A native Windows desktop "Dynamic Island" — a polished, always-on-top pill that sits at the top-center of your screen and expands on hover into a wide, restrained smoked-charcoal panel showing now-playing media, system volume, an audio equalizer, the clock, date, weather, RAM/network, battery, and a timer/alarm.
Built in C# + WPF on .NET 10, rewritten from an original Python/Tkinter
prototype. The complete evolution of Python prototypes that led here is preserved
in python-versions/.
The native build also includes Q, an on-demand visual assistant that reads the
active window, uses OCR and optional vision input, and streams answers directly
inside the Island. See Q.md for setup, provider configuration, and the
privacy model.
The native build also detects a paired, connected AirPods or compatible Beats device through Windows Bluetooth LE advertisements. The Island can show the model, connection state, left/right/case battery, charging state, case-lid state, and in-ear state without requiring a driver or a companion service.
No install, no build — download the self-contained .exe and double-click. Nothing else required.
The current native WPF build keeps the Apple-style shell while adding a dedicated timer/alarm surface, settings customization, live activities, and Q. The timer panel above is a clean implementation capture rather than a design mockup.
The expanded Island is organized into three precise sections on one wide overlay:
| Left — Now Playing | Center — Audio | Right — Status |
|---|---|---|
Album art, a NOW PLAYING squircle chip, title + explicit badge + favorite, artist/source, a gold progress timeline, and a 5-button transport |
Speaker, volume %, −/+, a live blue equalizer, and a clickable Output device row | Clock + AM/PM, date, weather card, RAM & network cards, and a row of circular quick actions |
The transport is, in order: ⟲10 · prev · play/pause · next · 10⟳. The rewind and fast-forward buttons jump exactly 10 seconds and clamp to the start/end of the track; they gray out with an explanatory tooltip when the active media app can't seek.
| Expanded Island | Compact Island | Settings surface | Timer surface |
|---|---|---|---|
|
 |
 |
|
These captures document the current native WPF implementation. The clean crops
are used here intentionally; raw desktop captures in test-artifacts/ may include
the contents of the active test window and should not be treated as public promo
assets. The timer comparison capture is retained in media/current-timer-comparison.png
for QA reference. The older animation and design renders remain in media/ as historical
references under media/legacy/ and are no longer used as the README hero.
- Compact ↔ expanded — a rounded pill that animates smoothly to a wide glass panel on hover (120–220 ms, no bounce) and collapses again after a short delay.
- Media — title/artist, artwork, explicit & favorite indicators, a gold
progress bar with elapsed/remaining time, and rewind-10 / previous /
play-pause / next / forward-10 controls via the Windows
GlobalSystemMediaTransportControls(GSMTC) API. When several apps have media sessions, the most relevant one is scored and chosen — never blindly the first. - Seek — 10-second backward/forward seeking with clamping at 0 and track end; disables gracefully when the provider doesn't support position changes.
- Audio — master volume, mute, output-device readout, and a live WASAPI-loopback equalizer (with a tasteful idle animation when nothing is playing), via CoreAudio interop.
- System monitor — live RAM usage bar and a network throughput sparkline.
- Clock, date & weather — 12/24-hour time on a one-second tick, long date, and a current-conditions weather card.
- Battery & charging — percentage plus a dedicated charging capsule; degrades cleanly on desktops with no battery.
- AirPods - native BLE advertisement detection for paired, connected AirPods and compatible Beats devices, with rotating-address tolerance, model detection, left/right/case battery, charging flags, case status, and in-ear status. Public advertisements expose battery values in 10% steps, so the UI displays honest ranges such as 90-99% instead of implying an exact value.
- Timer & alarm — presets and custom durations, a done state with sound, snooze/dismiss, and state that survives a restart.
- Q visual assistant — invoke with
Ctrl+Alt+Q, capture the active window or monitor, extract OCR text, optionally send the captured PNG to a vision-capable provider, and stream an answer in the Island. Q supports Ask and Say modes, typed follow-ups, Windows dictation, retry/copy/recapture/new-question actions, provider model discovery, and configurable one-click shortcuts. - ChatGPT / Codex for Q - sign in through the official Codex device-code flow and use eligible Codex subscription limits without an OpenAI API key. The existing API-key providers remain available and unchanged.
- Quick actions — timer, settings, collapse, and a menu, as one row of equal circular buttons.
- System integration — per-monitor-V2 DPI aware, multi-monitor aware, single-instance, hidden from Alt-Tab, optional launch-on-startup, optional click-through when compact, reduced-motion support, full light/dark theming, and a tray menu.
- Privacy-first — no analytics or accounts. The app makes network requests only for optional weather and Q provider requests when Q is explicitly invoked. Q credentials use Windows user-scoped DPAPI storage and captured context stays in memory for the current session.
Restrained premium Windows-style smoked charcoal, not flashy glassmorphism: dark graphite surfaces, low-opacity translucency, a faint backdrop, one thin gray-blue outline, and soft shadows. Color is used sparingly — muted gold only for the media progress, and muted blue only for live system visualizations (equalizer, RAM fill, network sparkline). Iconography is Segoe Fluent Icons throughout; type is Segoe UI Variable.
- Go to the latest release and download
DynamicIsland.exe(or use the green button above). - Double-click it. The build is self-contained — no .NET, no installer, nothing else to set up.
To enable Q, open Settings → Q Assistant, choose a provider and model, add the provider key if needed, choose whether to capture the active window or monitor, and use Test connection. The first Q session also presents a disclosure before screen context is sent to a provider. Local Ollama setups can use the configurable base URL without an API key.
For ChatGPT/Codex testing, the release also includes
DynamicIsland-Codex-Test-v1.0.6-win-x64.zip. Extract the complete folder and
launch its DynamicIsland.exe; the ZIP includes a pinned, SHA-256-verified official
Codex runtime. The normal DynamicIsland.exe remains the standalone option and
uses an existing supported official Codex installation. Signing out of Codex in Dynamic Island also
signs out official Codex apps for that Windows user. See Q.md for the
subscription limits, privacy model, and security boundaries.
The island appears at the top-center of your primary monitor and lives in the system tray (right-click for Settings, Recenter, Quit). Windows SmartScreen may warn about an unsigned app the first time — choose More info → Run anyway.
AirPods support is automatic: pair the device in Windows, connect it, and leave Bluetooth enabled. The app listens passively for Apple manufacturer data (0x004C) and only accepts advertisements when exactly one matching AirPods/Beats device is reported as connected by Windows. Rotating BLE addresses are tolerated; the app does not write pairing records or connect to the earbuds.
Battery values from the public advertisement are coarse 10% buckets. A displayed 90-99% means the device reported the 90% bucket, not that the app measured an exact 90% charge. A missing component battery is omitted rather than shown as 0%.
ANC, transparency, gestures, and other controls are intentionally not exposed: Windows does not provide a safe public API for controlling those AirPods features from this driver-free integration. Availability also depends on a Bluetooth adapter that supports LE advertisements and on Windows exposing the paired device as connected.
The
.exeis ~287 MB (it bundles the .NET runtime), which is over GitHub's 100 MB per-file limit, so it's distributed as a release asset rather than committed to the repo.
Requirements: Windows 10 1809+ (Windows 11 recommended) and the .NET 10 SDK. From the repository root:
dotnet build .\DynamicIsland.slnx -c Debug
dotnet run --project .\DynamicIsland.WindowsRun the tests:
dotnet test .\DynamicIsland.Windows.TestsPublish a self-contained single-file executable (no .NET needed on the target):
dotnet publish .\DynamicIsland.Windows -c Release -r win-x64This project was developed with a workspace-local .NET SDK. If a global
dotnetreports "No .NET SDKs were found", install the .NET 10 SDK (or use the local toolchain that shipped during development).
So the Download button resolves, attach the published exe to a GitHub Release
named exactly DynamicIsland.exe:
dotnet publish .\DynamicIsland.Windows -c Release -r win-x64
# rename/copy the output to DynamicIsland.exe, then:
gh release create v1.0.6 ".\DynamicIsland.Windows\bin\Release\net10.0-windows10.0.19041.0\win-x64\publish\DynamicIsland.Windows.exe#DynamicIsland.exe" --title "v1.0.6" --notes-file .\RELEASE_NOTES.mdThe #DynamicIsland.exe suffix uploads the asset under that name, which is what the
releases/latest/download/DynamicIsland.exe link points to.
DynamicIsland/
├── DynamicIsland.Windows/ Main app — the Windows version (C# + WPF, .NET 10)
│ ├── Models/ Plain state records (settings, media, audio, battery, …)
│ ├── Services/ One responsibility each (media, audio, monitor, weather, …)
│ ├── Interop/ Isolated P/Invoke + CoreAudio COM interfaces
│ ├── ViewModels/ MVVM view models
│ ├── Views/ IslandWindow, SettingsWindow, TimerAlarmWindow (XAML)
│ └── Infrastructure/ ObservableObject, RelayCommand, SeekMath, …
├── DynamicIsland.Windows.Tests/ xUnit tests (e.g. 10s-seek clamping)
├── DynamicIsland.slnx Solution
├── DynamicIsland.Q.Core/ Provider contracts, prompt composition, and streaming session state
├── Q.md Q assistant setup, controls, providers, and privacy notes
├── MIGRATION_REPORT.md Python → C# audit, feature mapping, test results
├── design-qa.md Visual QA notes and known capture limitations
├── media/ Current screenshots used by this README (`legacy/` holds old renders)
├── test-artifacts/ Local implementation/QA captures; review for private content before sharing
└── python-versions/ Archived Python/Tkinter prototypes (not built)
All Windows interop is isolated under Interop/; P/Invoke is not scattered through
the UI. See MIGRATION_REPORT.md for the full feature audit
and what was preserved vs. improved. See Q.md for the native assistant
workflow and design-qa.md for visual validation notes.
Before the native rewrite, the island went through many Python/Tkinter
explorations — different shapes, dock positions, an animated progress ring, a
and premium builds. They're all kept, with a
guide to each, in python-versions/.
Released under the MIT License — see LICENSE. (Swap in a different
license if you prefer.)