Window Switcher

Window Switcher is an open-source desktop app that creates small always-on-top preview windows for selected applications and lets you switch between them quickly.

It is designed for multibox and multi-client workflows without modifying the target applications, with support for floating previews, filtering, renaming, diagnostics, and global keybinds.

Inspired by eve-o-preview, the project focuses on broader use cases and cross-platform support.

What you can do

• Display floating previews for selected windows
• Bring the original window to foreground by clicking a preview
• Trigger a specific client, or cycle to the next/previous selected client, with global keybinds
• Optionally focus windows on mouse hover
• Filter displayed windows with whitelist prefixes
• Exclude windows with blacklist entries
• Temporarily hide a window for the current session (temp blacklist)
• Rename a window title directly from the UI
• Persist floating window size/position per window
• Tune preview behavior, sizing, decorations, and highlight color from Settings
• Open the app data folder and inspect runtime/OS/dependency status from the About window

Main areas

• Filters: manage whitelist prefixes and blacklist entries.
• Keybinds: assign global shortcuts to built-in actions or specific client targets.
• Settings: control preview behavior, movement, sizing, decorations, startup mode, and highlight color.
• Help > About: inspect runtime information, preview mode, config path, and Linux dependency status.
• File > Open data folder: open the persisted application data directory directly.

Compatibility

• ✅ Windows
• ✅ Linux (X11 + Wayland)
• ⏳ macOS (not implemented)

Limitations

• 🖵 Fullscreen applications not supported
• ⌨️ Linux global keybinds require access to /dev/input/event* and /dev/uinput; previews still work without that access

How it works

• Windows: native DWM thumbnail previews are used in floating windows, and global shortcuts use a low-level keyboard hook.
• Linux (X11): screenshots are captured via ImageMagick import, and window actions use wmctrl.
• Linux (Wayland): PipeWire preview is used when dependencies are available; otherwise it falls back to screenshot mode.
• Linux global keybinds: evdev devices are read and forwarded back through uinput, so matching shortcuts can be intercepted without swallowing unrelated typing.

Typical workflow

1. Launch Window Switcher.
2. Open Settings > Filters, then use the Prefixes tab to add whitelist entries.
3. In the same Filters window, use the Blacklist tab to exclude titles you do not want to see.
4. Floating previews are created for matching windows.
5. Open Settings > Keybinds and assign shortcuts to Next client, Previous client, or a specific client target.
6. Click a preview to focus the original window, or enable Focus on hover.
7. Right-click a preview (or list item) to blacklist, temp-blacklist, or rename a window.

Demo

v0.8.0

Features

• Add a window to configure keybinds

Keybinds window

🎥 Example with 5 World of Warcraft clients, on Arch Linux KDE (Wayland)

v0.7.0

🎥 Example with 3 World of Warcraft clients, on Arch Linux KDE (Wayland)

v0.4.0

Features

• Add a window to configure settings
• Add the ability to rename windows
  • keep track of different settings for clients like World of Warcraft

Main window	Prefix window

Live preview	Settings / Rename

🎥 Example with Eve Online, World of Warcraft and Project Gorgon clients :

Requirements

• Runtime: Windows or Linux
• Source build: .NET SDK 10 (net10.0)
• Linux preview/focus features require external tools (see Linux dependencies below)

Installation

Download the latest release here

Quick start

Windows

• Download and run the WindowSwitcher-setup-*.exe installer from the releases page.

Linux

• Download the *.AppImage from the releases page.
• Make it executable and run it:
  • chmod +x WindowSwitcher-*.AppImage
  • ./WindowSwitcher-*.AppImage

Build from source

From the repo root:

• Build: dotnet build Window-Switcher.sln
• Run: dotnet run --project src/WindowSwitcher/WindowSwitcher.csproj
• Test: dotnet test src/WindowSwitcher.Tests/WindowSwitcher.Tests.csproj

The application version is centralized in ./Directory.Build.props via WindowSwitcherVersion.

Build resources used by the packaging scripts now live under:

• ./scripts/assets/installer/
• ./scripts/assets/packaging/linux/

Generated build outputs now live under:

• ./scripts/artifacts/

Build Windows installer (scripted)

Prerequisite: install NSIS (so makensis is available).

From the repo root:

pwsh ./scripts/build-installer.ps1

The NSIS definition used by these scripts is stored in ./scripts/assets/installer/WindowSwitcher.nsi.

The script reads the version from ./Directory.Build.props by default. Use -Version only to override it for a specific build.

(Works in Windows PowerShell too: powershell ./scripts/build-installer.ps1.)

From Linux/macOS, you can also use:

./scripts/build-installer.sh

Build Linux AppImage (scripted)

From the repo root:

./scripts/build-appimage.sh

The AppImage packaging resources used by this script are stored in ./scripts/assets/packaging/linux/.

The script reads the version from ./Directory.Build.props by default. Use -v only to override it for a specific build.

Output: ./scripts/artifacts/appimage/WindowSwitcher-<version>-linux-x64.AppImage

Build all artifacts from Linux

From the repo root:

./scripts/build-artifacts.sh

By default, this produces both:

• ./scripts/artifacts/installer/WindowSwitcher-setup-<version>-win-x64.exe
• ./scripts/artifacts/appimage/WindowSwitcher-<version>-linux-x64.AppImage

You can also target a single artifact from the wrapper:

• ./scripts/build-artifacts.sh --skip-installer builds only the Linux AppImage
• ./scripts/build-artifacts.sh --skip-appimage builds only the Windows installer

Prerequisites on Linux:

• .NET SDK
• NSIS (makensis) when building the Windows installer
• appimagetool in PATH, or let the AppImage script download it automatically

Linux dependencies

Make sure your system has:

• wmctrl (list/focus/rename windows)
• ImageMagick import (screenshots for live preview)
• gst-launch-1.0 + pipewiresrc plugin (PipeWire video stream)
• pw-dump (PipeWire node discovery and matching)
• gdbus (optional, only if portal fallback is enabled)

Install examples (depends on your distro):

• Debian/Ubuntu: sudo apt install wmctrl imagemagick
• Arch: sudo pacman -S wmctrl imagemagick
• Fedora: sudo dnf install wmctrl ImageMagick

Wayland PipeWire packages (examples):

• Debian/Ubuntu: sudo apt install gstreamer1.0-tools gstreamer1.0-pipewire pipewire-bin libglib2.0-bin
• Arch: sudo pacman -S gst-plugin-pipewire gstreamer pipewire glib2
• Fedora: sudo dnf install gstreamer1 pipewire-gstreamer pipewire-utils glib2

Usage

Filters behavior

• Whitelist prefixes: a window is shown when its title contains at least one configured prefix (case-insensitive).
• Blacklist: exact title matches are excluded (case-insensitive).
• Temp blacklist: hides a window by ID for the current session only.

Floating preview behavior

• Drag preview windows when Move windows is enabled.
• Resize previews when Resize windows is enabled.
• With Fixed size, all previews share configured width/height.
• Preview position and size are restored per window key on next launch.
• The active preview highlight is updated when a preview is clicked or activated through a keybind.

Global keybinds

• Open Settings > Keybinds to assign shortcuts to built-in actions or to a specific client window.
• Next client and Previous client cycle through the currently selected client set, meaning windows that match the whitelist and are not excluded by the blacklist.
• Client targets are populated from currently detected windows, and previously saved targets remain available even when that window is not running yet.
• Duplicate shortcuts on the same target and conflicts across different targets are rejected by the UI.
• On Linux, keybind capture is optional but requires input-device permissions; without them, the app still runs but global shortcuts are unavailable.

Settings available in-app

• Disable previews
• Resize windows
• Move windows
• Focus on hover
• Start minimized
• Window decorations (Linux policy)
• Fixed size + Width/Height
• Highlight color
• Apply is mainly needed when toggling Disable previews; other values are persisted as they change

In-app diagnostics

Help > About shows:

• App version
• OS / .NET runtime / architecture
• UI backend
• Config file path
• Active preview mode
• Linux dependency status

Configuration

Settings are persisted to config.json under the app data folder:

• Windows: %APPDATA%\\WindowSwitcher\\config.json
• Linux: ~/.config/WindowSwitcher/config.json (typically)

The file stores:

• UI and preview settings
• Whitelist / blacklist filters
• Saved floating window positions and sizes
• Global keybind target definitions

Linux global keybind requirements

Global keybinds are optional on Linux, but when you use them the listener needs:

• Read access to /dev/input/event*
• Write access to /dev/uinput or /dev/input/uinput
• Typically: root, membership in the appropriate input group, or custom udev rules

License

This project is licensed under the GPL3 License.

Donations

If you find Window Switcher useful and would like to support its development, consider buying me a coffee ☕

Your support helps keep this project alive and motivates further improvements. Thank you! 🙌