The best thing about Flatpaks is how many great apps you can find. The worst part is how many mediocre ones you have to sift through to get there. Installing Flatpaks can feel like gambling an entire afternoon on the chance you’ll stumble across a hidden gem. To save you trouble, I did the testing for you. Here are five genuinely useful Flatpaks worth installing on your Linux PC.
Warehouse
A must-have for managing your Flatpaks
Warehouse is a Flatpak designed to help manage all your other Flatpaks. It provides a graphical interface where you can view all your installed Flatpaks in one place, manage their remotes, pin specific versions if you don’t want them auto-updating, and run batch operations across multiple apps at once.
That said, what I find most useful is its ability to remove leftover data. When you uninstall a Flatpak, it typically leaves behind app data and runtime files. So if you’re removing an app expecting a clean slate the next time you reinstall it—that’s not what you’ll get.
Warehouse fixes that. It lets you delete all files associated with an app, ensuring a fresh install actually starts from scratch. As a bonus, it also helps free up storage space.
In a previous round-up of must-have Flatpak apps, I mentioned Flatseal—a permission manager for Flatpaks that lets you control what each app can access on your system. Pairing Flatseal with Warehouse gives you complete control over your Flatpaks.
Gear Lever
The Flatpak designed for AppImages
If you’ve been using Linux for some time, you’ve probably come across AppImages. They’re portable, self-contained applications delivered as a single executable file. You can run them on most distros without installation, root permissions, or traditional package management.
They sound almost magical until you realize that because you’re not installing them, they don’t show up in your app launcher. They also don’t update automatically like Flatpaks or apps from your distro’s repositories. Instead, you have to manually download each new version. It’s as annoying as it sounds—but Gear Lever aims to fix that.
All you have to do is import an AppImage into Gear Lever, and it takes care of the rest: creating a launcher entry, organizing associated files, and even checking for updates when supported. It effectively turns AppImages into a first-class citizen on your system—which is especially useful since many great apps are only available as AppImages for Linux users.
Stay productive on any distro: 6 portable Linux apps I always keep on me
Some I just throw on a USB drive so I can plug in an run them on any Linux computer.
Parabolic
It’s yt-dlp, but without the terminal
yt-dlp is one of the most capable download tools available. It supports hundreds of sites, handles format selection, can extract audio, and works with playlists. The main caveat is that it’s entirely command-line based, which puts it out of reach for anyone not comfortable using the terminal.
Parabolic solves that by offering a graphical frontend for yt-dlp. It’s also super intuitive to use. You just enter the URL, choose the format and quality, and hit Download.
Importantly, this isn’t one of those stripped-down web wrappers. It gives you access to nearly all of yt-dlp’s capabilities. You can extract audio, download entire playlists, and choose from available formats—all through a clean, modern interface.
Junction
Stop letting Linux decide which app opens your files
By default, when you open a link or file on Linux, the system sends it straight to your default app. You don’t get to choose which app opens that file—unless you dig into settings and change the default. But then that app now opens all the future links and associated file types. This default setup might be convenient for some, but others—including me—prefer the flexibility to choose different apps for the same file type.
For example, I use multiple browsers logged into different accounts to separate work and personal use. Sometimes I want a link to open in my work browser; other times, in my personal one. That’s a problem when only one browser can be set as the default—but Junction fixes it.
As the name suggests, it acts as a “junction” between a file type and the app that opens it. Once installed, clicking a file or link brings up a pop-up that asks which app you want to use, letting you decide on the fly.
Strip out the personal details from your files before you share them
Most files carry more information than you realize. Photos embed GPS coordinates, camera model details, and timestamps. PDFs and documents often include the author’s name, editing history, and the software used to create them. This hidden data is called metadata. You don’t see it when you open a file—and most people don’t think about it until they share something and realize they’ve revealed more than intended.
Metadata Cleaner helps you remove all this information before sharing your files. That way, you can send files without worrying about accidentally exposing personal details.
It offers a simple, straightforward interface that shows all the metadata associated with a selected file. With a single click, you can remove everything. It also supports multiple file types and batch processing, so you don’t have to waste time cleaning files one at a time.
Metadata isn’t always useless. Some apps rely on it to organize files. For example, if you sort photos by the date they were taken, that depends on timestamp metadata. That’s why Metadata Cleaner includes a “Lightweight Cleaning” option, which preserves commonly used metadata while only removing the sensitive details.
What your photos are secretly telling everyone (and how to fix it)
Metadata can reveal a lot more about you than you realize.
There’s a lot more where this came from
There are hundreds of Flatpaks available, and that number keeps growing. These five are genuinely worth your time, but they’re far from the only ones. I’ll keep digging and share more hidden gems soon. Until then, don’t stop exploring—and if you know a Flatpak (or any app) that deserves more attention, share it with your fellow readers.
Product:
8/10
- Operating System
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Kubuntu 24.04 LTS
- CPU
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Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX (2.7GHz up to 5.4GHz)
This laptop is purpose-built for developers and professionals who want a Kubuntu Linux-powered portable workstation and gaming platform. It features an Intel processor capable of hitting 5.4GHz and both integrated graphics and a dedicated NVIDIA 5070 Ti GPU for when you need extra power for machine learning or games.
Stephan is the sports journalist for the Maple Grove Report.
