MightyPie Revamped — Customizable Pie Menu for window switching and more

This is the second iteration of MightyPie, a window switcher (and much more) for Windows, inspired by Blender's pie menus. My original aim was to get rid of the taskbar — have everything right at your cursor-tip and reclaim the space as a bonus. And at the same time to create something smoother and more predictable than Alt/Win+Tab — no more switching to the wrong window because of everything moving around all the time. But of course a Pie Menu can be used for much more than just window switching.

Pie Menus — different border colors show the different button types

Contents

• What's New
• Features
• Installation
• Usage
• Known Issues / Limitations
• Advanced Usage
  • Debugging
  • Configuration Files

Note

This is now my second "real" program, but creating it was quite a bit more complex than the first version of MightyPie. This means, once again, there are almost certainly bugs and rough edges here and there, so use at your own discretion. I welcome feedback and contributions, but I may not actively maintain or expand the project beyond its current state. Though I will most likely patch major bugs and issues.

What's New

MightyPie Revamped is based on Tauri, which means no more DPI-problems. The UI should remain crisp in multi-monitor setups and when switching between displays.

The available programs that can be assigned to Launch Program and Show Program Window buttons are now gathered at startup from all installed programs. Previously, MightyPie collected only open programs in a cache, which of course made for a very limited and clunky selection, but it also often lead to broken file paths after programs updated. MightyPie Revamped uses a more sophisticated (at least I'd like to think so) system to find and filter all installed programs that someone would likely want to launch.

Note

If for some reason the heuristic doesn’t pick up a program you want to use in MightyPie Revamped (i.e. portable programs), you can add a shortcut to that program's executable to this folder: C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs

You will need to have admin rights to create a shortcut (.lnk file) there.

Also keep in mind that shortcuts can break when programs are updated.

Beyond that, we have more and improved features, better and more intuitive UI, better organization and an overall more snappy experience.

The Pie Menu itself though works just the same as it always has. But instead of two menus with three pages each, they are now basically unlimited.

And if you can't seem to find a window among all your new Pie Menus, you can now use a Search Box to find them by title or application name.

Features

Multiple Pie Menus

Create basically unlimited Pie Menus, each with their own assignable keyboard shortcut. Each Menu has a customizable number of Pages with eight configurable buttons each.

6 Button Types

Button Type	Description
Show Any Window	This button is assigned any open window. - Left-click brings the window to the foreground. - Left-click while the window is already in the foreground will minimize the window. - Middle-click closes the window.
Show Program Window	This button is assigned only windows that belong to the specified application. It otherwise reacts the same as Show Any Window buttons. If no window of the specified application is open, it behaves like the Launch Program button.
Launch Program	Launches an instance of the specified application.
Call Function	Executes handy functions from the available functions list, i.e. Play, Pause, Maximize under cursor etc.
Open specific Page in Pie Menu (new!)	Opens any existing page you choose in any menu. You can assign it a custom text label.
Open Resource (new!)	Opens any file or folder you choose (using the default application). You can assign it a custom text label as well.
Keyboard Shortcut (new!)	Executes a keyboard shortcut. (valid keys can be found here)

Quick Menu:

• Middle-click the Center in any Pie Menu to open the Quick Menu (or by clicking the tray icon).
• Here you can get to the Settings, Pie Menu Configuration and the Fuzzy Search. (... and toggle Dark Mode!)
• Fill Gaps: Show Any Window buttons keep their assigned window as long as they are open. If you want to fill any gaps from closed windows, this will re-assign all buttons. (Lowest indexes of menus/pages/buttons are always assigned first.)
• Access your favorite menu directly, which you can set in the Pie Menu Configuration.
• The Quick Menu auto-closes when you click anywhere else.

Pie Menu Configuration

• Create Menus, add Pages and assign all your Buttons here. Assign keyboard shortcuts for each menu.
• (new!) Save and Load your Configurations.
• (new!) Choose one Page to be displayed in the Quick Menu.
• (new!) Quickly make all Buttons of a page the same type.

Settings

• Customize colors, choose what a left-click in the Pie Menu center does and more.
• At the bottom are shortcuts to the Installation folder and the App Data folder. The Pie Menu Configuration, Settings and Shortcuts are all stored there.
• Set Autostart policy (with/without Admin Rights)

Note

In order for MightyPie Revamped to work when a program that runs with admin privileges is in the foreground (like Task Manager), you need to run MightyPie Revamped with admin privileges as well. You also need admin privileges to change these settings. (They are turned off by default.)

Audio Volume Control (new!)

• Control the audio volume via Mouse Wheel while any Pie Menu is open. (Can be turned off in Settings.)

Fuzzy Search (new!)

• Fuzzy Search for any open window — by title or application name — and bring it to the foreground.
• Accessible from the Quick Menu, but can also be assigned to Call Function buttons in the Pie Menus.

Tray Icon (new!)

• Left-click to open Quick Menu.
• Context menu gives direct access to the Settings, Pie Menu Configuration (and Pause Toggle) without opening a Pie Menu. Helpful if you haven't set a keyboard shortcut (or forgot it).

Pause functionality (very new!)

• Pause the Pie Menu shortcut detection, so you can use the shortcuts for other purposes. For example, you could use the Q key to open a Pie Menu and then Pause the shortcut detection when you want to type text.
• You can toggle Pause via the tray icon menu, a Pie Menu Function button, setting a key for it in the settings or toggling Pause via simply moving the cursor to a screen edge. (The last two are disabled by default.)
• A Pause indicator will be displayed on the lower right edge of the screen to let you know when Pause is enabled.

Installation

Download the executable from the releases page and run it. The program should work in whatever location you install it.

Note: There is no portable version of MightyPie Revamped unlike the original MightyPie.

Usage

1. Run the application.

2. Pie Menu Configuration: MightyPie Revamped will open to the Pie Menu Configuration Editor by default (this can be changed in the Settings menu). Here you can customize your first Pie Menus and assign keyboard shortcuts to them. Each Menu has Pages and each Page consists of eight Buttons to configure.

   • Button Details section:

     To configure a Button, click it and set a button type and its options. Click the Question Mark to get more information about the selected button type.

   • Page Settings section:

     To quickly set all Buttons of a Page to the same type, select that Page by clicking it (or a Button within it) and use the Reset Page with Type button in the Page Settings section. Above it, you can select the button type this applies from the dropdown.

     One Page out of all the Pages can be starred with the Use for Quick Menu button. This Page will be displayed in the Quick Menu.

   • Menu Settings section:

     Set and clear the shortcut for the active Menu. See the note below for more information.

   • Pie Menu Config section:

     Save, Load or Clear the whole Pie Menu Configuration (incl. shortcuts and starred pages).

   To close the Pie Menu Configuration Editor, hit the Done or Discard All button or just hit Esc.

3. Ready to Go: MightyPie Revamped runs in the background and waits for you to trigger a Pie Menu shortcut.

   Pressing the shortcut once will open the Pie Menu. Hitting it again will cycle through it Pages.

   You don't have to click a Button directly. Its clickable area is the whole slice that the Button is in.

   Right-clicking anywhere or hitting Esc will close the Pie Menu.

   Drag-select: Press and hold the shortcut, then hover anywhere over the Button's slice, and release the shortcut to trigger it. This triggers its left-click action with needing to actually left-click the Button.

   Pie Menu Center Button: The ring in the center of the Pie Menu is also a button.

   Middle-click it to open the Quick Menu.

   The left-click action of it is configurable in the Settings menu.

For more info on the Settings menu and Quick Menu see the Features section.

Note

You can assign almost any keyboard key, combined with any modifier, as a shortcut. In theory, you could even use something like Ctrl + VolumeUp. I don't know why you'd want that, but I won't judge. Though some keys might not have human-readable names. Only the Escape key is not usable.

Be aware that the shortcuts you set for your Pie Menus are blocked for everything else!

Known Issues / Limitations

• Sometimes a window is not being focused first try. I think it works more reliably than in the original MightyPie but it's still not a 100%. At this point I assume it is a quirk of Windows.

• The keys that the Keyboard Shortcut button can execute are more limited than the ones that can be assigned to open Pie Menus (see the Note above). You can find the list of valid keys for the Keyboard Shortcut button here.

• Application icons are sometimes not displayed, and display a warning symbol as a placeholder. This can happen when...

  • ... a config is loaded that has an outdated icon path (should be fixed when you leave the menu)
  • ... an application update changed it's exe path (should be fixed on re-starting the app)
  • ... the application has just been installed (should be fixed on re-starting the app)

• Very rarely, Pie Menu keyboard shortcuts stop working. This is usually fixed when opening the Pie Menu Config via the tray icon. Please let me know if you experience this issue.

Advanced Usage

Debugging

You can find the log files in the app data folder AppData\Local\MightyPieRevamped\logs\. There is also a shortcut at the bottom of the Settings menu to open this folder directly.

By default, the logging level is set to info. To change it, find MightyPieRevamped.lnk from the start menu, and in the properties, in the Target field, add -- --log-level debug (or warn instead of info) after the path.

Configuration Files

• The Pie Menu Configuration and Settings are stored in the App Data folder:

  • AppData\Local\MightyPieRevamped\piemenuConfig.json
  • AppData\Local\MightyPieRevamped\settings.json

• There is also windowExclusionList.json, where you can define windows by application or title (or both) to exclude them from the Pie Menus entirely.

• You can also adjust the NATS configuration (it's how Tauri communicates with the backend), if you have trouble with the ports.