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LangSwitch icon

LangSwitch

KDE Plasma–style language switcher OSD for Windows

Release License Platform Built with Rust

Switch keyboard layouts with a beautiful, non-intrusive OSD — just like KDE Plasma on Linux, but for Windows.

LangSwitch OSD preview

✨ Features

  • 🪟 KDE Plasma–inspired OSD — elegant floating indicator appears on layout switch, then fades out automatically
  • ⌨️ Custom Hotkey Support — adds Ctrl+Shift as a fast and convenient global shortcut for switching languages
  • 🎨 Follows your system theme — adapts to Windows light/dark mode and accent color
  • 🖱️ Fully click-through — the overlay never steals focus or blocks interaction
  • 📌 Tray icon — lives quietly in the system tray; right-click to toggle or quit
  • ⚡ Minimal footprint — written in Rust, ~2 MB binary, near-zero CPU/RAM usage
  • 🔕 No taskbar clutter — OSD window is completely invisible outside of active display

📸 Preview

The OSD popup appears near your cursor for ~1.8 seconds when you press Ctrl+Shift (or standard Windows shortcuts), then smoothly fades out:

demo.mp4

🚀 Installation

Option 0 — Via WinGet (recommended)

winget install stormsia.LangSwitch

Option 1 — Download Installer (Recommended)

  1. Go to Releases
  2. Download & run langswitch-*.msi from the latest release
  3. It will install LangSwitch to C:\Program Files\LangSwitch, add a Start Menu shortcut, and automatically configure it to run on Windows startup.

Option 2 — Download release binary

  1. Go to Releases
  2. Download langswitch.exe from the latest release
  3. Run it — the tray icon will appear immediately

Autostart: Place a shortcut in shell:startup (Win+R → type shell:startup) to launch on login.

Option 3 — Build from source

Requirements: Rust toolchain (stable), Windows 10/11

git clone [https://github.com/stormsia/LangSwitch.git](https://github.com/stormsia/LangSwitch.git)
cd LangSwitch
cargo build --release
# Binary: target/release/langswitch.exe

🖱️ Usage

Action Result
Press Ctrl + Shift Switches the language and shows OSD
Press standard Windows hotkey OSD appears with new language, fades in 1.8s
Right-click tray icon → Intercept keys Toggle key interception on/off
Right-click tray icon → Quit Exit LangSwitch

LangSwitch provides a built-in Ctrl+Shift shortcut, but it also works with whatever hotkey Windows uses for layout switching (e.g., Alt+Shift or Win+Space).

⚙️ How it works

  1. A global keyboard hook intercepts layout-switch key combos (including the built-in Ctrl+Shift shortcut)
  2. ActivateKeyboardLayout switches the active layout
  3. A Slint OSD window with WS_EX_TOOLWINDOW | WS_EX_TRANSPARENT | WS_EX_TOPMOST displays the new layout abbreviation near the cursor
  4. The window fades out via opacity animation, then is hidden via Win32 — leaving no trace

🏗️ Tech stack

Component Technology
Language Rust
UI / OSD Slint
Win32 API windows-rs
Tray icon tray-icon
Concurrency crossbeam-channel

📋 Requirements

  • Windows 10 or Windows 11 (x64)
  • No runtime dependencies — fully static binary

🤝 Contributing

Issues and PRs are welcome! If you have ideas for features (multi-monitor improvements, config file, more OSD styles), open an issue to discuss.

📄 License

MIT © 2026 stormsia