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win-glide

win-glide is a high-performance Windows utility designed for rapid, momentum-based window repositioning using keyboard arrow keys. It prioritizes tactile feedback, precision, and a "snappy yet light" physics model, allowing you to "glide" windows across your desktop with ease.

Core Features

  • Fluid Keyboard Movement: Move active windows using arrow keys with high-precision acceleration and friction, powered by a 120Hz physics loop.
  • Instant Window Centering: Press Win + Alt + C to center the focused window on its current monitor in one step.
  • Tactile Window Resizing: Hold Shift + Arrow Keys to grow/expand borders outwards, or Alt + Arrow Keys to shrink/pull borders inwards. Resizing uses continuous overlay preview physics and commits the physical window at the end of the gesture.
  • Snappy & Light Physics: Uses a Dual-Friction Model for slow, deliberate acceleration to high speeds while maintaining a nearly instant "glide stop" upon release.
  • Free Multi-Monitor Movement: Glide windows seamlessly across your entire virtual desktop. Windows can be "parked" partially off-screen while maintaining a safe 150px visible margin.
  • Safe & Responsive:
    • Maximized Window Guard: Prevents accidental movement or resizing of maximized windows.
    • Panic Exit: Any other keyboard input or mouse click immediately deactivates the glide session for instant control recovery.

Security & Privileges

Due to Windows User Interface Privilege Isolation (UIPI), standard-user applications are restricted from interacting with "high-integrity" windows.

  • Task Manager / Elevated Apps: To move windows belonging to Administrative processes (like Task Manager), you must Run win-glide as Administrator.
  • Automatic Detection: The application will warn you at startup if it's running with limited privileges and will skip activation on restricted windows with a clear console message.

How to Use

  1. Launch: Run the application (cargo run or the compiled binary).
  2. Center (One-Shot): Press Win + Alt + C to center the focused window inside the monitor work area (taskbar-aware).
  3. Activate glide: Press Ctrl + Alt + F10 while any window is focused to start a "glide" session. The tinted helper overlay will appear over the window.
  4. Move: Use the Arrow Keys to apply thrust. Acceleration is continuous; hold the keys to reach top speed (~1.3s spin-up).
  5. Resize: Hold Shift + Arrow Keys to expand borders outwards, or Alt + Arrow Keys to shrink borders inwards. The overlay updates continuously while the physical window is committed at the end of the resize.
  6. Exit:
    • Keys: Press Esc or any non-arrow/modifier key to let the window glide to a stop.
    • Mouse: Click anywhere to instantly deactivate the session.
    • Timeout: The session automatically ends after 5 seconds of inactivity.
    • Focus Loss: Switching windows or losing focus will also end the session.

win-glide screencap

Configuration

Upon first run, win-glide generates a config.json next to the running executable. You can customize the physics, resize speed, and hotkeys:

{
  "physics": {
    "acceleration": 3000.0,
    "friction": 10.0,
    "thrust_friction": 0.5,
    "top_speed": 4000.0
  },
  "resize_speed": 600.0,
  "hotkey": {
    "modifiers": 3,
    "vk": 121
  },
  "center_hotkey": {
    "modifiers": 9,
    "vk": 67
  }
}

Note: Acceleration and top speed are in pixels per second. The resize_speed field controls the base speed of continuous resizing (Default: 600.0). You can optionally define a resize_physics block in config.json (similar to the translation physics block) for custom resizing momentum and friction; if omitted, resize physics values are computed proportionally based on resize_speed. Modifiers (Default: Ctrl+Alt) and Virtual Key (vk) codes follow Win32 standards.

Build & Run Requirements

This project targets Windows 10/11 on x86_64 and needs:

  • A recent Rust toolchain with cargo (installed via rustup.rs).
  • Microsoft Visual C++ Build Tools (MSVC) including the Windows 10/11 SDK.

Build and Run

cargo build --release
./target/release/win-glide.exe

Run Tests

cargo test

Note: Some tests that register global hooks or hotkeys are marked as #[ignore] to avoid failures in non-interactive CI environments. To run all tests locally, use cargo test -- --ignored.

Developer Notes

  • Graceful Shutdown: The application uses a thread-safe signaling mechanism. When App receives a Shutdown event (from Ctrl+C), it sends a WM_QUIT signal to the background input thread. This ensures that Drop implementations for low-level hooks and global hotkeys are executed reliably.
  • DPI Awareness: The application is PerMonitorV2 DPI-aware. Movement and rendering are normalized against the current monitor's DPI scaling.
  • Resize Rendering: Overlay resize previews are intentionally ghost-driven and are only redrawn when the rounded window bounds actually change, which reduces churn and keeps the UI responsive.
  • Testing Hygiene: System-level tests involving Win32 hooks require an active interactive desktop session. These are gated behind #[ignore] to maintain CI stability.

Development Workflow

This project follows mandatory documentation habits. Detailed technical decisions and bug fixes are recorded in the .history/ directory.

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License.