adflow

The taskbar as a stage.

An overlay in the style of the Dynamic Island, down in the taskbar. It grows upwards out of the bottom edge, takes two thirds of the bar's height, and gets out of the way of everything already sitting there.

Height
⅔ of the taskbar
Animated
Width and position
Focus
Never takes it
Alt-Tab
Never shows up
Download

Create an account, get the file.

The overlay shows ads while you work, and half of what an advertiser pays for them is yours. Signing up takes one tick: no email, no name, no bank details. You get an ID and a passkey, and that is the account. Your IBAN comes later, on your account page, once you actually want to be paid.

WHAT YOU GET
50 % of the ad revenue

Every spot stands for 60 seconds, and it counts only once it has stayed on screen for the full 60 seconds. A spot you close, skip or hide before that does not count. At the current rate that is 0.0060 USD per spot. Every spot is worth the same. Clicking one does not pay more. How many paid spots you get depends on how much advertisers book, and that is shared across everyone running the app. While we are starting up, expect a few dollars a month, not an hourly wage.

WHEN YOU GET IT
From 10.00 USD

Paid to the bank account you add on your account page, once your balance reaches 10.00 USD and the account is at least 5 days old. The waiting period exists so fraudulent accounts can be spotted before money leaves. You choose how: by bank transfer to an IBAN, or through Stripe, which pays you in your own currency in the United States, Canada, the UK, Switzerland and most of Europe. Outside Europe, a bank transfer can lose a fee to your bank or an intermediary bank; the terms have the details.

BE HONEST
Faking views does not pay

Only what the app actually displays is counted, capped at 1,000 spots a day (that limit moves up as more campaigns are booked). Scripted requests are rejected, and an account caught faking loses its balance. Payouts go to a bank account in your name. It is not worth it for a few cents.

Create an account

Daily limit  ·  currently 1,000 ads

What you earn depends on what advertisers book.

At the moment no advertiser has booked a campaign. Until the first ones arrive, we pay for the filler spots ourselves, at the same rate, up to 1.00 USD per account a day, from a small start-up budget. Once that is used up, filler spots earn nothing. The booked ads are shared across everyone who runs the app, so one machine cannot use them up in an afternoon. The daily limit moves up on its own as more campaigns come in. You do not have to do anything, and nothing needs reinstalling.

Be realistic: while we are starting up, expect a few dollars a month, not a wage. The most a single account can be paid in one day is currently 1.00 USD, counted from midnight UTC to midnight UTC. That is a ceiling, not what a normal day brings.

The download link is then valid for 15 minutes and is tied to this browser. 3 attempts, in case the connection drops.

Already registered?

Enter your ID and passkey and you get a fresh download link.

What gets stored

  • ID: randomly generated, in plain text.
  • Passkey: only as an Argon2id checksum.
  • IBAN and name: nothing at sign-up. Only once you add them on your account page, then encrypted with AES-256-GCM; the key sits outside the web folder.
  • IP address: not at all, only a shortened HMAC to curb abuse.
  • After 365 days the account is deleted automatically.

Double-click. That is the setup.

The download contains a finished .exe. No installer, nothing to compile, nothing that writes into Windows.

  1. Unpack the zip and open adflow.exe

    Put the folder wherever you like. The program runs from where it sits and does not install itself.

  2. Allow it once, on the first run

    Click More info, then Run anyway. That is a one-time step for the archive route; the one-line install skips it. After that the program starts normally, every time.

  3. Enter your ID and passkey

    The program asks for them itself, in a small window, right after the first start. Paste in the two lines you got with the download. You can also skip it: the bar then shows demo spots and earns nothing.

Once it runs

Click the baropens it, click again and it closes
Right-clickjumps to the next spot
Click the crossquits
Ctrl + Alt + Escquits from anywhere, even if the bar is hidden

Command line, size options and technical details

Nothing to configure.

The app fetches the current spots from the server when it starts, and again every 15 minutes. You never edit anything, and you never restart anything. If you want to run a spot yourself, you book one, same as any other advertiser.

Or you are here to run an ad.

Everything above is for people who install the overlay. What follows is the other side of it: what a spot looks like from the inside, and what one costs.

Six fields, one spot.

What ships with it are placeholders. Real campaigns come later. The format is settled: every spot fills the same six fields, and everything else (width, type size, colors) works itself out from those.

MARK
One letter in a circle

Far left, outlined in the accent color. Present in both states, the smallest mark that still carries when only the taskbar has room.

BRAND
The name

All caps, bold, white. Always visible. Together with the tagline it decides how wide the bar gets in its compact state, and with that, whether it fits between the buttons.

TAG
The line beneath

Short, after the separator dot. Always visible too. Anything too long here makes the bar permanently wide. Two to four words are plenty.

BODY
Only after the click

The body text appears only in the expanded state. It costs nothing as long as nobody opens the bar, and only a click can open it.

CTA
The button

Expanded state only, filled in the accent color. In the demo it answers the click with “Thanks! (demo)”; in production the campaign's action hangs here.

ACCENT
One color per spot

It colors the badge, equalizer, button and progress line. It gets no more surface than that. The rest of the bar stays black, like the system chrome.

No image, no video, no sound. What fits inside is text, one letter and one color. And the collapsed state has a ceiling: if brand + tagline does not fit into the free strip, it is truncated rather than laid over the taskbar icons. The body text is not affected; only whoever clicks sees it anyway, and expanded the bar may get as wide as it likes. So the constraint every campaign has to work within is that short line at the front.

Cycle the placeholders
Book an ad

Build your spot, see it at once.

A spot stands for 60 seconds, then the next one comes. Compact, it is visible the whole time, expanded only when somebody clicks. Enter your lines; the preview shows both states at the size they appear at in the taskbar.

Accent color
Compact, visible the whole time
Expanded, after the click
…

How many displays

YOUR NUMBER

Between 500 and 5,000,000. The price follows as you type.

USD, paid once

You pay per display, 12.00 USD per 1,000, half of that goes to the people running the app. Spots take turns, so every campaign gets the same share of the rotation. Only displays that stayed on screen for the full 60 seconds and were reported back are counted; a spot that never reached a screen is not billed to you. When your displays are used up, it stops by itself.

Book it

One step. You land on Stripe's payment page, pay by card, and your spot goes live within a minute. You get a campaign code and can watch the progress any time. No account, no password.

Founding offer  ·  10 of 10 places left. Delivered in full, or everything back. From 6.00 USD.

Straight to Stripe. Your card details never touch this server.