Taskbar Audio Visualizer

A Windows taskbar audio visualizer component.

The application interface defaults to English and supports custom menu text through an optional JSON language file. The tray tooltip and window title are TaskbarAudio. Application logs and error messages are in English; error descriptions returned by Windows may use the system language.

• Real-time audio visualization in the taskbar
• Supports bar and line chart display modes
• Configurable position (left, center, right)
• Horizontal offset adjustment
• Mixed audio capture (system + microphone)
• Global hotkey and tray actions to pause/hide or resume/show the visualizer

• Windows 10 or later
• Rust toolchain (for building)

cargo build --release

Cargo.lock pins the application dependencies. CI uses --locked, runs tests before creating a tag release, and checks normal master pushes and pull requests.

CI installs the latest stable Rust/Clippy. Run rustup update stable before checking locally to avoid differences in lint rules between toolchain versions.

cargo test --offline
cargo clippy --offline --all-targets -- -D warnings
cargo build --release --locked
# Requires working Windows playback and microphone devices:
cargo test --offline live_system_and_mixed_capture_restart -- --ignored --nocapture
# Interactive desktop; exit the running visualizer first:
cargo test --offline desktop_hotkey_tray_resume_and_restart -- --ignored --nocapture

The regular tests cover shortcut/config parsing, audio decoding and mixing, thread shutdown, FFT output, panel lifecycle, and bar/line pixel bounds at multiple DPI settings. The optional device test starts and stops both capture modes twice. The optional desktop test checks hotkey registration, message routing, tray double-click resume, panel bounds, recovery after panel loss, and restart while paused.

Create a config.json file in the same directory as the executable:

{
    "position": "center",
    "display_mode": "bar",
    "offset_x": 0,
    "environment_volume": false,
    "auto_start": false,
    "toggle_hotkey": "",
    "language_file": ""
}

• position: left, center, right
• display_mode: bar, line
• offset_x: Horizontal offset in pixels (positive = right, negative = left)
• environment_volume: Enable mixed audio capture (system + microphone). Windows converts microphone audio to the system audio format before mixing. Changes to either default device restart capture.
• auto_start: Enable Windows auto start via HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run
• toggle_hotkey: Optional global shortcut, for example "Ctrl+Alt+V". Omit it, use null, or leave it empty to disable. Configuration changes take effect after restart. Both flat configuration and options nested inside "user" are supported.
• language_file: Optional JSON file with custom tray menu labels, for example "locale.json". Relative paths are resolved from the executable directory; absolute paths are also accepted. Omit it, use null, or leave it blank for built-in English. Changes take effect after restart.

UTF-8 files with or without a BOM are supported. Malformed JSON or invalid option types fall back to defaults with a warning. An invalid toggle_hotkey value only disables the shortcut; an invalid language_file type only disables custom text. Both preserve the other options.

Place a locale.json next to the executable, then set "language_file": "locale.json" in config.json (or inside its "user" object). For example:

{
    "show_visualizer": "Afficher la visualisation",
    "hide_visualizer": "Masquer la visualisation",
    "retry_taskbar_attachment": "Réessayer l'intégration",
    "restart": "Redémarrer",
    "exit": "Quitter"
}

Release archives also include locale.example.json, a Chinese translation that can be copied to locale.json and edited. The sample is not enabled by default.

Only the labels you provide are overridden. Missing, blank, incorrectly typed, or control-character-containing labels fall back individually to English. Unknown keys are ignored, and ampersands are displayed literally. Use UTF-8 with or without a BOM and a JSON object at the root. An unreadable or invalid file logs a warning and falls back to English without preventing startup. Restart the app after editing the language file. Logs, configuration keys, and the TaskbarAudio brand name are not translated.

The visualizer starts enabled on every launch. Press the configured shortcut or select Hide Visualizer in the tray menu to pause it. Pausing stops audio capture (including the microphone in mixed mode), device polling, spectrum analysis, rendering, and taskbar maintenance timers. Only the tray, shortcut, and Windows message loop remain active.

Press the shortcut again, select Show Visualizer, or double-click the tray icon while paused to resume. Resume recreates the visualizer using the current default audio devices. If the taskbar is unavailable, attachment retries continue until it becomes available. Visibility is not saved between launches. Startup and resume check taskbar geometry every 50 ms and show the panel after it has remained stable for at least 100 ms. The panel width is calculated from the bar count, with 5-pixel columns, 2-pixel gaps, and 6-pixel padding on each side.

The tray menu offers Hide Visualizer while running and Show Visualizer while paused. Retry Taskbar Attachment is available only while running with taskbar attachment unavailable. Restart and Exit are always available.

Shortcuts are case-insensitive and allow whitespace around +. Use one or more distinct modifiers (Ctrl, Alt, Shift, Win), followed by exactly one main key:

• A–Z, 0–9, or F1–F24 (except Windows-reserved F12).
• Space, Tab, Enter, Escape, Backspace, Delete, Insert, Home, End, PageUp, PageDown, Left, Right, Up, Down.

Single keys, duplicate modifiers, empty parts, unknown keys, and multiple main keys are rejected. Invalid values (including incorrect JSON value types) disable only the shortcut. Shortcuts already occupied or rejected by Windows are ignored with a warning; tray controls continue working. Holding the shortcut does not repeatedly toggle the visualizer.

asset/logo.ico is embedded into the executable as MAINICON and is also used by the tray. It combines the audio waveform with a smaller personal mark on a transparent background, with eight sizes from 16 to 256 pixels.

After replacing it, run cargo build --release --locked and distribute the rebuilt target/release/taskbar_audio.exe. Existing GitHub release archives keep their original icon; publishing the new icon requires committing the change and pushing a new version tag. Updating the PowerShell $tag variable alone does not change the package version in Cargo.toml.

If the tray and Task Manager show the new icon but File Explorer shows the old one, refresh the Windows icon cache and reopen the folder:

ie4uinit.exe -show

If necessary, restart Windows Explorer from Task Manager or follow Microsoft's icon cache rebuilding instructions.

MIT