Support

flick requires macOS 14 Sonoma or later and is distributed exclusively through the Mac App Store. Two features depend on a newer system: Spotlight results for Recents require macOS 15, and the Control Center buttons require macOS 26. Everything else works on every supported version.

flick is a menu bar application. It has no Dock icon and opens no window on launch; you will find it as an icon in the menu bar at the top right of your screen. On first launch a short tour introduces the picker and offers to make flick your default browser and, if you wish, your default email application. You can revisit every choice in the tour later in Settings, which opens from the menu bar icon.

Keep exactly one copy of flick on your Mac. macOS hands links to one application per bundle identifier, and a second copy, such as a test build, can silently receive links intended for the first. If you have ever installed a second copy, delete it and restart flick.

Click the flick icon in the menu bar and choose Set as Default. macOS presents its own confirmation dialog; confirm it, and from that moment every link you click in any application is handed to flick. You can also make the change in System Settings, under Desktop and Dock, Default web browser.

To stop using flick, choose another browser in the same System Settings pane. flick continues to run for its other features, such as Send this tab and Route copied links, but no longer receives clicks. Deleting flick returns the default to whatever macOS chooses.

When a link has no rule and no other decision applies, the picker appears at your cursor. It lists every browser installed on your Mac, Safari first and Chrome second, and, where a link belongs to an application such as Zoom or Figma, an offer to open that application instead. Click a row to open the link there.

3.1 Keys inside the picker. The number keys 1 to 9 open the browser at that position. The arrow keys move the selection and Return opens it. S turns the picker over into Link Scan. 0 opens the link in its native application, and Command 0 does so for that site from now on. Command C copies the cleaned link without opening anything. Escape dismisses the picker and nothing opens.

3.2 Always use for this site. Ticking the checkbox at the foot of the picker before you choose a browser saves a rule for that site, so the next link to it opens silently in the same place. Rules are described in Section 4.

3.3 Forcing the picker. Hold Option while clicking a link and the picker appears even when a rule, a Focus filter or the learning router would otherwise have decided. Use this to send one link somewhere unusual without changing anything.

3.4 Where it appears. The picker opens on the screen the mouse is on, at the cursor, and never takes focus away from the application you were using. Clicking anywhere outside it dismisses it.

A rule sends every link that matches a pattern to a browser or application without asking. Create one from the picker with Always use for this site, or in Settings, Rules, by entering a pattern and choosing a destination.

4.1 Patterns. A pattern is a host, such as github.com, which also matches its subdomains. Email rules use the recipient's domain with the mailto prefix, such as mailto:company.com, and mailto:* matches every email address. Email rules never match links and link rules never match email addresses.

4.2 Rules pinned to an application. A rule can be pinned to the application the link came from, so that github.com from Slack opens in one browser and the same link from Mail opens in another. The rule editor offers the applications that have actually sent you links. A pinned rule always beats a general rule for the same site, regardless of the order of the list.

4.3 Order. Otherwise the first matching rule in the list wins. Drag rules to reorder them.

4.4 Rules in plain language. With flick Pro, type a sentence such as "send youtube to firefox" into the composer at the top of the Rules tab and flick writes the rule for you to review before it is saved. The on device Apple model does this work; a Claude key of your own is used only if you add one.

4.5 The free limit. The free tier includes five rules. When the free trial ends, rules beyond the fifth keep working and may be edited or repointed, but new rules beyond the limit require flick Pro. Nothing is deleted.

The intelligence features live under Settings, Intelligence, and every one of them has its own switch. They are part of flick Pro and run on your Mac; see Section 18 for what they store.

5.1 The learning router. flick remembers which browser you choose for each site. Once it has seen you make the same choice several times with high confidence, the picker opens with that browser already selected, and, if you enable automatic routing, the link opens there silently with an undo offered in a notification. Silent routes are never used to train the router further, so a habit cannot reinforce itself.

5.2 Native applications. Links owned by Zoom, Teams, Figma, Notion, Spotify, Linear, Discord and Slack can open the installed application directly instead of a browser tab. flick also notices the applications you already have, and the first time you click a site that matches one of them the picker offers it.

5.3 Intent routing and work hours. flick can send work links to your work browser during the hours you set and personal links elsewhere. A Focus filter, described in Section 13, overrides work hours whenever a Focus is on.

5.4 Today in Links. A daily digest of where your links went: which browsers, which sites, which applications sent them, and what a rule could save you. Open it from the menu bar, from Control Center on macOS 26, or with the Today in Links Shortcuts action. With a Claude key of your own it can add a plain language recap of the day.

5.5 Sign in links. flick recognises sign in and single sign on links by their address and always keeps them in a browser, because those flows depend on browser cookies and session state that an application cannot provide.

Before any rule sees a link, flick replaces redirect wrappers with the page they lead to: Outlook Safe Links, Google and Facebook redirects, YouTube, LinkedIn, Slack, Reddit, Tumblr, VK and exit.sc wrappers, and AMP pages, up to three layers deep. It then removes tracking parameters such as utm_source, fbclid and gclid. Everything else in the address is left exactly as it was, and search pages are never touched.

Both steps are on by default and can be switched off under Settings, General, Links. Unwrapping runs at every entry into flick, including links opened through Send this tab, the Safari button, Shortcuts and the automation interfaces described in Section 15.

Press S in the picker and flick follows the link's redirect chain from your Mac, names the final destination, reads its title and flags characteristics common to deceptive links, such as look alike domains and unusual top level domains. It retrieves at most the first 16 kilobytes of the destination and never renders the page. Automatic scanning of suspicious links can be enabled in Settings, Intelligence.

Link Scan is assistive. Where it cannot reach a destination it says so rather than calling the destination safe, and a clean result is not a guarantee. You remain responsible for the links you open. Link Scan is part of flick Pro.

Since version 2.0 flick can be your default email application as well. Open Settings, Email, and press Set as Default; macOS confirms the change. From then on every email address you click receives the same picker as a link, listing your installed mail applications, such as Mail, Outlook and Spark, together with Gmail, Outlook.com, Outlook for work or school, Yahoo Mail and Fastmail, which compose in the browser you choose under Webmail opens in.

Rules for email use the recipient's domain, so that every message to your company opens in your work mail and everything else in your personal one. Email routing is part of flick Pro; without it, addresses open silently in the fallback mail application you choose in the same tab.

Press Control Option S while a browser is in front and flick reads the address of that browser's current tab, then shows the picker with every other browser, so the page you are reading moves to another browser in one keystroke. The same command is available from the menu bar, as the Send This Tab Shortcuts action, and from Control Center on macOS 26. Send this tab is part of flick Pro.

9.1 Supported browsers. Safari, Safari Technology Preview, Orion, Chrome, Chrome Canary, Chromium, Brave, Edge, Arc, Vivaldi and Opera. Firefox does not expose its current address to other applications, so it cannot be read; use the Safari button or copy the address instead.

9.2 The permission dialog. To read the address, flick asks the browser through macOS Automation, and macOS shows a permission dialog once per browser. If you decline, flick reports that automation was denied and the feature does nothing for that browser; every other part of flick is unaffected. To change your answer later, open System Settings, Privacy and Security, Automation, and adjust the browsers listed under flick.

flick includes a Safari extension that adds a Send to flick button to Safari's toolbar. To enable it, open Safari, Settings, Extensions, and tick flick. Click the button and the page you are on lands in the picker with every other browser offered. The extension reads only the address of the active tab, only when you click the button, injects nothing into any page and keeps nothing. Safari lists its access as all websites because it must be able to see the address of whichever page you press the button on. Settings, Shortcuts in flick shows whether the extension is enabled and opens Safari's extension settings.

Recents lists every link flick has routed, newest first, searchable by site, destination or the application the link came from, with All, Today and This week filters and a destination menu. Click an entry to open it again in the same destination, or use its context menu to open it elsewhere, show the picker, copy the link or remove it. Open Recents from the menu bar, the Dock menu, Control Center on macOS 26, or with the Show Recents Shortcuts action. Recents is part of flick Pro.

11.1 Remember full links. By default flick records only the host of each link. Turn on Remember full links under Settings, Intelligence, Memory, and the complete address is kept as well, on this Mac only, so Recents can show the page rather than the site. Email addresses are never kept in full.

11.2 Spotlight. On macOS 15 and later, remembered links are indexed by Spotlight on the same Mac, so a page you opened can be found by searching for it. If Spotlight shows nothing, check that Remember full links is on and that you are on macOS 15 or later.

11.3 Forget Everything. Available under Settings, Intelligence, and in the Recents window, it erases the routing history and the Spotlight index together and immediately. It works whether or not you have flick Pro.

Turn on Sync rules with iCloud at the foot of Settings, Rules, on each Mac you want to share rules with. Your rules list then travels through your own iCloud account to every Mac signed in to the same Apple Account, and the most recent edit wins. Only rules sync: routing history, remembered links, preferences and your trial state stay on the Mac they were made on. Turning the switch off stops syncing in both directions and leaves your rules where they are. Rule sync is part of flick Pro.

Open System Settings, Focus, choose a Focus, and under Focus Filters add flick, then pick the browser for that Focus. While the Focus is on, links without a rule open in that browser. A Focus beats work hours, because it is you stating your context rather than flick guessing it.

If flick does not appear in the list of filters, the usual cause is a second copy of flick on the Mac; macOS resolves the filter to one copy, and a test build or an older download can be the one it finds. Delete the extra copy, quit System Settings, and try again.

flick provides Shortcuts actions that also appear in Spotlight and can be spoken to Siri: Open Link, Show Picker for Link, Route Copied Links, Today in Links, Send This Tab and Show Recents. Each accepts the same input as the feature it opens.

On macOS 26, open Control Center, choose Edit Controls, and add flick's buttons: Send This Tab, Route Copied Links, Recents and Today in Links. Each button opens the matching feature in flick. On earlier versions of macOS the buttons are not offered and the Shortcuts actions cover the same ground.

15.1 Route copied links. Press Control Option L anywhere and flick reads your clipboard, finds every link in it and opens each one through its own rule, so a whole message or a standup thread can be routed at once. The same command is available from the menu bar and as a Shortcuts action, and is part of flick Pro.

15.2 The flick scheme. Other applications and scripts can drive flick through addresses that begin with flick://: flick://open?url= opens a link through your rules, with &browser= to name a browser; flick://pick?url= shows the picker; and flick://sendtab, flick://recents, flick://digest, flick://ask, flick://settings and flick://reload open the matching feature or reload the rules.

15.3 The MCP server. Launched with the --mcp argument, the flick binary acts as a local Model Context Protocol server for AI agent tools running on your Mac, over standard input and output only. It offers the tools list_browsers, open_link, show_picker, scan_link, add_rule, list_rules, get_history and get_digest. It opens no network port. The tools you connect to it act with your rules and your history, so connect only tools you trust.

16.1 Free forever. The picker, the keyboard shortcuts, link unwrapping and tracking cleanup, the default browser and default email setup, and up to five rules are free with no time limit.

16.2 The trial. Every flick Pro feature is unlocked automatically for 14 days from first launch, with no account and no payment details. The trial is offered once per Mac and cannot be restarted by reinstalling. When it ends, nothing breaks: links keep opening, existing rules keep working, and Pro features open the flick Pro window instead.

16.3 flick Pro. Pro unlocks rules in plain language, unlimited rules, the learning router, native applications, Link Scan, intent routing, Today in Links, Route copied links, email routing, Send this tab, Recents and Spotlight, and rules in iCloud. It is available as a monthly subscription, a yearly subscription, or a one time lifetime purchase, priced in the App Store in your local currency; in the United States the prices are 1.99 dollars a month, 14.99 dollars a year and 39.99 dollars once. The lifetime purchase supports Family Sharing where Apple offers it.

All purchases are made through Apple with your Apple Account, and flick never sees your payment details. To restore a purchase on another Mac, open the flick Pro window and choose Restore Purchases while signed in to the Apple Account that made it.

To cancel a subscription, open System Settings, click your name, choose Subscriptions, select flick Pro and cancel; the App Store application offers the same under your account. Cancellation takes effect at the end of the current period and you keep Pro until then. Deleting flick does not cancel a subscription.

Refunds are handled by Apple under Apple's policy; request one at reportaproblem.apple.com. The developer cannot issue refunds directly.

Nothing leaves your Mac. flick has no accounts, no analytics and no server of the developer's. By default it keeps a local log of the host of each routed link, the application it came from and the browser it opened in; Remember full links adds the complete address, on this Mac only. Your rules and settings live in flick's own sandbox container, and the trial date and any Claude key you add live in the macOS Keychain. The only things that can ever leave are the link you open, a Link Scan request to that link's own server, your rules through your own iCloud if you turn sync on, and requests to Anthropic under a key you supply.

Forget Everything erases the routing history and the Spotlight index. Deleting flick removes its container; macOS keeps Keychain items until you remove them in Keychain Access. The full statement is the Privacy Policy.

• Links open without flick. flick only receives clicks while it is the default browser. Check the menu bar icon for Set as Default, or System Settings, Desktop and Dock, Default web browser. Then make sure only one copy of flick is installed.
• A link opened in a browser I did not expect. A rule, a Focus filter or the learning router decided. Hold Option and click the link to force the picker, then check Settings, Rules, the active Focus, and the Intelligence switches.
• The picker never appears. Every link has a rule, or automatic routing is on. Option click shows the picker regardless.
• Send this tab says the browser is not supported or that automation was denied. See Section 9 for the supported browsers and the Automation setting in System Settings.
• The Send to flick button is missing from Safari. Enable the extension under Safari, Settings, Extensions, then customise the toolbar if the button is still hidden.
• Recents is empty. Recents lists links routed while the intelligence features are on and needs flick Pro. Spotlight results additionally need macOS 15 and Remember full links.
• flick is not listed under Focus Filters or in Control Center. Focus filters need a single installed copy of flick; Control Center buttons need macOS 26.
• flick is in the wrong language. Choose a language under Settings, General; flick relaunches in it. Nine languages are included.
• Something else. Write to support with your macOS version, flick's version from the About window, and what you clicked and what happened.

Quit flick from the menu bar and drag it from Applications to the Trash. macOS removes flick's sandbox container with it, which holds your rules and history, and reverts the default browser and email application if they pointed at flick. Two items remain by design of macOS: the trial date and any Claude key, both in the Keychain. To remove them, open Keychain Access, search for site.clickflick.flick and delete the entries.

Write to [email protected]. Include your macOS version, the flick version shown in the About window, and what you clicked and what happened; one line is usually enough. Every message is read by the developer and answered, usually within one business day. There are no accounts, so there is nothing to look up on our side and nothing you need to send but the description.