Window Switcher

Window Switcher is an open-source desktop app that creates small always-on-top preview windows for selected applications.

It is designed for fast window switching and multibox workflows (games, tools, multi-client setups), without modifying target applications.

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
• 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 and highlight color from Settings
• Inspect runtime/OS/dependency status from the About window

Compatibility

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

Limitations

• 🖵 Fullscreen applications not supported

How it works

• Windows: native DWM thumbnail previews are used in floating windows.
• 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.

Typical workflow

1. Launch Window Switcher.
2. Open Settings > Configure prefixes and add entries to the whitelist.
3. Open Settings > Configure blacklist to exclude titles you do not want to see.
4. Floating previews are created for matching windows.
5. Click a preview to focus the original window, or enable Focus on hover.
6. Right-click a preview (or list item) to blacklist, temp-blacklist, or rename a window.

Demo

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

Build Windows installer (scripted)

Prerequisite: install NSIS (so makensis.exe is available).

From the repo root:

pwsh ./scripts/build-installer.ps1 -Version 0.7.0

(Works in Windows PowerShell too: powershell ./scripts/build-installer.ps1 -Version 0.7.0.)

Build Linux AppImage (scripted)

From the repo root:

./scripts/build-appimage.sh -v 0.7.0

Output: ./artifacts/appimage/WindowSwitcher-0.7.0-linux-x64.AppImage

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.

Settings available in-app

• Disable previews
• Move windows
• Resize windows
• Focus on hover
• Start minimized
• Window decorations (Linux policy)
• Fixed size + Width/Height
• Highlight color

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)

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! 🙌