AltAppSwitcher: alternative application switcher for Windows

Main features:

• Minimalist icon based interface
• MacOS-like or Gnome-like application switching. Use alt + tab to select the active app (not window) and alt + ~ to switch between windows of the active app.
• MacOS-like application switching can be disabled if you prefer Windows style.
• Customizable keybindings and display options

Tested on Windows 10 and Windows 11.

Launching AltAppSwitcher:

Get the archive from the release page.

x86_64 and ARM64 (AArch64) architectures are available. Please note that I was not able to test the ARM64 one myself.

Run the AltAppSwitcher.exe (preferably as an administator).

Close the application using CloseAltAppSwitcher.bat file.

Run at startup:

Run AddToStartup.bat to add AltAppSwitcher to Windows startup apps.

Run RemoveFromStartup.bat to revert this.

Customization

"Settings" executable lets you change settings such as key bindings, theme, scale and mouse support.

Known issues

• Alt tab popup is behind start menu.
• Releases might be flagged as malicious by antiviruses. This is a false positive (detection relies on machine learning).

Building from source

This is a C project relying on C standard library and Windows API. I'm using Clang (mingw) and VS Code / VS Codium. Here is my setup:

Dependencies:

• Clang and Windows libraries:
  Download Clang MinGW, unzip and add Bin subfolder to "Path" so clang (and other tools from MinGW) can be called from a terminal.
  I'm using llvm-mingw-20240619-msvcrt-x86_64 from Clang (mingw) at the time of writing.
• Python:
  Download Python and install or add to "Path" so python can be called from a terminal.
  Alternatively, you can use MinGW-provided Python under Python/bin.
• Make
  Make is part of MinGW.
• (Optional) mt.exe:
  To deploy (Makefile deploy target), we need Microsoft's mt.exe. This tool is used to embed manifest in exe. The application runs fine with external manifest (when not using Makefile deploy target). mt.exe is part of the Windows SDK.

Building:

• Clone the repository.
• Open a terminal at the root of the repository.
• Run mingw32-make.exe (MinGW make must be used)
• Binaries are found in /Output/Debug_x86_64

Debugging:

I'm using VSCodium/VSCode to write and debug code, with 2 extensions:

• https://open-vsx.org/extension/vadimcn/vscode-lldb for debugging
• https://open-vsx.org/extension/llvm-vs-code-extensions/vscode-clangd for language server integration (code completion, errors...)

With those, you should be able to build and run inside VSCode using the configurations defined in .vscode\launch.json (at the moment, configurations are written for x86_64 but you can easily create arm64 equivalent)

Configurations refers to tasks defined in /.vscode/tasks.json