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Inspector Rust 🕵️♂️
One hotkey, your whole toolbox: clipboard history, text expander, launcher, screenshots & OCR, screen recording, a system-wide EQ and 70+ power commands — in a single native popup for macOS, Windows 11 and Linux. No Electron, no cloud, no telemetry.
Press Ctrl+Space anywhere → frameless popup over the active monitor → search 1 000 deduped clipboard entries → Enter pastes back into the previously focused app. Whole loop under 200 ms, under 50 MB RAM, AES-256-GCM-encrypted at rest with keys in the OS keychain. Built for the kind of person who already has muscle memory for three clipboard managers and is tired of every one of them.
Screens of every feature, the complete feature list, the changelog, checksums and a one-click download that picks the right file for your system.
Free, open-source, zero-telemetry — one person, a lot of late nights, and an unreasonable amount of espresso. If Inspector Rust just saved you a few hundred keystrokes, toss a coffee in the jar ☕ — every cup quite literally turns into the next command.
✨ What it does (in short)
Roughly sorted by everyday usefulness × how much engineering sits behind it — flagship features first, easter eggs last.
- 📋 Clipboard history — text, RTF, HTML, PNG, file lists; 1 000 entries deduped via SHA-256; substring search-as-you-type; pin + attach a note to any clip.
- 🎯 Text expander — 4 modes: passive auto-expansion (aText-style — expands as you type, no hotkey) · in-popup search · system-wide hotkey (AX/UIA in-place replace + Electron fallback) · direct hotkey → snippet slots (works even in terminals). Dynamic placeholders at paste time:
{date} / {date:%d.%m.%Y}, {time}, {datetime}, {clipboard}, {cursor}, {{/}}.
- 🧮 Inline calculator (
2+2, sqrt(144), hex/bit-ops; slot-machine reveal), unit / base / time converter (5 km in mi, 0xff in dec, 1700000000 as date) and colour converter (#hex / rgb() / hsl() in any direction).
- 🎚️ System-wide audio EQ —
boom (macOS · Windows via Equalizer APO) — a 10-band graphic equaliser + volume boost + 20 presets applied to all system audio, plus 5 enhancement effects (Bass · Clarity · Fidelity · Ambience stereo-widen · Night compressor for low-volume listening), with live input/output level meters and a perceptual system-volume taper (the stock virtual-driver curve made everything below 40 % near-inaudible; boom now applies a proper power taper, so the volume slider feels like real hardware). Installs a small virtual audio driver from the panel (one click), matches your device's sample rate, and follows your output device live (incl. Bluetooth). Battery-aware: after 60 s of silence the audio bridge suspends itself so your Mac can sleep normally, and resumes within milliseconds when anything starts playing.
- 🪟 Window management (macOS, opt-in) — drag a window to a screen edge to snap it (left/right halves · top to maximize, Magnet-style), or hover its green zoom button for a Moom-style palette: preset layouts (⌥ for quarters) + a drag-over honeycomb grid (16×10 default, up to 24 — rounded hexagons with magnetic hover, gradient-lit selection, and a live size readout) to drop the window into any region of the screen, with a live on-screen outline preview.
- 📸 Screenshots — CleanShot-X-style: region (
Ctrl+Shift+S) · full-screen · active-window · self-timer · repeat-last; floating preview HUD; annotation editor (arrow / line / text / rect / ellipse / highlight / blur / redact / numbered step badges); pin to screen. Filenames include the source app.
- 🎥 Screen recording (
Ctrl+Shift+Alt+S) — drag a region → pick audio (system / mic / both) → 3-2-1 → MP4 (H.264) to Downloads; floating bar with pause/resume; multi-monitor; system audio auto-routes through a loopback. Needs ffmpeg.
- 🔍 Screen-region OCR (
Ctrl+Shift+O) — Apple Vision (macOS) / WinRT (Windows) / Tesseract (Linux). PDF-grade text recognition into the clipboard.
- 🎬 Media tools — download YouTube / Instagram / TikTok / Facebook (video or audio — just paste a URL; Tab toggles on YouTube), with an optional trim-and-download section under the buttons: QuickTime-style yellow handles, scrub the range by ear on a small audio proxy, and the download fetches only the cut (frame-accurate — 20 s out of an 83-minute set arrive as ~1.2 MiB instead of hundreds of MB); audio swap (
Ctrl+Shift+Alt+M) to replace or mix a video's audio with a local file or a YouTube track; trim local audio/video (trim) lossless-fast or frame-accurate. Need ffmpeg / yt-dlp.
- ⏱️ Time tracking / Timesheet (
track on/off; track or Ctrl+Shift+T; macOS) — opt-in, event-based app-usage tracking by window focus with retroactive idle auto-pause; an editable Timesheet tab with day/week views, inline-SVG charts (timeline · app donut · categories · projects), manual Pause/Resume, CSV + self-contained HTML export following the visible scope (day or Mon–Sun week), week-wide cleanup, and a global toggle-tracking hotkey (Ctrl+Shift+Alt+T, rebindable); detects Claude Code usage per project (time + tokens); an optional browser extension (loopback socket only). Window titles + URLs encrypted at rest.
- 📊 System stats (
stats) — live inline dashboard: CPU (overall + per-core), memory + swap, battery & power draw in watts, temperatures + fan RPM (SMC / hwmon), disks, live network throughput, uptime. Live ↔ History toggle with per-metric line charts (1 h / 6 h / 24 h / 7 d).
- 📈 AI usage limits —
limits / quota (v0.190.0+) — your Claude subscription limits as claude.ai shows them (session, week, per-model week, extra usage, weekly split by surface), each with a bar, percentage and reset time (relative + Berlin time). Below: Codex (5-hour window and week, read from its local session files — no network) and Antigravity (quota used up / free again at, from its logs). Claude Code's login is read read-only — never refreshed, never written back; polls every 5 min only while the panel is open, backs off on 429. Details
- 🤖 AI tasks —
task / ki (v0.191.0+) — describe in plain words what should happen; Claude (API key or the local Claude Code), Gemini or ChatGPT writes the script (zsh, Bash, Python, AppleScript — PowerShell on Windows), you review it (risky lines flagged, revisions shown as a diff) and approve that exact version. It then runs on its own — every N minutes, at a time on chosen weekdays, when files land in a folder, at app start or after wake — with a time limit, a run log and one switch to pause everything. Keys stay in the keychain. Details
- 👾 Live retro overlay —
8bit / 16bit (v0.190.0+, macOS; Windows runtime-unverified) — your whole screen, live, in retro style while you keep working: pixelation, a fixed palette (NES, C64, PICO-8, Game Boy, CGA, greyscale) or a reduced colour depth per channel (SNES, Mega Drive, Amiga), Bayer dithering, scanlines, CRT curvature. A focus mode draws the active window finer and a cursor lens shows the area under the mouse in detail, so text stays readable; stage 2 adds retro dialog frames with pixel-font titles and a sprite cursor. Settings panel with live preview and presets; ⌃⇧⌥8 starts and stops it from anywhere. ScreenCaptureKit → Metal shader, zero copy. Details
- ☀️ Monitor brightness (
brightness / bri) — sliders inline in the preview for built-in and external displays (↑↓ pick a monitor, ←→ adjust). Software (gamma) dimming on macOS + Windows, hardware DDC/CI on Linux. On EDR-capable Macs (14"/16" MBP XDR, Pro Display XDR) the same slider runs past 100 % to push the display into its extra-brightness (EDR/XDR) range — Vivid-style, up to ~7× — via a multiply-blend Metal overlay; macOS thermal-throttles it automatically (same path as HDR video, within spec).
- 💡 Philips Hue (
hue) — control your lamps inline: all-lamps on/off + brightness, per-lamp brightness, and 8 colour-preset swatches on colour bulbs. Plus a Beat-sync disco that pulses the lamps to music from the mic. Local LAN pairing (discover or enter IP + link button); no cloud.
- 🖐️ Touchpad gestures (opt-in) — 3-finger swipe up/down for volume (consistent 5 % grid steps), 3-finger tap to mute, and tip-tap tab switching (macOS, opt-in): rest one finger, tap a second to its right/left → next/previous tab, sending each app's own shortcut automatically (Ctrl+Tab for browsers/terminals/Finder, ⌘⌥→/← for VS Code/Cursor, ⇧⌘]/[ for JetBrains/Xcode — resolved for your keyboard layout, e.g. ⌥6 on German; extend the map with a
tab-shortcuts.json in the app data dir, no rebuild). Gesture guard: every gesture passes four filter levels before it fires — palms and thumbs never count as fingers, contacts that land in the edge zones are ignored, a key press shortly before or during the touch blocks volume and mute (250 ms after a single key, 600 ms within a burst; unmuting and tab switching are never blocked), and a swipe that another finger joins is rejected. The gestures panel draws the trackpad live, holds the thresholds per device (built-in / external), lists the last 20 decisions with the level that stopped them, calibrates palm and thumb thresholds for your trackpad in about 20 seconds, and records traces you can replay; ⌃⇧⌥G saves the last 3 seconds when something fired by itself. The volume overlay stays 2.2 s after the last gesture and never closes while the mouse rests on it; a capture that goes deaf (after sleep, display changes, or silently) rebuilds itself within about a minute. macOS via the private MultitouchSupport API (consumes the swipe so the app underneath doesn't scroll); Windows Precision Touchpad with all four levels, using the touchpad's own confidence bit (not yet tested on a real machine); Linux libinput with its disable-while-typing switched on. Details: docs/gestures.md.
- 🔐 2FA / TOTP manager — type
2fa or otp for the TOTP vault — just type to filter it (fuzzy, Enter copies the top match's code); otp <issuer> / 2fa <issuer> for instant OTP autocomplete with a live 30-second countdown, Enter copies the token; 2fa add [issuer] jumps straight to the add form (issuer pre-filled). Add / edit / delete, drag-reorder, and dedupe-on-import; imports Google Authenticator / Aegis / 2FAS / OTPManager (macOS) / otpauth — paste or drag the export file onto the overlay. Secrets encrypted, never cross the IPC boundary.
- 🔊 Audio output (
sound / audio) — inline picker to switch the system default output device (macOS · Windows · Linux).
- 🎵 Song recognition —
shazam — type shazam, and it records ~10 s from the mic, generates a Shazam audio-fingerprint (natively, in Rust — no file, no ffmpeg) and identifies the track: cover, title, artist, album, genre, year + a link to open it in Shazam. shazam history opens your recognized-songs list. Verified bit-for-bit against the reference and end-to-end against the real service.
- 🕵️ Network monitor —
snitch (macOS) — lists every app with a live connection and lets you toggle its internet access off (best-effort: a background watcher feeds a blocked app's server IPs into the pf firewall — one admin prompt, not a hard firewall; a real per-app filter needs an Apple system-extension entitlement a self-signed app can't have). snitch map plots your live outbound connections on an offline dotted world map — connections actively transferring right now glow green with packets flowing along an arc from your location — each server located by country/city/ISP (public IPs only — LAN addresses never leave the machine). Typing snitch shows both the blocker and the map as selectable rows.
- 🧹 Cleaning (
clean) — free disk space by deleting cache/log/temp files inside known-safe folders. At Standard this sweeps the whole user cache dir (~/Library/Caches — often many GB); opt-in Aggressive adds dev-tool caches (npm/pnpm/Gradle/Cargo incl. sources), Xcode build caches and old Trash items. Enter opens an interactive category picker (sizes, file counts, largest files — choose exactly what goes) — including duplicate files in Downloads (content-hashed, the oldest copy always survives), old installers (dmg/pkg/iso), editor caches (VS Code / Cursor), Xcode DerivedData + iOS DeviceSupport and the Docker build cache (via docker builder prune) — risky categories are pre-deselected, user files are never a default; strict allowlist, symlinks never followed; Safe / Standard / Aggressive levels.
- 🎨 Color picker / eyedropper (
Ctrl+Shift+C) — a custom screen loupe with the live hex shown under the magnifier (macOS) / GDI overlay (Windows); hex straight to the clipboard.
- 🖼️ Image tools — Recolor (logo tint), ML cut-out (U²-Net ONNX, 4.5 MB embedded), Lanczos3 resize (
rz) + optimise (optim, oxipng) on the Finder selection or the clipboard image.
- 📁 Finder selection actions (
Ctrl+Shift+F, macOS) — batch resize / optim / cut-out / open on whatever you have selected in Finder.
- 📄 Markdown → PDF (
Ctrl+Shift+M / md2pdf, macOS) — converts the .md files currently selected in Finder to PDF in-process; no CLI tools required.
- 🚀 App launcher (Spotlight-like, macOS) — fuzzy-match an app name, real icon in the row, Enter launches. Activates an already-running instance instead of spawning a duplicate.
- 🔳 QR code (
qr <text>) — live preview in the panel; Enter copies the PNG to the clipboard.
- 🛠️ Dev quick-tools —
uuid [n] · slug · hash (SHA-256) · json (pretty-print clipboard) · jwt (decode clipboard) → clipboard.
- 🎲 Fake test data —
faker (v0.84.270+) — 70+ generators (names, emails, addresses, phones, companies, finance, lorem, dates, numbers, UUID/…, plus composite person / user / address / order records) in 14 locales. Bare faker lists them with live samples; faker person 50 --csv @de → 50 German records as CSV in the clipboard, one Enter. --json / --sql / --ts, faker int 1..100, --seed= reproducible, ⌘/Ctrl+R rerolls, faker tpl "{name} <{email}>". Honest locale fallback (unsupported → EN, shown). Also {faker:first_name} in snippets. See docs/faker.md.
- 🛡️ Security command builders —
sec (v0.84.271+) — guided command builders for nmap · sqlmap · feroxbuster · John. Pick a preset, fill the target; Inspector Rust assembles the correct (sh/bash-quoted) command line with a plain-English flag cheat-sheet — nmap service 10.0.0.5 → nmap -sV -sC 10.0.0.5. Enter copies it; ⌘/Ctrl+Enter opens your terminal with it inserted (macOS, opt-in, un-submitted by default). It never scans itself — no subprocess, no network. Authorized targets only. See docs/security-builder.md.
- 🌐 Web-search bangs —
g · ddg · gh · yt · npm · crates · so · wiki <query> open a site's search.
- 🥁 BPM detector (
bpm) — live microphone beat detection with an animated AAA visualizer. Captured natively (in Rust) so starting it never interrupts other apps' playback. Its little sibling dezibel / db shows the live room loudness in dB (an SPL estimate, dBFS + 90) with the same glow-and-meter animation.
- 🏁 CPU benchmark (
benchmark / performance) — seven Geekbench-style workloads, single- and multi-core, scored against a measured reference. Typing shows a preview first; nothing runs until you confirm. Runs persist as JSON — import a run from another machine or OS and compare side by side with deltas (sub-noise differences are marked as noise, not findings). Exports as HTML/PDF.
- 📑 Signed reports — every exported report (LoC, PageSpeed, repo stats, benchmark, Bruno, timesheet; HTML and PDF) carries a signature and a vector seal in the shared print-ready design — one look across all of them.
- 💸 Bruno (Brutto/Netto) — German net-pay calculator 2025 as a search-bar command, for employees AND freelancers:
bruno 60000 (salary) or bruno 80000f / bruno 90000-15000f (self-employed profit, income − expenses) with voluntary GKV or fixed PKV premium, Gewerbesteuer incl. §35 credit, Grund-/Splittingtarif. Tab flips employee ↔ self-employed on the row; Shift+Enter copies the full breakdown, and the preview exports it as HTML or PDF in the shared report design. Smart defaults + per-user override in Settings.
- ⚙️ Power commands — the search bar parses dozens of shell-style commands: translate (
tr / tren / trde / trde2it / …), system (kill / lock / reboot / shutdown / mute / freeze), rnd / random (dice), timer / alarm <HH:MM>, touch / mkdir / terminal (in the open Finder folder), rmvvls, pwgen, meme [query], calendar [month year] (month-view calendar — which weekday was that date?) — plus every command listed above. Fuzzy-matched, always outranking clips, rendered with a red accent. Append ? to any command (or type ? alone) for full inline help — arguments, examples, tips — right in the preview.
- 📓 Snippets (27 bundled AI prompts + 255 Material colours, organised into groups — filter, assign, create/rename/reorder/delete) · Notes (persistent bookmarks) · Backup (single-file JSON, optionally password-encrypted; carries snippet groups).
- 🟢 Keep-alive & wakelock —
wakelock on/off (alias caffeine) keeps the machine awake (pulsing footer LED + on-screen toast); “Always keep running” (Settings → Startup) relaunches the app natively if it's ever quit or killed.
- 🔒 Local-first — zero network calls, zero account; data only at
~/Library/Application Support/InspectorRust/history.db, AES-256-GCM-encrypted with keys in the OS keychain.
- 🎮 Hidden games — five Easter-egg trigger words. You'll find them.
Translation and Spotify fixes (v0.215.1). Paste text containing paragraphs after any tr* command: line breaks, blank lines and indentation remain in the preview and copied translation (multiline translation). Spotify controls and exports run repeatedly with Enter, spotify stop pauses, and custom values such as spotify volume 7 are retained. German and English history intervals are always offered; selecting another interval replaces the previous one and Tab switches between them (Spotify commands, completion).
X/Twitter video downloads (v0.215.2). Paste a public x.com or twitter.com post link to get Download video before the QR action. Legacy/mobile links, clipboard previews and mixed batch downloads are supported. Supported links and troubleshooting.
🧰 Tech stack
Tauri 2 (WebView2 / WKWebView) · Rust workspace (core/rust-lib shared, 2-line per-OS bundle shells) · React 19 + TypeScript 5 + Tailwind v4 + Vite 7 · brightness via CoreGraphics/GDI gamma + DDC/CI (ddc-hi). 5871 unit tests (2236 Rust + 3635 frontend). MIT-licensed.
Press Ctrl+Space → search → paste. Inspired by Alfred's clipboard viewer on macOS, scoped to one tool you can keep on every machine.
Screenshots
Dark theme on macOS, with a demo clipboard history — dummy data, no real clips.
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weather — current conditions, next 12 h + animated 5-day forecast | boom — system-wide 10-band EQ + presets + volume boost |
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equalizer — live 28-band mic spectrum + beat reaction | bpm — live mic tempo detector (128 BPM · 99 % confidence) |
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hue — Philips Hue: per-lamp colour + brightness | snitch map — live outbound connections on a world map |
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shazam — identify the playing song from the mic | stats — live CPU / RAM / battery / network dashboard |
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calendar — month view + weekday lookup | brightness — per-monitor sliders (+ EDR/XDR boost) |
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sound — audio output picker + volume slider | uptime — live, animated uptime readout |
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| Clipboard history — search-as-you-type, live preview, notes + QR | figlet — ASCII-banner gallery; every row renders your text |
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bruno — German gross→net breakdown | Inline calculator — type an expression, Enter pastes the result |
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? — built-in command index & inline help | disk — usage sunburst; the path bar browses the whole disk |
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repo — git + GitHub activity (24 h / 7 d, ranges, heatmap, hotspots), HTML/PDF export, ⌘K clone | — world clock; any IANA zone, DST handled by the OS |
Download
Latest release: — see the CHANGELOG for what's new.
Website: inspector-rust.celox.io (incl. every feature, mirrored from features.txt, plus the current lines of code and unit-test count from .github/repo-stats.json — both follow every push within 15 minutes) · one-click download for your system: inspector-rust.celox.io/download
macOS Gatekeeper note. Releases are ad-hoc-signed, not Apple-notarized. A DMG downloaded from GitHub is quarantined by the browser, and macOS then claims the app is "damaged and can't be opened" — it isn't; right-click → Open does not help against that particular wording. Move the app to Applications, then clear the marker once:
xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine /Applications/InspectorRust.app
(For a locally built app the marker is never set, so this is only needed for downloads.) Then grant the required TCC permissions:
| Permission | Required for |
|---|
| Accessibility | Paste (enigo synthesizes Cmd+V), system-wide text expander, freeze input lock |
| Screen Recording | OCR (Ctrl+Shift+O) and screenshot region (Ctrl+Shift+S) |
| Automation → Finder | Finder selection (Ctrl+Shift+F) and Markdown→PDF (Ctrl+Shift+M) |
| Microphone (optional) | BPM detector (bpm command) |
The Settings tab surfaces missing grants as collapsible amber banners with one-click jumps to the right Privacy pane. scripts/install-macos.sh signs every build with a stable self-signed certificate so all grants survive future rebuilds — you grant each permission once. scripts/grant-permissions-macos.sh walks through the full one-time setup in a single guided pass.
Full details in macos/README.md.
Platform support
| Platform | Status | Location |
|---|
| Windows 11 | ✅ implemented | win/ |
| macOS | ✅ implemented | macos/ |
| Linux | ✅ implemented | linux/ |
All app logic lives in core/ — a single frontend (core/frontend) and a single Rust lib (core/rust-lib) shared across platforms. Each OS has its own thin bundle shell that owns platform-specific details (installer config, icons, capabilities). To add a new platform, see CONTRIBUTING.md.
Linux port contributor credit: CONTRIBUTORS.md.
Workflow
Inspector Rust is built for one workflow: Ctrl+Space → type → Enter. The hotkey opens a frameless popup over the active monitor; whatever you type is fuzzy-searched across clipboard history, snippets, calc results, and color values; Enter pastes the top match into the previously focused app. No mouse, no menu trees, no per-app integrations.
Three more global shortcuts fire from anywhere — Inspector Rust's window doesn't need to be open or focused:
Ctrl+Shift+O — screen-region OCR. Drag a marquee, Apple Vision recognises the text in the region, the text lands on your clipboard + at the top of History.Ctrl+Shift+S (v0.15.0+) — screen-region screenshot. Same marquee, no OCR step: the captured PNG goes straight to the clipboard and into History. Use this for charts, buttons, photos, or any region without recognisable text. Save to file: while the overlay is open, press S — the selection border turns green and after drawing the region a native save dialog appears instead of writing to the clipboard (v0.19.2+).Ctrl+Shift+C (v0.17.0+) — eyedropper. Cursor turns into the NSColorSampler loupe (macOS) / GDI overlay (Windows); click a pixel, the hex code (#RRGGBB) lands on your clipboard + History. No popup, no modal — fire-and-forget.
Literal Control on every OS — same key on Windows and macOS. OCR + screenshot require the macOS Screen Recording TCC grant on macOS; on Windows no extra permissions are needed.
Everything else (snippets management, notes, settings, image tools) lives in the same popup behind tabs in the top-right — there's no separate window to alt-tab to. Settings → Keyboard shortcuts carries the full cheat sheet.
Configuration
Everything is configured in the popup's Settings tab (Ctrl+Space → Settings) — no config files. The essentials:
| Area | What you can set |
|---|
| Popup hotkeys | Main hotkey (default Ctrl+Space) + a second clipboard-history hotkey (default Ctrl+Shift+V, can be disabled) |
| Global shortcuts | Every action hotkey (OCR, screenshot, eyedropper, Finder selection, Markdown→PDF, recording, audio swap, timesheet, …) is rebindable, with live collision checks |
| Text expander | Abbreviation hotkey, direct hotkey→snippet slots, passive auto-expansion (aText-style), trigger/case options |
| Appearance | Dark / Light / System theme + popup size (S / M / L) |
| Clipboard privacy | App exclusion list (e.g. password managers) + auto-clear timer |
| Cleaning | Safe / Standard / Aggressive level, minimum file age, per-category toggles, dev-project roots |
| Timesheet | Idle threshold, retention, Claude-Code detection, privacy denylist |
| Sounds | Master toggle for all feedback cues |
| Command defaults | Bruno (tax parameters), Faker, Figlet, Security builder, meme library folder |
| Startup | Start at login + “always keep running” auto-relaunch |
| Backup | Full-app export/import, optionally password-encrypted (Argon2id + AES-256-GCM) |
All data lives in one SQLite file — ~/Library/Application Support/InspectorRust/history.db (macOS), %APPDATA%\InspectorRust\history.db (Windows), ~/.local/share/InspectorRust/history.db (Linux) — with sensitive columns AES-256-GCM-encrypted (details).
Features & shortcuts at a glance
🔥🔥🔥 Global hotkeys — fire and forget, from anywhere 🔥🔥🔥
| Shortcut | Action | Requires (macOS) |
|---|
Ctrl+Space | Open popup over the active monitor | — |
Ctrl+Shift+V (v0.83.0+, configurable) | Second clipboard-history hotkey — also opens the popup | — |
Ctrl+Shift+O | Screen-region OCR → text on clipboard + History | Screen Recording |
Ctrl+Shift+S (v0.15.0+) | Screen-region screenshot → PNG on clipboard + History (no OCR); press S during overlay to save to file instead (green border) (v0.19.2+) | Screen Recording (macOS) |
Ctrl+Shift+Alt+S (v0.81.0+) | Screen recording → region select → audio (system / mic / both) → 3-2-1 → MP4 to Downloads. Floating stop bar with pause/resume. Multi-monitor; ffmpeg | Screen Recording (macOS) |
Ctrl+Shift+C (v0.17.0+) | Eyedropper → hex (#RRGGBB) on clipboard + History | — |
Ctrl+Shift+F (v0.30.0+) | Finder selection → popup with the currently-selected files + actions (Resize, Optim, Cut-out, …) | Automation → Finder |
Ctrl+Shift+M (v0.46.0+, macOS) | Markdown → PDF — convert the .md files selected in Finder to PDF in-process | Automation → Finder |
Ctrl+Shift+Alt+M (v0.84.22+, macOS) | Replace / overlay audio — select a video in Finder → overlay to swap or mix in a local audio file or a yt-dlp'd YouTube track at a chosen position | Automation → Finder |
Ctrl+Shift+T (v0.84.85+, macOS) | Timesheet — open the time-tracking overview (the Timesheet tab) | none |
Ctrl+Shift+Alt+T (v0.84.204+, macOS) | Toggle time tracking — start/stop a timesheet session from anywhere (status toast confirms) |
Literal Control on every OS. Same key on Windows and macOS. The expander hotkey is opt-in (off until you configure it in Settings → Text expander).
Popup shortcuts — when the popup is open
| Shortcut | Action |
|---|
↑ ↓ | Navigate the list |
Shift+↑ Shift+↓ (v0.22.0+) | Raise / lower the system volume (±5 % per press, snapped to the 5 % grid) |
Enter | Paste selected entry (respects the plain-text setting) |
Shift+Enter | Paste with original formatting (overrides plain-text setting once) |
Esc | Close popup |
⌘B / Ctrl+B | Cut out background on the selected image entry (ML — U²-Net) |
⌘S / Ctrl+S | Save image to Downloads (unchanged PNG) |
Search-bar commands
Every power command, generated from the canonical CommandDoc registry
(core/frontend/src/lib/commandDocs.ts). Type any command followed by ?
in the search bar for full inline help (arguments, examples, tips); type ?
alone for the whole index.
| Command | Since | What it does |
|---|
rmvvls | v0.18.0 | Strip vowels from the text → clipboard. |
tr (alias: tren, trde, trde2it, trit2de, trde2sp, trsp2de, trde2pl, trpl2de) | v0.18.0 | Live translate in the preview — Enter copies, ⇧Enter opens Google Translate. |
kill | v0.19.0 | Live process picker — filter by name/PID, confirm, terminate. |
lock | v0.19.0 | Lock the screen immediately. |
mute | v0.19.0 | Toggle system output mute. |
reboot | v0.19.0 | Reboot the machine (with confirmation). |
shutdown | v0.19.0 | Shut the machine down (with confirmation). |
bruno | v0.33.0 | German net-pay calculator — employees AND freelancers (tax year 2025). |
freeze | v0.35.0 | Input lock — block keyboard + mouse until an unlock chord. |
pwgen | v0.40.0 | Password generator — CSPRNG, 4 modes. |
alarm | v0.42.0 | Alarm at a clock time (next occurrence). |
timer (alias: countdown) | v0.42.0 | Countdown timer — fires an alarm on expiry. |
md2pdf | v0.46.0 | Markdown → paginated A4 PDF in mrxdown's look, beside the source — never overwrites. |
wakelock (alias: caffeine) | v0.52.0 | Keep the Mac awake — full (screen on) or dark (screen may sleep). |
mkdir | v0.53.0 | Create a folder in the front Finder/Explorer folder. |
terminal | v0.53.0 | Open a terminal at the front Finder/Explorer folder. |
touch |
Full feature matrix
| Feature | Where to trigger | Doc |
|---|
| Clipboard history (text/RTF/HTML/PNG/files, 1 000 entries, deduped) | Ctrl+Space → search | core |
| Rich-copy fidelity — copied Markdown stays Markdown | Automatic on capture | clipboard-shapes.md |
| Copy shapes + lineage rails — a converted copy becomes a new entry, tied to its original by a commit-graph rail | Preview → hold ⌘/Ctrl for the transform chips | clipboard-shapes.md |
Live translation — tr* commands translate in the preview as you type | Type tren <text> | translation.md |
| Substring search (clipboard) + fuzzy match (commands / apps) | Type in the search bar | core |
| Inline calculator | Type an expression in the search bar (2+2, sqrt(9), sin(pi/2), 0xff << 4, …) | core |
| Color converter | Type #RRGGBB / rgb(…) / hsl(…) in the search bar → swatch + all formats | colors.md |
| HSV color picker modal | History tab → Color Picker button → hue slider + swatch + hex/rgb/hsl tabs | colors.md |
| Screen eyedropper (modal) | Color Picker modal → Pick from screen (macOS NSColorSampler loupe / Windows GDI overlay) |
Features
Clipboard core
- Global hotkey
Ctrl+Space opens the popup centered on the monitor with the cursor.
- Captures text, RTF, HTML, images (PNG, ≤ 5 MB), and file lists via OS-native clipboard events (no polling). Image-before-files priority on macOS so Finder image-copies land as bitmaps, not paths.
- Search ranks matches as you type: clipboard history by substring, power commands + the app launcher by fuzzy (first-char-anchored subsequence). Virtualized list, per-content-type preview pane.
- Auto-paste — Enter pastes via
enigo-simulated Ctrl+V / Cmd+V into the previously focused app. Shift+Enter overrides the plain-text setting and pastes with original formatting.
- SQLite store at
%APPDATA%\InspectorRust\history.db / ~/Library/Application Support/InspectorRust/history.db. SHA-256 deduped, 1 000-entry cap.
- AES-256-GCM at rest since v0.6.0 — text/HTML/RTF/image bodies, snippet bodies, note bodies. Key in OS keychain (Keychain / Credential Manager / Secret Service), 0600 keyfile fallback. Full reference:
docs/encryption.md.
- Time chip (v0.10.3) — the relative-time hint on each row (
just now, 1h ago) becomes a tiny clickable button: hover shows both Captured and Last used absolute timestamps in a tooltip; click toggles the chip itself between relative and absolute display.
Text expander (snippets, v0.2 — system-wide v0.2.7, hotkey overhaul v0.12.0, direct slots v0.13.0)
- In-popup expansion — type an abbreviation in the search bar; matching snippets surface above clipboard entries; Enter pastes the body.
- Abbreviation expander — type the abbreviation in any text field, press the configured hotkey (default
Alt+1, opt-in via Settings; one-click presets Alt+1 / Alt+2 / Alt+3, or record any combination), Inspector Rust replaces it in place. Three paths: AX/UIA in-place replace (native apps — no clipboard touch, no flicker, verified by re-reading the value); AX-select-then-paste-over-selection for Electron / Chromium / Mac-Catalyst apps that expose AXValue read-only (WhatsApp, Slack, Discord, VS Code — v0.12.0); and a clipboard+keystroke fallback for everything else. Diagnose button in Settings reports which path was used.
- Why
Alt+1 and not Alt+Backquote? The old default was unreachable on German ISO MacBooks (the physical ^ key reports as IntlBackslash). Digit-row keys are layout-stable everywhere. An un-customised old install is migrated to Alt+1 once on upgrade (won't clobber a value you deliberately re-pick).
- Direct hotkey → snippet slots (v0.13.0) — bind a hotkey straight to a snippet (Settings → Direct hotkey → snippet); pressing it pastes the body at the cursor with no abbreviation typed. Reads nothing from the focused field — just writes the body to the clipboard, synthesizes paste, restores the clipboard — so it works in any app, including terminals (iTerm2, Terminal.app, …) where the abbreviation expander can't see the input line. Collisions with the popup / OCR / abbreviation hotkeys are rejected.
- Loud on permission failure (macOS, v0.12.0) — if Accessibility isn't granted, pressing the hotkey no longer silently no-ops: Inspector Rust opens its popup, switches to Settings, and shows an amber banner with
Force re-grant → Restart now. (Same pattern as the OCR / paste banners. Direct slots use the same gate + banner.)
- Snippets tab for create/edit/delete with a two-column form. JSON import via Snippets → Import (
docs/snippets-import.md, themed samples in docs/examples/snippets/).
- Works everywhere, including terminals (v0.64.0) — when the hotkey is enabled, a passive keystroke tracker remembers the abbreviation you just typed, so
Alt+1 expands it from that buffer (blind-Backspace + paste) without ever reading the focused field. The AX/UIA in-place paths remain as a fallback. Image/file snippets aren't expanded (text only).
27 bundled AI prompt snippets (v0.5.0, reworked v0.12.0)
First-launch seeds your snippet table with ai*-prefixed prompts across programming, web, IT security, business, data, and API design (aiplan, aireview, airefactor, airegex, aisql, aitest, aimigration, aithumb, aithreat, aipentest, aibrief, aiml, aiapi, …). Each prompt is the structured-instruction half only — no [REQUIREMENT]-style fill-in slots (removed in v0.12.0). You append it to your own prompt / code / context and the LLM picks up the subject from there. Idempotent (deleted prompts stay deleted), restorable from the Snippets sidebar — existing installs click Restore defaults to pick up the v0.12.0 style. Full list: docs/ai-prompts.md.
Inline calculator (v0.2.5)
Type a math expression in the search field, the result appears as the top list item — Alfred-style. Press Enter to paste it.
- Operators
+ - * / % ^, unary +/-, parens. Numbers: int/decimal/scientific/1_000-grouped. Constants: pi/π, tau, e. Functions: sqrt, cbrt, abs, sign, floor/ceil/round, ln/log/log2, exp, trig + hyperbolic + inverse, min/max/pow/mod.
- Gated to expressions with at least one operator/function/constant — plain numbers and text don't trigger. Force-evaluate a literal with
= prefix (=pi).
- Safe recursive-descent parser in
calc.ts, no eval. 43 tests.
Color tools (v0.4.0 → v0.5.2)
- Inline hex preview — type
#3366FF (also 3366ff, #abc, #abcdef12) → swatch + hex + RGB row at top → Enter pastes uppercase #RRGGBB.
- HSV picker modal — hue slider, big swatch, output tabs for hex / RGB / HSL, two-click selection (no silent default), copy via Tauri clipboard plugin (sidesteps WKWebView restrictions).
- Pick from screen — sample any pixel on the desktop. macOS: Apple's
NSColorSampler magnifier loupe. Windows: fullscreen overlay + GetPixel. Module: screen_picker.rs.
- Frontend in
colors.ts + ColorPickerModal.tsx. 37 tests. Reference: docs/colors.md.
Screen-region OCR (v0.9.0, macOS)
Press Ctrl+Shift+O (or use the tray's OCR Region entry) → drag a marquee over any text on screen → Inspector Rust runs Apple Vision over the selection and writes the recognized text straight to your clipboard. The text also lands at the top of History; the source PNG is kept as a separate image entry just below, so you can re-OCR a different region without rescreenshotting and pressing Enter on the auto-selected top entry pastes the text, not the screenshot (ordering fixed in v0.14.2). The hotkey is literal Control on macOS too (v0.14.1+ — earlier builds used ⌘⇧O which collided with IDE bindings).
- Region picker — uses
screencapture -i (the same binary as Cmd+Shift+4), so the marquee UX is the polished one users already know. Esc cancels cleanly.
- Engine — Vision's
VNRecognizeTextRequest with accuracy=Accurate + language correction; same engine that powers Apple Live Text. No model bundling, no network.
- Languages — whatever your macOS Vision install supports (Latin + CJK + Arabic + Cyrillic on macOS 13+).
- Windows (v0.19.2+) — implemented via WinRT
Windows.Media.Ocr + Windows.Graphics.Imaging. Uses the language packs already on your Windows install (Settings → Time & Language → Language); no extras needed. COM is initialised per-thread on the worker; blocking .get() calls keep the pipeline synchronous.
- Modules:
region_picker.rs, ocr.rs.
Image tools — recolor + ML cutout + save (v0.7.0 → v0.10.x)
On selected image entries, the preview pane exposes three actions:
- Recolor (v0.7.0) — for mostly-grayscale PNGs (logos / icons / silhouettes), 9 preset swatches + custom hex tint the image. RGB lerps from target → white by per-pixel luminance, alpha preserved. Saturated photos are auto-hidden from the toolbar (chromaticity gate). Adds the tinted version as a new history entry; original stays.
- Cut out background (v0.10.0) — runs the U²-Net (U2Netp) ONNX model (~4.5 MB embedded) over the image to detect the foreground subject; output is a transparent PNG saved to
~/Downloads/<name>-cutout-<ts>.png. Shortcut Cmd/Ctrl+B. Works on real photos (airplane in sky, person against cluttered background, …) — same architecture as Python's rembg, just without Python. Inference runs via ort (ONNX Runtime, statically linked into the binary).
- Save to Downloads (v0.10.1) — drop the selected image entry to disk as
~/Downloads/inspector-rust-image-<ts>.png unchanged. Shortcut Cmd/Ctrl+S. Companion to recolor: select the freshly-tinted history entry, hit Cmd+S, your file is in Downloads.
- Inputs: PNG, JPEG, WebP, GIF, BMP — for clipboard image entries and single-file Files entries (so a JPG copied from Finder works too). Output is always RGBA PNG.
- Modules:
recolor.rs, cutout_ml.rs. Legacy chroma-key cutout in cutout.rs is kept as a fast-path option but unused by default. 16 MP cap on inputs. Bundled model: core/rust-lib/models/u2netp.onnx (Apache-2.0).
Notes (v0.2.6)
Persistent, categorized clipboard items in a separate SQLite table — not subject to the 1 000-entry pruning.
- Bookmark from history — hover any row → bookmark icon → entry lands in Notes/
Uncategorized. Decoupled from the source clip; survives pruning.
- Notes tab — three panes: categories sidebar (with counts; virtual
All / Uncategorized), list, detail/edit. Free-form categories (<datalist> autocomplete). Editable bodies for text/HTML/RTF; image/files notes are read-only. Per-row delete + Clear All with confirm.
- + New Note for from-scratch entries. Tray shortcut: Manage Notes opens the popup directly here.
- Reference:
docs/notes.md.
Backup — single-file JSON export/import (v0.2.6+)
Settings tab → Backup & restore → Export writes the whole app (history, snippets, notes, 2FA accounts, every setting — timesheet opt-in) to one file, optionally password-encrypted (AES-256-GCM + Argon2id). Import detects encrypted files, asks for the password inline, and merges back: snippets upsert by abbreviation, history upserts by SHA-256, 2FA/timesheet dedupe, settings overwrite, notes append. Versioned schema — newer backups are refused rather than silently truncated. Reference: docs/backup.md.
Plain-text paste (default on, v0.4.0)
HTML / RTF clipboard entries are stripped to their text preview at paste time, so copy-from-Word / browser / mail no longer leaks styling into other apps. Toggle in Settings → Paste. Shift+Enter in the popup overrides for one paste.
Permissions UX (v0.11.0)
Inspector Rust uses four independent macOS TCC surfaces. The Settings tab surfaces each as a collapsible amber banner:
| Permission | Enables | Banner shown when missing |
|---|
| Accessibility | Paste, text expander, freeze | On every paste attempt + expander hotkey |
| Screen Recording | OCR (Ctrl+Shift+O), screenshot (Ctrl+Shift+S) | When OCR or screenshot is attempted |
| Automation → Finder | Finder selection (Ctrl+Shift+F), Markdown→PDF (Ctrl+Shift+M) | When hotkey is pressed without grant |
| Microphone | BPM detector (bpm) | When BPM mode is activated |
Each banner:
- Stays loud (border + warning icon + primary
Open System Settings button) when missing, but collapses to a single row by default so the page is not cluttered.
- Pre-checks before invoking the relevant native call. OCR returns a
screen.permission_denied sentinel rather than failing silently; a Tauri event opens the popup and flips the banner to point at the right Privacy pane.
- Polls the grant once per second while not granted, so the badge flips green ~1 second after the user toggles the System Settings switch — no panel reload needed.
- Has a
tccutil reset recovery button for the "toggle says on but the running process still sees denied" stale-cdhash state.
scripts/install-macos.sh signs every build with a stable self-signed certificate so grants survive rebuilds. scripts/grant-permissions-macos.sh provides a one-pass guided setup for all four permissions. Full details: macos/README.md.
Discoverability (v0.10.7)
- Footer — two rows. Top: the audio switch (where the sound comes out — speakers, Bluetooth, headphones — or
boom → <device> while boom runs; click to pick another output or toggle boom), the sleep/wake and recording indicators plus the global shortcuts ⌃⇧O OCR · ⌃⇧S Shot · ⌃⇧C Color, with the free disk space on the right. Bottom: the Finder folder the file commands (touch, echo, mkdir, terminal, daisy) work in, plus the current selection — click to show it in Finder — and the version on the right.
- Settings → Keyboard shortcuts — three-group cheat sheet (Global / Popup nav / Image actions) covering every shortcut the app binds. Modifier glyphs (
⌘ vs Ctrl, ⇧ vs Shift, ⌥ vs Alt) adapt to the running OS via the IS_MAC helper in core/frontend/src/lib/platform.ts.
- About dialog — Settings → About opens a modal with version, license, year, target audience, and a tabular tech-stack overview.
Screenshots — capture modes, preview HUD, editor, pin (v0.32.0 → v0.59.0)
- Capture modes — region (
Ctrl+Shift+S / shot [n]), full-screen (shotfull), active window (shotwin), and repeat-last (shotlast). shot 3 adds a 3-second self-timer. All modes feed the same preview HUD. macOS uses screencapture, Windows a GDI blit, Linux grim/scrot.
- CleanShot-X-style HUD — the captured PNG floats as the background of a small dark card with: X (discard), Pin (keep preview across next screenshot), Copy + Save + Pin to screen (centre pills), Pencil (open editor).
- App-name baked into filename — the frontmost app is read before the region picker fires; saved file becomes
Safari-20260524-153012.png. Edited variants use -edited.
- Annotation editor — Pencil opens a separate Tauri window with nine tools: Arrow / Line / Text / Rectangle / Ellipse / Highlight / Blur (mosaic, samples the source so undo is non-destructive) / Redact (opaque block) / Step (auto-numbered badges). 4 colour presets, 2–16 px stroke. Hotkeys:
⌘Z/⌘⇧Z undo/redo, ⌘S save, Esc cancel, single-key tool switches (A/L/T/R/E/H/B/X/N). Full-resolution canvas. Geometry lives in a pure, unit-tested module.
- Pin to screen — float a capture as its own persistent, draggable, always-on-top window; multiple pins coexist, close per pin. (Distinct from the HUD's Pin toggle, which only keeps the preview across the next shot.)
Media tools — record · download · trim · swap (v0.81.0 → v0.84.x, ffmpeg)
- Screen recording (
Ctrl+Shift+Alt+S, macOS) — region select → pick audio (system / mic / both, mic boosted +10 dB) → 3-2-1 countdown → MP4 (H.264) to Downloads, with a floating stop bar that pauses/resumes (segment + lossless concat). Multi-monitor (records the screen under the cursor). System audio auto-routes through a BlackHole multi-output device and restores your default afterwards; the captured audio is de-clicked (adeclick), time-corrected (atempo), and encoded at 256 k AAC / 48 kHz. The arg builders + audio-sync math are pure and unit-tested.
- Replace / overlay audio (
Ctrl+Shift+Alt+M, macOS) — select a video in Finder → an overlay to replace the audio track or mix a new one over it, at a chosen start position with optional trim and per-track volume. The new audio is a local file or a yt-dlp'd YouTube track. Video is stream-copied (fast/lossless), output is a sibling -audioswap.mp4.
- Download social media — paste/copy a YouTube / Instagram / TikTok / Facebook / X (Twitter) URL; it's auto-detected (in a clip or the search bar) and the preview offers Download video (all) + Download audio (YouTube). H.264 is preferred so files play in QuickTime; on YouTube's "confirm you're not a bot" gate it transparently retries with your browser cookies (Chrome / Firefox / Brave / Edge). Files land in
~/Downloads with the download timestamp (so they sort newest-first). Powered by yt-dlp.
- Trim (
trim command) — pick a local audio/video file, set start/end on a timeline, and cut it lossless & fast (-c copy, snaps to keyframes) or frame-accurate (re-encode). Saves a sibling -trim copy.
Meme library (v0.70.0) — type meme [query]
meme [query] fuzzy-browses a folder of GIFs/images, shows an animated preview, and copies the selected one to the clipboard on Enter (as a file-URL on macOS, so the animation is preserved when you paste into a chat). The folder is not bundled into the app — point it at your own collection, or grab the curated starter pack below.
📦 Download the starter pack: inspector-rust-memes.zip (~126 MB, 351 reaction GIFs in 14 categories) — also browsable in the repo under memes/.
Install (3 steps):
- Download
inspector-rust-memes.zip from the latest release (or copy the memes/ folder from a repo clone).
- Unzip it — it expands to a
memes/ folder with category subfolders (feels/, deal-with-it/, …).
- Put it where the app looks, either:
- Default path (recommended — enables the animated preview): move the contents so they live at
- macOS / Linux:
~/My Drive/media/memes
- Windows:
%USERPROFILE%\My Drive\media\memes (or G:\My Drive\media\memes if Google Drive runs in streaming mode)
- Any path: drop the folder anywhere and set it in Settings → Meme library (or leave the field blank to reset to the default). A custom folder still lists + copies fine; the animated in-app preview only renders inside the default path (asset-protocol scope).
Then open the popup and type meme (optionally meme cat to filter). Subfolder names become categories; the file name (minus extension) is the searchable label. Supported: gif · png · jpg · jpeg · webp · bmp · apng. The whole feature can be compiled out with pnpm build:{macos,win,linux}:nomeme.
Finder selection actions (v0.30.0, macOS)
Ctrl+Shift+F — osascript reads the current Finder selection (with TCC Automation → Finder grant, prompted on first use). The popup opens with the selected files listed at top, each with a finder chip.- Multi-file
rz — typing rz 1200x800 in finder-mode resizes every selected image, writes <name>-1200x800.<ext> next to source (format preserved). Originals untouched.
- Multi-file
optim — same shape: oxipng every selected PNG, writes <stem>-optim.png next to source. Non-PNG selections are skipped (oxipng-only).
- Permission via Settings — the macOS permissions card has three rows (Accessibility · Screen Recording · Automation → Finder); "Set up permissions" chains all three with one click via
tccutil reset + re-prompt.
Bruno — Brutto/Netto-Rechner (v0.33.0 · freelancer mode v0.86.0)
- Command — type
bruno 60000 (yearly) or bruno 5000m (monthly) in the search bar. Result row shows net / month + net / year inline; preview-pane shows full split (KV / PV / RV / AV + ESt / Soli / Kirche + Abgabenquote + Grenzsteuersatz).
- Freelancer / self-employed (
f suffix, v0.86.0) — bruno 80000f computes the net from a yearly profit; bruno 7000mf from a monthly one; bruno 90000-15000f from income − business expenses. Model: voluntary GKV (14.0 % reduced / 14.6 % with sick-pay entitlement + Zusatzbeitrag, assessed on the profit between the Mindestbemessungsgrundlage and the contribution cap) or a fixed PKV premium; full care-insurance rate; no pension/unemployment contributions; Grund- or Splittingtarif; Gewerbesteuer for Gewerbebetriebe (24 500 € allowance, 3.5 % Messzahl × municipal Hebesatz) incl. the § 35 EStG credit — Freiberufler stay exempt. VAT is a pass-through (§ 19 hint only). Configure Rechtsform, Hebesatz, GKV/PKV & Splitting under Settings → Bruno → Selbständig.
- Smart defaults — Steuerklasse I, NRW, 0 Kinder, kein Kirchensteuerpflichtig, TK-Niveau 2,45 % KV-Zusatz. Override per user in Settings → Bruno (persisted via SQLite settings table;
bruno-defaults-changed event refreshes the popup without restart).
- Steuerjahr 2025 — §32a EStG tariff (simplified), Grundfreibetrag 12.096 €, Beitragsbemessungsgrenzen KV 66.150 € / RV 96.600 €. Ported from the maintainer's steuerschleuder web app.
- Pure-TS compute — no IPC round-trip per keystroke. Number-format-tolerant parser (
bruno 60.000 = bruno 60,000 = bruno 60000). 82 unit tests pin the compute + parser (both modes). ⚠️ Simplified — no Faktorverfahren, no individual Freibeträge. Keine Steuerberatung.
freeze (v0.28.0)
- Native macOS
CGEventTap (raw FFI on ApplicationServices + CoreFoundation) blocks all keyboard + mouse input until the configured unlock chord (default i + r) is pressed. Installed on the main run loop via CFRunLoopGetMain() — worker-thread variants silently failed to drop events on Sonoma+.
wakelock / caffeine (v0.29.0 · on/off syntax v0.52.0)
- Type
wakelock on to keep the machine awake, wakelock off to stop. caffeine on/off is an alias. (The old wakelock=1/=0 syntax was retired in v0.52.0.) Keep-awake pauses sleep + the screen lock, defeating Teams / Slack / Discord "away" detection and screensaver/lock idle timers. Per-platform mechanism: macOS spawns caffeinate -disu (real IOPM assertions); Windows uses SetThreadExecutionState plus an invisible F15 keypress every 30 s (so the screensaver/lock idle timer is reset, not just power-sleep); Linux X11 jiggles the cursor (Wayland: no-op). Toggling closes the popup and plays a centred status toast confirming the new state.
touch / mkdir / terminal (v0.53.0, macOS)
- With a Finder window open, type
touch <name> to create an empty file, mkdir <name> to create a folder, or terminal to open a terminal — all in that window's current folder (or the Desktop if no window is open — Finder's insertion location). touch/mkdir reveal/select the new item in Finder; names are sanitised (no /, ., ..). terminal prefers iTerm2 if installed, falling back to Terminal.app. All need the Automation → Finder TCC grant (same as Finder selection).
System tray + multi-monitor
- Tray menu: Open · Manage Snippets · Manage Notes · OCR Region (Ctrl+Shift+O) · Screenshot Region (Ctrl+Shift+S) (v0.15.0+) · Pick Color (Ctrl+Shift+C) (v0.17.0+) · Pause Capture · ☑/☐ Start with Windows / Start at Login (checkmark reflects state since v0.14.0) · Clear History · Quit.
- Autostart on login (v0.14.0) — toggle in Settings → Startup, or from the tray menu. macOS writes
~/Library/LaunchAgents/InspectorRust.plist; Windows uses the run-key registry entry. App launches hidden in the tray so it's ready when the popup hotkey hits.
- Multi-monitor placement: popup opens on the monitor with the cursor, horizontally centered, ~⅓ from the top, clamped to the active monitor's bounds (matters on mixed-DPI setups).
Repository layout
inspector-rust/
├── core/
│ ├── frontend/ # React 19 · TS 5 · Tailwind v4 · Vite 7 — one UI shared by all 3 OSes
│ │ └── src/
│ │ ├── App.tsx # popup shell: the combined list, dispatchCommand, every inline-panel wiring
│ │ ├── components/ # 57 components — SearchBar, HistoryList/Item, PreviewPanel, the inline panels
│ │ │ # (Weather · Stats · Hue · Boom · Calendar · Shazam · Snitch · BPM · Equalizer …),
│ │ │ # the hidden games, the screenshot editor, the settings/features tabs
│ │ ├── hooks/ # 8 hooks — useClipboardHistory · useFuzzySearch · useSnippets · useKeyboardNav …
│ │ └── lib/ # ~60 pure, unit-tested modules — ipc.ts · commands.ts · commandDocs.ts · calc.ts
│ │ # · convert.ts · bpm.ts · disco-engine.ts · weather.ts · figlet.ts · qr.ts …
│ └── rust-lib/ # inspector-rust-core — ALL business logic (66 modules + 10 subsystem dirs)
│ ├── build.rs # links macOS Vision (OCR) + Metal (EDR brightness)
│ ├── models/u2netp.onnx # U²-Net cutout model (~4.5 MB, Apache-2.0)
│ ├── assets/ # embedded WAV cues + alarm + ~550 gzipped figlet fonts
│ └── src/
│ ├── lib.rs · commands.rs # Tauri builder + tray + invoke_handler · ~290 #[tauri::command]s
│ ├── db.rs · models.rs · crypto.rs · settings.rs · ui_state.rs · backup.rs · sync.rs · logging.rs
│ │ # SQLite (5 tables) · hash-dedup + prune · AES-256-GCM · cloud sync (cue)
│ ├── clipboard_watcher.rs · snippets.rs · snippet_template.rs · notes.rs · seed.rs
│ │ # capture · snippets + templates + notes · first-launch seed
│ ├── expander.rs · auto_expand.rs · paste.rs · hotkey.rs · input_lock.rs · esc_watch.rs · keepalive.rs
│ │ # text expander (4 modes) · global hotkeys · input lock · Esc/Enter watcher
│ ├── text_field/ # FieldAccess trait + macOS AX + Windows UIA in-place replace
│ ├── region_picker.rs · ocr.rs · screen_record.rs · screenshot_preview.rs · screenshot_editor.rs
│ │ # OCR · screenshots (region/full/window) · recording · preview HUD · annotate
│ ├── screen_picker.rs · color_loupe.rs # eyedropper + live-hex loupe
│ ├── social_dl.rs · media_trim.rs · audio_swap.rs · md_to_pdf.rs # media: download · trim · audio-swap · md→PDF
│ ├── recolor.rs · cutout.rs · cutout_ml.rs · image_ops.rs # image: tint · cutout (U²-Net) · resize · optim
│ ├── system_commands.rs · system_stats.rs · stats_history.rs · brightness.rs · edr.rs
│ │ # kill/reboot/lock/mute · live stats + history · brightness + EDR/XDR
│ ├── audio.rs · sound.rs · mic_capture.rs · wakelock.rs # audio device · native cpal mic · keep-awake
│ ├── boom/ # system-wide EQ — mod.rs (DSP) · macos.rs (driver bridge) · windows.rs (EqAPO)
│ ├── hue.rs · weather.rs · shazam.rs · snitch.rs · bruno.rs · timer.rs · alarm.rs · status_toast.rs
│ │ # inline panels & integrations (Hue · weather · song ID · net monitor …)
│ ├── gestures/ · window_snap/ · window_palette/ # trackpad gestures + window snapping/palette (per-OS impls)
│ ├── tracking/ # Timesheet — os/ (active window) · db · claude · bridge · slots · export
│ ├── faker/ · figlet/ · sec/ # generators: fake data · ASCII banners · pentest command builders
│ ├── totp_store.rs · totp_import.rs # 2FA / TOTP vault + importers (GAuth · Aegis · 2FAS · OTPManager)
│ ├── translate.rs · cleaner.rs · meme.rs · app_launcher.rs # translate · disk cleaner · meme picker · launcher
│ ├── finder_selection.rs · frontmost_app.rs · osascript_util.rs # Finder selection · touch/mkdir/terminal
│ └── cli_dispatch.rs · desktop_shortcuts.rs # Linux CLI-flag dispatch + gsettings shortcut install
├── win/ · macos/ · linux/ # per-OS bundle shells — 2-line main.rs + tauri.conf.json + capabilities/ + icons/
│ # (macos also: entitlements.plist · linux: .desktop + install docs)
├── boom-driver/ # vendored BlackHole → "boom Audio" virtual driver (build.sh, ad-hoc-signed)
├── extension/ # MV3 browser extension for Timesheet (reports the active tab over a loopback socket)
├── memes/ # starter meme pack (reaction GIFs; also the release's inspector-rust-memes.zip)
├── .github/workflows/ # ci.yml (Rust + frontend tests) · release.yml (bundles + GitHub Release on v* tags)
├── docs/ # 19 deep-dive docs (encryption · timesheet · figlet · faker · translation …)
│ ├── screenshots/ # the README screenshot gallery
│ └── *.png # brand artwork — ir.png · rust-juggernaut.png
├── scripts/ # check.sh · install-{macos,linux}.sh · gen-docs.mjs · update-badges.mjs · gen-figlet-fonts.mjs …
├── Cargo.toml # Rust workspace — members: core/rust-lib + {win,macos,linux}/src-tauri
├── pnpm-workspace.yaml # pnpm workspace (core/frontend + win/macos/linux)
└── package.json # root scripts: dev/build:{win,macos,linux} · test · check · lint · typecheck · update-badges
Quick start
Prerequisites
| Tool | Version | Notes |
|---|
| Rust | stable | MSVC toolchain on Windows; run rustup component add clippy |
| Node.js | 20+ | |
| pnpm | 10+ | npm install -g pnpm |
Platform-specific prerequisites:
Install & run
pnpm install # install the whole workspace (CI uses --frozen-lockfile)
# Windows
pnpm dev:win # tauri dev — live-reload
pnpm build:win # → target/release/bundle/msi/InspectorRust_x.x.x_x64_en-US.msi
# macOS
pnpm dev:macos # tauri dev — live-reload
pnpm build:macos # → target/release/bundle/{macos/InspectorRust.app, dmg/InspectorRust_x.x.x_<arch>.dmg}
bash scripts/install-macos.sh # build + re-sign (stable cert) + install + launch
bash scripts/install-macos.sh --reset # …also tccutil-reset stale TCC grants
bash scripts/grant-permissions-macos.sh # one-pass guided setup for all four TCC permissions
Why the install-macos.sh helper? Without an Apple Developer ID, every fresh pnpm build:macos is ad-hoc-signed with a new cdhash, which makes macOS TCC invalidate all previous grants on rebuild. The script creates a stable self-signed certificate (once) and signs every build with it — TCC keys the grant to the Designated Requirement (bundle id + cert hash), not the cdhash, so all four permission grants survive every future rebuild. Full background: macos/README.md — macOS permissions.
Each platform must be built on its native host (Windows for MSI, macOS for DMG/.app). Cross-compilation is not supported.
Snippet import
In Inspector Rust: open the popup (Ctrl+Space) → Snippets tab → Import → pick a .json file. The native file picker opens (NSOpenPanel on macOS, OpenFileDialog on Windows); existing abbreviations are upserted in place so re-importing the same file is idempotent.
Ready-to-import samples in docs/examples/snippets/:
| File | Snippets | Theme |
|---|
getting-started.json | 3 | Address, email, German signature — first-import test |
signatures.json | 4 | Email signatures (DE/EN, short, OOO template) |
dev.json | 8 | Shebang, MIT header, fn skeletons, gitignore, commit-msg |
markdown.json | 5 | Headings, table, <details>, PR-body |
wrapped-form.json | 2 | Demonstrates { "snippets": [...] } shape |
See docs/snippets-import.md for the full schema, field semantics, the sqlite3+jq export recipe, and tips/anti-patterns.
Notes & Backup
Notes have their own tab; the categories sidebar has + New Note and Clear All. Backup lives in the Settings tab now.
- Save a clipboard entry as a note: hover any History row → click the bookmark icon → the entry lands in the
Uncategorized bucket of the Notes tab. Move it to a category by editing the note.
- Export full backup: Settings tab → Backup & restore → optionally tick Timesheet data and/or Encrypt with password → Export… → choose a path. Inspector Rust writes a single file (default name
inspector-rust-backup-<timestamp>.json) covering history, snippets, notes, 2FA accounts and every setting.
- Import a backup: Settings tab → Backup & restore → Import… → pick the file (encrypted backups prompt for the password inline). Snippets and history merge by their natural keys (abbreviation / SHA-256 hash), 2FA and timesheet dedupe, settings overwrite; notes are appended. Notes / Snippets / History tabs auto-refresh.
Full feature reference: docs/notes.md. Backup file schema and merge semantics: docs/backup.md.
Tests & coverage
Inspector Rust keeps its pure logic — parsers, math, state machines, arg-builders, formatters — as free functions and unit-tests them exhaustively (behaviour, edge cases, error paths), while the impure OS/FFI edge (CoreAudio/Vision/CGEvent FFI, Tauri windows, ffmpeg/yt-dlp/osascript spawns, Web Audio) is left to manual/integration testing because it needs a live machine. So the code that can carry a deterministic test is well-covered — frontend src/lib ≈ 83 % stmt / 95 % branch (measured 2026-07-19), and the pure Rust cores that sit next to their 0 %-covered FFI shells (e.g. window_snap/mod.rs 93 %, boom/mod.rs 93 %) — even though the headline workspace average looks modest.
pnpm test # frontend unit tests (vitest + happy-dom) — 3635 tests
cargo test --workspace # Rust unit tests — 2236 tests
Iterate on one module:
cargo test -p inspector-rust-core --lib snitch # one Rust module
pnpm --filter inspector-rust-frontend exec vitest run src/lib/worldmask.test.ts # one frontend file
Coverage reports (tooling: cargo-llvm-cov + @vitest/coverage-v8):
cargo llvm-cov --lib -p inspector-rust-core --summary-only
cd core/frontend && npx vitest run --coverage --coverage.provider=v8 --coverage.include='src/lib/**'
The test commands run in GitHub Actions CI on every push and PR. The headline lines-of-code + test-count badges are auto-computed from the real sources/runners — never hand-edited — by pnpm update-badges (scripts/update-badges.mjs, which also runs automatically as a posttest hook and aborts if a suite is red). The same run writes the numbers to .github/repo-stats.json, which the product page reads; repo-stats.test.ts keeps file and badges in agreement.
Static analysis
pnpm check # cargo clippy (workspace) + tsc --noEmit + eslint
Known limitations
| Limitation | Detail |
|---|
| At-rest encryption scope | Sensitive content (clipboard text/HTML/RTF/images, snippet bodies, note bodies) is AES-256-GCM encrypted at rest with a per-install random 256-bit key (v0.6.0+). Key lives in the OS keychain; falls back to a 0600 keyfile in the data dir if the keychain is unavailable. Not encrypted: timestamps, content-type tags, dedup hashes, snippet abbreviations, note titles/categories — none of those reveal clipboard content. Full reference: docs/encryption.md. |
| No sensitive-app detection | Inspector Rust captures everything without filtering. |
| No cloud sync | No automatic sync or multi-device support — but the Backup export/import gives you a portable JSON file you can move between machines manually. |
| File paste fallback | Setting file-list clipboard payloads from Rust is not universally supported; Inspector Rust falls back to pasting the newline-joined list of paths as text. |
| Expander in terminals: use a direct slot | The abbreviation expander does nothing on a terminal command line (Terminal.app, iTerm2, kitty, …) — terminals don't expose the input line via accessibility and a shell prompt has no GUI "select previous word". Use a Direct hotkey → snippet slot there (v0.13.0 — pastes without reading anything, works everywhere) or the popup (Ctrl+Space → search → Enter). Electron / Chromium / Mac-Catalyst apps (WhatsApp, Slack, VS Code, …) are supported by the abbreviation expander as of v0.12.0, via an AX-select-then-paste path. |
| macOS Accessibility | Paste simulation (enigo), the system-wide text expander, and freeze require Accessibility access. Grant it once in System Settings → Privacy & Security → Accessibility; after granting, restart Inspector Rust once (the Settings tab offers a one-click relaunch). If missing, an amber banner appears on the next paste attempt or expander hotkey press. |
| macOS Screen Recording | OCR (Ctrl+Shift+O) and screenshot region (Ctrl+Shift+S, v0.15.0+) both require Screen Recording access — is attributed to Inspector Rust and macOS denies it without the grant. Pre-checked via ; missing permission opens the popup + shows an amber banner pointing to the right Privacy pane (v0.11.0). The eyedropper () does need Screen Recording. |
Contributing
Contributions welcome — see CONTRIBUTING.md for the dev workflow, code style, and how to add IPC commands or new platform shells.
Releasing
Push a v* tag to trigger the release workflow, which builds the Windows, macOS, and Linux bundles and attaches them to a GitHub Release. Full procedure (version bumps, pre-flight checks, troubleshooting) in docs/RELEASING.md.
Changelog
See CHANGELOG.md — every release is documented with what was added, fixed, and any known issues at the time.
Developers
- Martin Pfeffer — author & maintainer
- Kudos 2 Daniel
Reference documentation
Every deep-reference page lives in docs/. The in-app help (?,
<command>?) and the command matrix above are generated from the same
registry; these pages carry the parts that don't fit in a tooltip — design
decisions, failure modes, and the traps found the hard way.
| Page | What it covers |
|---|
| reports.md | Exported reports — the one design system behind every HTML/PDF/PNG export, and the print traps |
| inline-help.md | The ? help system and the CommandDoc registry that feeds three surfaces |
| transcribe.md | Local audio/video transcription with Whisper: setup, language and TXT output |
| spec.md | The original product spec |
| encryption.md | At-rest encryption: what is encrypted, what deliberately is not |
| backup.md | Full-app backup, encrypted backups, restore semantics |
| snippets-import.md | Snippet import/export formats and the merge rules |
| text-expander.md | The four expansion modes and why each exists |
| clipboard-shapes.md | Copy shapes, rich-text fidelity, lineage rails |
| notes.md | Notes |
💸 What it replaces
Inspector Rust bundles, in one free MIT-licensed app, what is normally sold as a shelf of separate utilities. The well-known equivalent per feature, at official list prices (September 2026, rounded — several vendors price regionally or run permanent sales):
| Inspector Rust feature | Replaces | Price (USD) |
|---|
| Clipboard history (pins, notes, lineage) | Paste | $29.99/yr |
| Launcher, command palette, calculator | Alfred 5 Powerpack | £34 ≈ $43 |
| Text expander (auto-expansion, snippets) | TextExpander | $60/yr |
| Window snapping + layout palette | Moom | $15 |
| Monitor brightness | Lunar Pro | $23 |
| EDR brightness past 100 % | Vivid | €10 ≈ $11 |
System-wide EQ + volume boost (boom) | Boom 3D | $49.99 |
Audio output switching + routing (sound) | SoundSource | $49 |
| Screenshots, annotation, pins, screen recording | CleanShot X | $35 |
| Screen OCR | TextSniper | $7.99 |
| Color eyedropper + loupe | Sip | $29.99 |
System cleaner (clean)¹ | CleanMyMac |
That's roughly $426 in one-time purchases plus about $238 every year in subscriptions — Inspector Rust: $0.
Plus the categories where the popular equivalents are already free (Amphetamine for keep-awake, Shazam, Espanso, Maccy, …) — here they simply live in the same search bar.
¹ The cache/log/duplicates part — CleanMyMac's malware/uninstaller modules have no counterpart here.
² Monitor, per-app activity and the live world map — the blocker is best-effort by design; a self-signed app cannot ship a NetworkExtension firewall, so Little Snitch's enforcement layer genuinely isn't replaced.
No feature parity claim with any of these — each of them goes deeper in its niche. But these are the tools this app replaces in everyday use.
License
MIT — © 2026 Martin Pfeffer | celox.io
A private open-source side project — built on weekends and evenings, made with ❤️.
Brewed and shipped from Berlin 🍻
🦾 From humble detective to Rust Juggernaut
It started innocently. One hotkey, a clipboard manager, and a polite little detective in a fedora who just wanted to help you paste things.
Then we gave him a text expander. Then OCR. Then screen recording, a system-wide EQ, 2FA, a weather forecast, a network world-map, ASCII banners, a song identifier, five hidden games and roughly ninety other commands.
He kept lifting. Somewhere between the U²-Net background cutout and the EDR brightness overlay he stopped being a detective and became a war machine. The fedora stayed. The rest is now hydraulics, riveted plating, a fortress-grade security shield, and an unreasonable amount of gear.
Ladies and gentlemen — The Rust Juggernaut · Ultimate Armored Edition™.
Same one hotkey. Roughly 400 % more armor. Still under 50 MB. 🕵️♂️ → 🦾
