Create LAN id, with all the appropriate user rights set on various drives and directories, with the one time logon and change password option set, create the home directory, configure the drive quota, and install the mail app in the home directory. 2) Build their logon script to mount the department's app drives to the correct drive letters and log onto the mainframe apps. 3) Build the Desktop to open the app windows in the standard locations. Start over with the next account. Like I said, using the GUI to do all this took about an hour for one user, and the lists seldom had less than 30 users. I automated the whole procedure, and using the command line script a single user took about a minute and a half, because the system didn't have to update graphics. All I had to do was edit the user list into a CSV spreadsheet file and feed it to the script, then kick up my feet and watch the work complete in 45 or so minutes instead of 30 hours. When we started switching over to NT2000 I taught myself Perl and verified complete functionality on a test server and workstation. I was ready when they wanted 300 users moved onto the new lan overnight. I was ready! Desktop automation has been fun to play with but I was a Unix Admin before this position and still prefer scripts using command line. I'm retired now but can see how newbies might find this easier, since it can be a point and click way to do the same thing.

[@Yuzemite]

A really nice feature, sounds similar to the Shortcuts app on iOS and MacOS. Great video Thio!

[@paulstelian97]

Sounds closer to Automator than to Shortcuts to me

[@prestonferry]

@@paulstelian97 agreed… Automater has syntax…

[@johnserpo9267]

This is available on the Mac since 2004, it is called "Automator". It is far more powerful on the Mac: the more apps you installed - the more functions you can use. The functions in Mac apps can be triggered without launching the apps, they are treated as services that can be use in your sequencing workflow. For example, with Pixelmator installed, you have a whole sets of image editing functions in Automator that you can program to automatically enhanced, resized, cropped images then save into a different file format.

[@nempk1817]

"Write programs to handle text streams, because that is a universal interface."

[@Cart1416]

I have used it multiple times and it is so much better than the online version.

[@onupirat]

Wow this is exactly what i need and was very excited while watching the video, until you said you can't schedule tasks. This ruins its purpose for me.😢😢

[@1Abdullah]

+1

[@siddiki9778]

You can write a AHK/PowerShell script that basically opens power automate and clicks the play button. You can then put that in task scheduler in case you want it to run on start-up.

[@AngelHdzMultimedia]

I've not watched the video in full, will do later. But if you can execute batch or Powershell script, then you can create Scheduled Tasks to run Power Automate tasks.

[@peterhelpme]

Someone at M$ came up with a great idea. What did the management do? They worked hard to figure out how to cripple the product as much as possible for regular people. - no auto start - no backup/restore - 365 account required - etc.

[@CouchPotator]

small correction, it requires a Microsoft account, not a 365 subscription, but otherwise I agree completely

[@peterhelpme]

@@CouchPotator Thanks for the correction. I forgot to add: no distribution via GPO (I assume)

[@PushyPawn]

ThioJoe is my sanitary angel. Helps me to manage my flow.

[@headerahelix]

Sanitary angel? 🤣

[@ViolaS471]

I've been using Macro Expert for years but it's a hassle to use in the workplace due to the nature of how windows treat macros. I may try this precious stone out to see if that overcomes the problems. Thanks!

[@Povilaz]

Now that's awesome. Goodbye AutoHotkey!

[@ulroxvladtepes4023]

Disagree. Scripting with auto hotkey is fast. Using a gui to select every action is cumbersome, though I will admit there's some cool tricks to this flows program and will have to take a look at some point.

[@Splarkszter]

*laughs in visual bot automation*

[@dj_chateau]

I've used it and not impressed. AutoHotKey or AutoIT are still easier to create and deploy without concern about automation leaking other information from logging or other sources.

[@lukejohnson6415]

Hard to believe I found this channel years ago by looking at Snipars liked videos

[@loicd.4283]

Nice way to start automation but I still prefer using AutoIt to do similar job Exist since decade its hard "coding" but it's very easy to understand/handle and his power is great we can compile it to an exe and use task planner to run it automatically we can also create some app with GUI

[@NazmusLabs]

never heard of it. Need to take a look.

[@mtbinkdotcom]

or AutoHotkey

[@passionfly1]

What an absolutely PERFECT video for showing and explaining a complicated piece of software that can do so much! WONDERFUL VIDEO! ❤💯❤

[@sidforreal]

Seem like Apple Shortcut version for Windows

[@chrismenza7023]

This is the only sponsor on any youtube video I have ever watched to the end

[@LaczPro]

Power Automate is very similar to Climpchamp, another included Windows app on Windows 11 (this one for editing videos) in the fact that it requires an email account to use it. It isn't too bad, seeing that other apps do the same, but still this may not be liked by everyone.

[@TheMeanor]

The reason for that is, that it stores your flows in your OneDrive

[@dandia7150]

I literally just searched youtube for details on power automate to my surprise one day ago this video is uploaded. I heard about power automate for some months now, I agree know one has even mentioned it and even ask a guy in tech and he never even heard about it!

[@itsmehere1]

Can you use it to do things like other programs like autohotkey can? Like make macros for games and such?

[@nickdaves3467]

Aaah ThioJoe... from tripling your internet speed by attaching a battery to the ethernet cable to automating stuff in Windows, what a man!

[@IsfarTausif]

Python automation scripts are practically obsolete now

[@ThioJoe]

Not necessarily if you need something that can auto run on a schedule at least

[@siddiki9778]

@@ThioJoe You can use a AHK/PowerShell script that would basically open up power automate and click the play button. After that, it's just a matter of putting that script into task scheduler ;)

[@zackpat3162]

I work at a Credit Union as an Automation Architect, my expertise is in the Power Platform (Power Automate, Power Apps, Power VA, and Power BI). It's a crazy powerful tool and will have a large impact in business processes going forward.

[@TadanoHitohito]

The "Sign into Microsoft" thing is a deal breaker for me. It's a shame, Power Automate looks very powerful.

[@TonyP9279]

Same for me.

[@steezykane4738]

why? mircosoft is the best company they are the reason you have a computer

[@vgamesx1]

@@steezykane4738 "mircosoft is the best company" Lol, good one. Also "they are the reason you have a computer" I guess you don't have any idea how it started do you? Or knew any other OSes existed... We would still have computers even if microsoft never took off.

[@TadanoHitohito]

@@vgamesx1 I'm pretty sure he was making a joke

[@N0zer0]

AutoHotKey for the rescue...

[@theproshopper]

Perfect timing, I just noticed this on my Windows 11 systems and was about to explore it.

[@Lil_Puppy]

The only thing I'd use this for is backing up game saves and settings to cloud storage but I can just make a batch file or powershell script for that and schedule it. This is for businesses and schools, maybe one day they'll have one for regular users that don't care about using AI to automate the categorization of their meme collections, but it isn't today.

[@mdmackint]

I’ve used power automate for years, it’s great!

[@VeggieManUK]

Yeah, its nothing new.

[@CandiceJoergan]

Fast forward over the advertisements, as I do, and use an ad blocker to block the rest and this isn't a bad video.

[@DooderKing]

I like the KZbin ads, but I love seeing creators get sponsors. I watch it a few times cause I admire them so much.

[@alainaerni]

I use the equivalent app on mac os called Shortcuts since about 2 years. It is very impressive how much you can automat. I love it.

[@TheBaxes]

I like using python for this kind of stuff, but its amazing how they made this look so user friendly (relatively speaking). Also, I guess that using this is far easier for interacting with a lot of Windows systems and that predictive model for selecting stuff in the browser is amazing!

[@PedroCoelho98]

Top! I've been using the Pullover's Macro Creator that does all this things with some more room to change some things!

[@JonRowlison]

Welcome, Microsoft, to the scripting system Apple added to Mac OS 7.5 around 1992!

[@davepaturno4290]

How long did it take Apple to come up with a phone that has a stylus built into it? My Galaxy Note 9 has had it for years. It does far more than screen write. MS Surface Pro tablets were using real stylus pens, 10 years ago.

[@YonatanAvhar]

Sometging worth noting is that for scheduling and autostart Windows has an application appropriately named "Task Scheduler". I don't know if you could make it activate these scripts but it's worth knowing

[@palmberry5576]

Probably could

[@RobbieRobski]

Seems like perhaps a more user friendly version of IFTTT (wouldn't know since I haven't used IFTTT but I do know the free version is severely limited)

[@eminencegrise1420]

Can I just kindly ask for the wallpaper on the desktop? Looks amazing! Thanks!

[@lilmsgs]

This reminds me of creating little utilities by stringing together command line commands with pipes and IO redirection in Unix/Linux, which is infinitely easier.

[@patrickolson7390]

Thanks for teaching me both about this awesome tool and Save Mine. I’ve never heard of it and appreciate you telling us about it!

[@TheCookiePup]

7:26 I wonder if a workaround is possible using a shortcut (.lnk) with certain flags and putting that in the Startup folder

[@kr6to409]

or maybe task scheduler?

[@TheCookiePup]

@@kr6to409 yeah that's what I was also thinking, probably easier than .lnk

[@paulthomann5544]

That's pretty nifty! I wonder how long before they drop this one without a replacement :P I guess you'll have to PowerAutomate the starting of the automations you'd like to have scheduled...

[@CheesiX8]

now let us pack it into a standalone exe file that reproduces the actions without the need for the app

[@phucnguyen0110]

Cool to see Power Automate makes it way to the personal user space! It's a powerful tool in the enterprise space :D

[@Lezappen]

A simple bash script can do all of that, and they've been around longer. In the enterprise space, scripts are way more versatile and reliable (work offline, can be scheduled etc..). I can see Power Automate being used by people that won't bother taking time to script to save themselves time on the job but still benefit from limited automation.

[@chotnik]

@@Lezappen right... now how a simple bash script reads and clicks in the browser I wonder...

[@Lezappen]

@@chotnik I'm unfamiliar with bash but in python there are multiple libraries to automate crawling the web and parsing web pages.

[@JohnSmith-xq1pz]

Mmm was hoping it was a single button to disable all of Microsoft's spying...

[@ThioJoe]

There are apps for that

[@JohnSmith-xq1pz]

@@ThioJoe Thankfully, but It would've be nice of them to have done it themselves OR be made too (looking at you EU, ya smacked Google and Apple )

[@NocFA]

Used to use this to log into Lost Ark automatic every time the servers opened so I could avoid queues, it’s incredible.

[@misophoniq]

You mean it took Microsoft 17 years to rip off "Automator" from macOS? I can see why they don't talk about it too much!

[@misophoniq]

Absolutely! Like many more things they implemented; Apple wasn't really the company inventing something, they just are real damn good in making it work commercially.

[@AKG58Z]

I recently got introduced to this tool via another KZbin video it's amazing to automate almost everything.

[@light-master]

I saw this app recently, figured I'd give it a try. Then was greeted by the "you absolutely have to log in" prompt. I immediately uninstalled it and went back to using Node-RED (no programming needed) and a couple more advanced Python scripts that use "Beautiful Soup" to parse HTML and XML sites.

[@l30P0H]

OMG! Finally I can automate anything without hours of googling how to make it work on batch or is it even possible!!!

[@Yell0wSmileY]

I do a lot of video editing but my app doesn't have templates so I use PA to start my app, then change the layout, add plug ins and even open explorer for me so it's ready to import files. No more redundant steps, it's awesome. The worst thing about PA is how long it takes to save automations. I dont know if it's a server issue but everytime i save changes, it will take a good while to save.

[@cybersecuritydeclassified4793]

You remind me of a younger version of myself. Passionate, keep up the great work young man!

[@BartokandBadIdeas]

Noones talking about it because it doesn't work, it's more than happy to turn itself on and get in the way of whatever I'm actually doing but it won't let me use it because I have to log in to it which doesn't work for some reason (something to do with one drive being disabled on my PC I think)

[@Kitteh.B]

I love this, I'm gonna use it to export my 2k+ favorite songs from my old music app. Even their support said they had no way of giving me a list of my songs, and in the web browser version it only lists like 20 at a time per page.

[@IreneSmith]

This has set my mind spinning. Wish I'd had it 15 years ago when I automated the creation of obituaries for the newspaper I was working for back then.

[@progman48]

Thanks for the suggestion. I will stay with AutoHotKey for now.