Support local AppFlowy desktop app integration without cloud login

[lijc210]

Hi,

Thank you for building this extension.

Currently, the extension requires users to log in before using the clipper functionality. For privacy-conscious users, this may raise concerns because browser extensions typically require broad page access permissions.

Would it be possible to support a "local-only" workflow without cloud authentication?

For example:

• Detect and communicate with a locally running AppFlowy desktop app
• Open the local AppFlowy app directly when clipping content
• Use a localhost API / custom protocol / deep link
• Allow completely offline clipping

This would help users avoid sending page data through external services and make the extension more attractive for self-hosted and privacy-focused workflows.

Something similar to:

• obsidian://
• logseq://
• local REST API communication

could work very well.

Thanks!

[alexrosepizant]

Hi @lijc210,

Thank you for the kind words and for this thoughtful feature request — this is actually exactly the kind of workflow I wanted to support from the start.

The workflows you describe (custom URI scheme, local REST API, IPC) all require the desktop app to expose an entry point for external data. AppFlowy Desktop currently doesn't offer any of these — the existing appflowy:// deep link is limited to auth callbacks (login, workspace invitations), not content creation.

I had put this on the back burner since the cloud approach was working well enough, but your request is pushing me to reinvestigate — I'm planning to look at what's feasible on the desktop side and open a PR upstream.

I'll let you know!

[alexrosepizant]

Quick update — I've opened a PR on the AppFlowy repository to add this: AppFlowy-IO/AppFlowy#8719

It implements an appflowy-flutter://new deep link endpoint that would allow the clipper to create documents locally without any cloud involvement. Stay tuned!