Win App Switcher

macOS-style application switching for Windows.

How it differs from the built-in alt-tab:

• WIN+TAB shows one icon per running application — alt-tab shows every window of everything.
• WIN+§ (Nordic keyboard) or WIN+` (US keyboard) lists all windows of the active application. A quick tap switches to the next window instantly, with no dialog at all.

Installation: Copy win-app-switcher.exe from the latest release to C:\Program Files\win-app-switcher.

Keys

Input	Action
WIN+TAB / WIN+SHIFT+TAB	Next / previous application
WIN+§ (tap)	Switch to the next window of the active app, no UI
WIN+§ (held)	Window list; § = next, SHIFT+§ = previous
Arrow keys / mouse hover	Move the selection
Release WIN	Activate the selection
Left click	Activate immediately
WIN+Q	Close all windows of the selected application
WIN+W	Close the selected window (in the window list)
ESC	Cancel

Start at login

Run win-app-switcher.exe as an administrator — it fails to switch to windows started from e.g. WSL unless it runs elevated.

Not in the Administrators group? The logon task below cannot elevate a standard account, no matter how it is configured — use the startup shortcut instead.

To start it elevated at every login without a UAC prompt, create a Task Scheduler logon task in an elevated cmd prompt (press WIN, type cmd, choose Run as administrator — not PowerShell, the quoting below is cmd-specific):

schtasks /Create /TN win-app-switcher /TR "\"C:\Program Files\win-app-switcher\win-app-switcher.exe\"" /SC ONLOGON /RL HIGHEST /F

Or in the Task Scheduler GUI: Create Task → check Run with highest privileges → Triggers → At log on.

The switcher also works as a normal user, with degradations (a tray balloon warns at startup): windows of elevated processes (and e.g. WSL-started windows) cannot be activated, process priority falls from REALTIME to HIGH so switching may lag under full CPU load, and WIN shortcuts pass through while an elevated window has focus.

To remove the logon task, see Uninstall.

Standard user accounts

Run with highest privileges only elevates accounts in the Administrators group; for a standard account the task silently starts an unelevated copy. UAC offers no silent elevation for standard accounts — the closest thing is a Startup shortcut that asks for administrator credentials at every logon:

1. Delete the logon task if one exists (elevated prompt: schtasks /Delete /TN win-app-switcher /F) — otherwise its unelevated copy races the shortcut's copy at every logon.
2. Download install-startup-shortcut.cmd from the latest release and double-click it as the account that logs in (no elevation needed). It creates win-app-switcher.lnk in the Startup folder.

At every logon UAC then asks for administrator credentials and the switcher starts elevated; Cancel starts it unelevated with the degradations above. To undo, delete win-app-switcher.lnk from the Startup folder (WIN+R, shell:startup).

If it still starts without administrator rights

The "Running without administrator rights" balloon after a reboot means an unelevated copy started. To find out why:

1. Confirm what is running: Task Manager → Details tab → right-click a column header → Select columns → Elevated shows whether win-app-switcher.exe is elevated.

2. Check that the task ran at your logon and requests elevation:

   schtasks /Query /TN win-app-switcher /V /FO LIST
   schtasks /Query /TN win-app-switcher /XML | findstr RunLevel
   

   In the first output Last Run Time should match your last logon and Last Result should be 0. The second must print <RunLevel>HighestAvailable</RunLevel> — LeastPrivilege means the task was created without Run with highest privileges; delete and recreate it as above.

3. Test the task alone: exit the switcher from the tray, run schtasks /Run /TN win-app-switcher. If no warning balloon appears now, the task is fine — something else starts an unelevated copy earlier at logon and the task's copy exits (only one instance runs). Remove the extra entry: Task Manager → Startup apps, and the Startup folder (WIN+R, shell:startup).

4. Run with highest privileges only elevates accounts in the Administrators group — net localgroup administrators must list your account. Check whoami /groups in a normal window: an elevated prompt opened with another account's credentials reports that account's groups, not yours. If your account cannot be added to the group, use the startup shortcut.

Uninstall

Run scripts/uninstall.cmd from an elevated prompt. It exits the switcher, deletes the logon task, the install folder, and the current account's startup shortcut.

If the startup shortcut was created by a different account, delete win-app-switcher.lnk from the Startup folder (WIN+R, shell:startup) as that account.

The switcher writes nothing outside its install folder — no registry entries, no other files.

Updates

The switcher checks GitHub for a newer release at startup and daily, and notifies with a tray balloon and an "Update available" tray-menu row. Clicking either opens the release page — updating is a manual download, there is no self-update. Set check_updates = false in config.toml to disable the check.

Antivirus false positives

The switcher installs a low-level keyboard hook (WH_KEYBOARD_LL) — the same API keyloggers use — so heuristic antivirus scanners occasionally flag the unsigned exe. This is a known issue for every switcher built this way (AltAppSwitcher included), not a sign of anything malicious. If it happens, add an exclusion for the exe, or build from source and verify the binary against the release as described below.

Similar projects

• AltAppSwitcher — an application-centric alt-tab switcher for Windows, written in C. Thanks to it for the inspiration behind this project.

Publishing a release

bin/release-github v1.2.3

This drafts a GitHub release pinned to HEAD (notes generated from conventional commits) and dispatches the release workflow, which tests and builds win-app-switcher.exe in the pinned Rust image and attaches it (+ .sha256, config.example.toml, install-startup-shortcut.cmd, uninstall.cmd) to the draft. Wait for the assets to appear, review the draft in the browser, then press Publish release — publishing creates the git tag.

The workflow uploads assets with the release bot's PAT, so the default read-only GITHUB_TOKEN never needs write access. One-time setup: add the bot as a collaborator with write access and store its PAT as the RELEASE_BOT_TOKEN Actions secret.

A released exe can be verified independently: check out the tagged commit, run TAG=vX.Y.Z make docker-build (same pinned image and version stamp as CI), and compare dist/win-app-switcher.exe.sha256 against the release asset.