Venu

What is Venu?

Venu brings a Dynamic Island-style experience to Windows and turns the unused space around the top of your desktop into a useful, contextual information surface.

See the time, control media, read notifications, track your current focus, display reminders, monitor AI coding tool usage, and receive alerts from developer tools without constantly switching windows.

Venu is designed to feel native, lightweight, and unobtrusive. It runs locally, uses hardware-accelerated rendering, and does not require an account or cloud service.

Why Venu?

Your desktop is where you already work. Venu puts useful information where you can see it without adding another full application window.

• Dynamic Notch for Windows
• Live media controls and now-playing information
• Windows desktop notifications
• Claude, Codex, and Antigravity usage tracking
• AI coding workflow notifications
• Scrolling edge marquee for reminders, notes, and text
• Custom glass, acrylic, blur, transparent, dark, and light surfaces
• Wallpaper-aware adaptive colors
• Native Windows system tray integration
• Local configuration with no telemetry or cloud dependency

AI Coding Usage Tracker

Venu can display AI coding tool usage directly inside the Windows Dynamic Notch.

Supported usage views include:

• Claude Code: context window, session cost, and rate limits
• OpenAI Codex: usage information directly in the notch
• Google Antigravity: usage information directly in the notch

This makes Venu especially useful for developers who spend most of their day working with AI coding agents. Instead of opening separate dashboards or repeatedly checking terminal output, important usage information can stay visible in the desktop HUD.

Venu also includes notification hooks for developer tools and AI agents such as Claude Code, Codex, and Antigravity, allowing scripts and development workflows to send events directly to the Dynamic Notch.

Features

Dynamic Notch / Desktop HUD

A compact Dynamic Island-style panel that expands when you need it and stays out of the way when you do not.

• Smooth spring-based expansion and collapse
• Open with a click, a hover, or either; hover waits a moment you choose and ignores the cursor sweeping past on its way to a tab
• No accidental opening while dragging a window or file, or over full-screen apps and games
• Close with Esc, a click outside, or moving the cursor away — any combination, all in Settings › Controls
• Right-click menu on the notch's own glass, with smooth open, close and hover, and arrow keys + Enter: Settings, keep open, pause hover, click-through, pages, quit. It works even while clicks pass through
• Never stuck: Reset controls and a click-through switch in the tray menu and at the top of Settings
• Music controls and the live wave right on the closed pill
• Hover highlights, a hand cursor and a soft ripple on everything clickable in the panel
• Pick a click gesture (Ctrl + click, middle click…) and only that opens the notch
• Global keyboard shortcuts you set yourself (default Ctrl + Alt + N to open or close, Ctrl + Alt + C for click-through)
• A mouse trigger over the notch: middle click, a side button, or Ctrl/Alt/Shift + click (works even with click-through on)
• Scroll to change pages on the open panel and, optionally, on the closed pill
• Top or bottom placement
• Configurable monitor, width, height, and offset
• Multiple information slides
• Mouse wheel navigation
• Pin mode for keeping the panel expanded
• Optional click-through mode
• Automatic mode that can prioritize active notifications, media, or the clock

Available slides include:

• Status: Focus and today's priorities
• Clock: Large digital clock and date
• Media: Current track, artist, artwork, and playback controls
• Notifications: Notification center and unread indicators
• Wallpaper: Image preview with optional caption
• Marquee: Moving reminder or custom text
• AI Usage: Claude, Codex, and Antigravity usage information
• Stats: whole-PC CPU and physical RAM, the busiest GPU engine, and battery or AC power
• Focus Timer: Pomodoro rounds and breaks, with the countdown in the resting pill
• Calendar: your next meeting and what follows, from a Google Calendar or Outlook iCal link
• Quick Toggles: mute the microphone or sound, switch dark mode, keep the PC awake
• Shelf: pinned files, folders, apps and .bat scripts, plus the newest files of a folder such as Screenshots; one click opens, right-click copies (Venu stores paths only, never copies)
• Clipboard: the last few things you copied, one click to copy again (opt-in, memory only, private content skipped)

Split Pill

Show more than one thing at a glance without a second notch. With Settings > General > Layout > Split pill on, the resting pill keeps its usual face in the middle and adds a fixed face on either side — for example the time on the left and CPU / RAM on the right.

• Any slide can be a side segment: Clock, Stats, Moving text, Timer, Calendar, Now Playing and more
• A side that matches the middle face hides itself, so nothing is ever shown twice
• Hover a side segment and the panel opens straight onto that slide; when it closes, the pill goes back to the face it was resting on

Satellite Pods

Live activities bud out of the notch as small pods beside it, and merge back into it when you open the panel (Settings > General > Layout > Satellite pods).

• Coding agents at work — e.g. Claude Code, with how long it has been running (see below)
• Focus timer running, with its countdown ring
• A meeting happening now or starting soon
• Music that is playing
• At most two at once, in priority order; a pod never repeats a face already on the pill
• Hover a pod to open the notch onto its slide

Notch Shape

Settings > Appearance > Shape controls the silhouette and finish, with a live preview:

• Style presets — Classic, Pill, Soft, Sharp — as starting points
• Corner roundness for the resting pill and the open panel
• Shoulder size: how the notch melts into the top edge (0 for square shoulders)
• Outline, glass sheen and shadow strength, relative to the chosen theme

Border Effects

The notch can play an effect around its edge on an interval or continuously: Rainbow, Glass reflection, Colour sweeps, Breathing glow, Aurora, Comet, Neon sign, Heartbeat and Fire. Effects can play on the resting pill, the open panel, or both, and Settings shows a live preview. Nothing is drawn between runs.

Media Controls

Control media playback without leaving your current application.

Venu integrates with Windows System Media Transport Controls to show the currently playing track, artist, artwork, playback state, and controls for play, pause, previous, and next.

• A centred player: the album cover or video thumbnail large in the middle, the title, artist or channel and the app under it, then the timeline and controls
• A live equaliser on the pill and the media pod that follows what is actually playing
• Click the media pod to play or pause, the timer pod to pause or resume

Notifications

Turn the Dynamic Notch into a lightweight notification hub.

• Live desktop alerts
• Unread notification indicators
• Notification center
• Individual dismissal
• Clear all notifications
• Application-specific colors
• Custom animated notification glow styles
• Local webhook support for external tools and scripts
• Charging, unplugged and low-battery alerts
• Microsoft Store version: notifications from every Windows app, with your permission. Windows only lets packaged apps read the notification center, so the portable and installer builds show alerts from the webhook only. Venu keeps the latest four in memory for the session; nothing is written to disk.

AI Agent and Developer Notifications

Venu can act as a small desktop HUD for your development workflow.

CLI hooks in scripts/notch-hooks/ allow external tools, build scripts, AI agents, and development workflows to send instant notifications to Venu.

This can be useful for events such as:

• AI coding agent task completion
• Long-running build completion
• Test results
• Deployment status
• Background scripts finishing
• Agent attention or approval requests

Work in progress can also be shown as a satellite pod. Post to /activity when something starts, and Venu shows a pod counting up beside the notch:

curl -X POST http://127.0.0.1:18923/activity -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"app":"Claude","state":"start"}'

Post "state":"stop" when it ends — or just send a normal notification with "level":"success" from the same app, which closes it too. Anything not stopped is dropped after an hour. For Claude Code, register scripts/notch-hooks/claude-activity.ps1 as a UserPromptSubmit hook; the existing Stop hook (claude-notify.ps1) already ends the pod.

Edge Marquee

Display scrolling text around the edges of your Windows desktop.

• Top, bottom, left, and right edges
• Custom text and reminders
• Adjustable speed and direction
• Configurable thickness and spacing
• Custom colors and opacity
• Always-on-top support
• Click-through mode
• Unicode support including Latin, Devanagari, CJK, and symbols

Use it for reminders, quotes, status information, temporary notes, or anything you want to keep visible while working.

Settings Window

A floating glass window that sits beside your work. Seven pages in three groups, each split into tabs, with a search box (Ctrl+F) that jumps straight to any setting.

• Frosted glass over your desktop, with a Glass strength slider
• Your own accent colour for switches, tabs, sliders and the selected page
• Sliders for every number, switches instead of checkboxes, gliding tabs
• A wallpaper picker that shows exactly how the notch will frame your image

Glass and Surface Themes

Venu includes multiple visual treatments designed to work with different Windows desktops and wallpapers.

• Dark / Obsidian
• Light
• Frosted Glass
• Transparent Glass
• Blurred
• Windows Fluent Acrylic

The notch can sample the desktop wallpaper and extract dominant colors for adaptive accents and themes.

Modern Color Editor

Venu includes a precision color editor instead of relying on the default Windows color picker.

• 2D saturation and value canvas
• Hue spectrum slider
• Alpha slider
• HEX input
• RGB input
• HSV input
• Curated color swatches
• Live opacity and color preview

System Tray and Windows Integration

Venu is designed to run quietly in the background.

• System tray support
• Quick controls and Settings access from the tray, plus a Settings button in the notch
• Ordinary launches open quietly in the tray; pass --settings to open the Settings window directly
• Single-instance application behavior
• Launch on startup (quiet, tray-only sign-in start)
• Native Windows file dialogs
• Windows 10 and Windows 11 support
• Local JSON configuration

Privacy First

Venu is designed as a local-first Windows application.

• No account required
• No telemetry
• No cloud dependency
• No mandatory online service
• Configuration stored locally on your PC

AI usage information is displayed locally by Venu based on the integrations and local data available to the application.

Installation

Installer (recommended)

Download venu-setup-x.y.z.exe from the GitHub Releases page and run it. The installer:

• installs Venu per-user into %LOCALAPPDATA%\Programs\Venu — no administrator rights needed
• adds a Start Menu shortcut (and optionally a desktop shortcut)
• offers to enable Launch on startup, so Venu is already running quietly in the tray the next time you turn your PC on
• ships an uninstaller that removes all of the above

Portable

Download venu-x.y.z.exe from the Releases page and run it directly. No installation, no admin rights. Venu starts quietly in the tray; choose Open Settings from the tray menu or use the notch's Settings button. Run venu-x.y.z.exe --settings when you want to open Settings on launch.

Either way, Launch on startup can be toggled any time from Settings > App > Preferences. The setting lives under your user profile (HKCU\...\CurrentVersion\Run), keeps pointing at the copy of Venu you last ran, and a sign-in start stays quiet in the tray instead of opening the settings window. --startup and --minimized also keep the launch quiet; an explicit --settings opens the window even when one of those flags is present. Only one Venu runs at a time.

Build from Source

Venu is built with Rust and targets Windows 10 and Windows 11.

Install the stable Rust toolchain, then run:

git clone https://github.com/imnakul/venu---Dynamic-Notch-for-Windows.git
cd venu---Dynamic-Notch-for-Windows
cargo build --release

The compiled executable will be available at:

target/release/venu.exe

To build the Windows installer as well, install Inno Setup 6 and run:

iscc packaging/venu.iss

The setup executable is written to dist/venu-setup-<version>.exe. A tooling-free per-user install/uninstall is also available as scripts/install.ps1 / scripts/uninstall.ps1.

How to Use Venu

Dynamic Notch

1. Move your cursor to the configured edge of the screen.
2. The Dynamic Notch expands automatically.
3. Scroll over the notch to move between active slides.
4. Use the pin control to keep it expanded.
5. Configure placement, size, monitor, and behavior from Settings > Notch.

AI Usage Tracker

Open the AI Usage slide to view supported AI coding tool usage directly in the notch. Configure the available integrations from the corresponding Venu settings.

Edge Marquee

1. Open Settings > Text.
2. Enter the text you want to display.
3. Open Settings > Appearance and select the screen edges.
4. Adjust thickness, spacing, color, and opacity.
5. Configure speed, direction, and click-through behavior under Settings > Behavior.

Colors and Themes

1. Open any Venu color setting.
2. Select the color capsule to open the color editor.
3. Adjust saturation, brightness, hue, and opacity.
4. Use HEX, RGB, or HSV input when precise values are required.
5. Select a surface theme such as Dark, Frosted, Transparent, Blurred, or Acrylic.

Configuration

Venu automatically stores preferences and state locally at:

%APPDATA%\venu\config.json

To reset Venu to its default configuration, close the application and delete this file.

Technology

Venu is built as a native Windows desktop application with a focus on performance and responsive visual rendering.

• Language: Rust 2021
• GUI: egui and eframe
• Graphics: Direct2D and DirectWrite through Windows bindings
• Backdrop: GDI screen capture with DWM capture exclusion and Direct2D interpolation
• Media: Windows System Media Transport Controls (SMTC / WinRT)
• Typography: Geist and Geist Mono, with Noto Sans Devanagari and Windows font fallback for multilingual text

For Developers

Venu is also designed to be useful inside a developer workflow.

External applications can communicate with the Venu notification system through local hooks and the notification webhook. This makes it possible to integrate Venu with scripts, CI workflows, AI coding agents, development tools, and other local applications.

The goal is simple: when something important finishes in the background, your desktop should be able to tell you without forcing you to keep another terminal or dashboard open.

Roadmap

Venu is actively evolving. Planned and experimental areas include improvements to:

• AI coding tool integrations
• Dynamic Notch information surfaces
• Notification integrations
• Windows desktop integration
• Customization and themes
• Developer automation hooks

Contributing

Contributions, ideas, and bug reports are welcome.

Before submitting changes, run:

cargo fmt --check
cargo check

Please keep changes focused and ensure the project builds without warnings where practical.

License

Venu is licensed under the MIT License.

Keywords

Venu, Dynamic Notch for Windows, Dynamic Island for Windows, Windows Dynamic Island, Windows notch, Windows desktop HUD, Windows desktop companion, Windows notification HUD, Windows media controls, Windows desktop customization, Windows productivity tool, Windows AI coding tools, Claude Code usage tracker, Claude usage tracker, Codex usage tracker, OpenAI Codex usage, Google Antigravity usage tracker, Antigravity usage tracker, AI coding agent notifications, Windows developer tools, Windows Rust application, Rust desktop application, Windows 10, Windows 11.