WinKeyCastr

English · Русский

A keystroke visualizer for Windows 11, ported from KeyCastr for macOS. It shows what you type and click in bezels over the screen, for screencasts, demos and presentations.

The visualizers, preferences, defaults and keystroke formatting follow KeyCastr's source closely. The bezels can blur the desktop behind them (acrylic).

Screenshots

Default	Svelte	Minimal

Preferences → General	Preferences → Display

Download

Get the latest build from Releases:

• WinKeyCastr-win-x64.exe — self-contained, runs as is.
• WinKeyCastr-win-x64-framework-dependent.exe — smaller, needs the .NET 10 Desktop Runtime.

Windows SmartScreen may warn about an unsigned app: choose More info → Run anyway.

Requirements

• Windows 11
• .NET 10 SDK (for building) / .NET 10 Desktop Runtime (for running a framework-dependent build)

Build and run

dotnet build
dotnet run --project src/WinKeyCastr
dotnet test

Single-file release build:

dotnet publish src/WinKeyCastr -c Release -r win-x64 --self-contained false -p:PublishSingleFile=true -o publish

Using it

• KeyCastr lives in the notification area. Click its key-cap icon (with the Windows logo) for About, Preferences…, Start/Stop Casting and Quit. The icon is filled while casting.
• Ctrl+Alt+Win+K toggles casting (KeyCastr's ⌃⌥⌘K). You can change it under Preferences → General.
• Drag a bezel to move it. The position is remembered.
• Running the program again opens the preferences of the copy that's already running.
• The interface is in English or Russian: Preferences → General → Language (defaults to the system language).

Visualizers (Preferences → Display)

Visualizer	What it shows
Default	A stack of bezels in the bottom-left corner. Typing in quick succession shares a bezel; commands, clicks and pauses start a new one. Display mode: Command Keys Only (default), All Modified Keys or All Keys, plus Apply Modifiers. Font size, line break delay, linger time, fade duration and colours are adjustable.
Svelte	A small panel with the last few keystrokes and ⇧ ⌃ ⌥ ⊞ indicators that light up while held.
Minimal	One bezel showing exactly what is held down right now: modifiers, key and mouse button.

Display Mouse Events adds a ring around the pointer on click, shows clicks in the visualizer, or both.

How it maps the Mac keyboard to Windows

macOS	Windows	Shown as
⌃ Control	Ctrl	⌃
⌥ Option	Alt / AltGr	⌥
⇧ Shift	Shift	⇧
⌘ Command	Win	⊞

• KeyCastr treats ⌃ and ⌘ chords as commands. On Windows, Alt chords (Alt+Tab, Alt+F4) count as commands too. AltGr does not, because it types characters the way the Mac Option key does.
• Preferences → General → Modifier keys switches to text labels (Ctrl+Shift+K) if your audience isn't used to the Mac symbols.
• Keys are shown in the keyboard layout of the window you are typing into, so a Russian layout shows ⌃С.

Differences from KeyCastr

• Acrylic. Optional blur behind the bezels (Preferences → Display → Bezel Material). It uses Windows.UI.Composition's host backdrop brush, because the regular Windows 11 acrylic turns solid in windows that are not active, and the overlays never are.
• Notification area / taskbar instead of menu bar / Dock. With "In the Taskbar" selected, closing the preferences window minimizes it to the taskbar, like a Dock icon.
• There is no Sparkle "Update" pane.
• The ⌘ on KeyCastr's key-cap icon is replaced by the Windows logo.
• Windows protects elevated (administrator) windows from non-elevated hooks. To show keystrokes typed into elevated apps, run WinKeyCastr as administrator too.

Project layout

src/WinKeyCastr/
  Input/        global keyboard/mouse hooks, keystroke → text (port of KCEventTransformer)
  Overlay/      always-on-top, non-activating overlay windows and the acrylic backdrop
  Visualizers/  Default, Svelte, Minimal and the mouse-click ring
  Settings/     preferences, saved to %APPDATA%\WinKeyCastr\settings.json
  UI/           preferences and about windows, notification-area icon, colour well, shortcut recorder
tests/WinKeyCastr.Tests/   keystroke formatting tests (ported from KeyCastr) and layout translation tests

Debug builds accept --demo Default|Svelte|Minimal to play scripted input without touching real input or saving settings (--prefs, --display open the preferences).

Licence

See THIRD-PARTY-NOTICES.md for KeyCastr's BSD licence, which covers the reused icons.