One shortcut, anywhere.
Ctrl + Shift + X by default. Remap it to anything with Ctrl, Alt or Win. If another app already owns a combination, SwiftX tells you instead of failing silently.
Ctrl+
Shift+
X
SwiftX for Windows 11
Everything you reach for.
Right where you are.
A quick-access orbit for your apps, files, folders and links. Summon it with a keystroke, a screen corner or the tray.
Hover the items. Then press Ctrl Shift X anywhere on this page.
It's not a dock. It's not a Start menu. It's an orbit that shows up exactly where your hands already are, and gets out of the way the moment you've picked.
Summon
Three ways in.
None of them in your way.
The orbit is a transparent overlay. Only the items take input, and every other pixel is click-through, so it can cover the screen without covering your work.
Throw the pointer. Hold.
Push the pointer into a corner and rest it there for a beat. The orbit appears with no click. Try it below.
Right beside the clock.
Left-click the tray icon to summon or dismiss. Right-click for the rest. Hide orbit is a real off switch: nothing brings it back until you say so.
Customize
Make the orbit yours.
Six slots for your own apps, files, folders, links and groups, with Settings and Close pinned to the last two. Then tune how it looks and how it answers the pointer. Every control below is live.
Hover an item. Rest on Tools to open its group.
Item size
Item shape
Hover style
Swaps the item to the opposite colour and grows it slightly.
Theme
Seven kinds of thing, one gesture.
Icons come straight from the shell, matching Explorer, overlays and all. A web link wears its own site icon, or pick any Fluent glyph, or your own picture.
Application
File
Folder
Web link
Shortcut
Group
Tool
8
Children per group.
A group opens a concentric outer orbit. The inner one never moves, so you never lose your bearings.
Five themes, and your colour.
Light, Dark, Midnight, Frosted glass with three frost levels, or follow Windows. The orbit's bubbles are live acrylic in every one.
19
Languages, and counting.
Or follow Windows. Right-to-left languages mirror the tool windows.
English (US)English (UK)FrançaisDeutschEspañolItalianoNederlandsPolskiPortuguês (BR)Português (PT)TürkçeРусскийالعربيةעבריתहिन्दी한국어日本語简体中文繁體中文
Drag it in.
Drop anything from Explorer or a browser onto a slot. Drag items to rearrange; a drop lands on the nearest slot.
Set up in three steps.
The first-run guide picks what goes on the orbit and what summons it. Nothing is written until you press Finish.
Back up, restore, reset.
Export your whole setup to one JSON file, carry it to another PC, or start fresh in one click.
Hot corner
The corner of your screen,
put to work.
Open the whole orbit at the corner, or a quadrant: four items on a quarter circle centred on the corner itself. The pointer is already there, so each one is a short flick away.
Move the pointer into the top-left corner and hold it there.Tap the highlighted corner.
Or click the SwiftX icon in the tray.
250 ms
A deliberate dwell.
A corner clipped in passing doesn't count. Rest for a quarter second and it fires.
6 px
A tiny trigger patch.
The pointer stops dead against the screen edge, so a few pixels is all it ever needs.
1×
Once per visit.
It re-arms only after you leave. A held mouse button never fires it, so window snaps still work.
0
System-wide mouse hooks.
The pointer is polled on a timer the tray already owns. Per monitor, taskbar or not.
The SwiftX app
A companion that
keeps out of the way.
Behind the orbit's Settings item: arrange the orbit on a live canvas, manage the tools, and change how SwiftX looks and behaves. There's no taskbar button. It lives beside the clock.
Built-in tools
Five developer tools.
Zero uploads.
They live inside the orbit's Tools item, one flick from wherever you are. Everything you paste or open is processed on your PC. Try the formatter right here. It runs in your browser, too.
Input · JSON
Output
ReadyProcessed on this device
Data formatter
Auto-detects JSON and XML. Format, validate, minify, sort keys, escape, and convert between the two. Hardened against XML entity tricks.
Quick Format
Formats whatever you last copied (JSON, XML, YAML or CSV) the moment you open it. No pasting required.
Secure values
A local key and secret store. Values stay masked, copy on demand, and are encrypted with Windows' own per-user protection (DPAPI).
Base64
Encode and decode text, with a URL-safe alphabet option. Or encode a file's bytes directly.
Certificate
Inspect .cer, .crt, .der and .pem files, PKCS#7 bundles, password-protected PFX and Java KeyStores, field by field.
Privacy
What you put in SwiftX
stays on your PC.
No account. No server. No analytics. SwiftX isn't private because of a policy. It's private because there's nowhere else for your data to go.
Everything stays on this device.
Your orbit items and settings are saved to this PC only. There's no SwiftX account and no server to sync to.
No tracking, no analytics.
SwiftX collects no usage data, sends no crash or telemetry reports, and shows no ads.
Secrets are encrypted for you.
Secure values use Windows' own per-user encryption, readable only while you're signed in to this account on this device.
The tools run offline.
Text you paste and files you open in the built-in tools are processed on this device and never uploaded anywhere.
You can take it all back.
Export your whole setup at any time from Settings, and Reset clears it back to defaults.
Your rating stays here.
The stars you give SwiftX are saved with your settings and sent nowhere. The feedback links simply open your browser.
The one thing that touches the network.
When you put a web link on the orbit, SwiftX asks that site for its icon so the item can show it, falling back to DuckDuckGo's public icon service if the site has none. The request names only the site, never you, and the icon is cached so it's asked for once. It's the only network call SwiftX makes on its own. We'd rather tell you than round it down to zero.
Tech specs
SwiftX 3.0
- Price
- Free. Open source under the MIT Licence.No account, no subscription, no in-app purchases.
- Compatibility
- Windows 11
- Windows 10, version 1809 or later
- Architecture
- Native x64 and ARM64 builds.
- Runtime
- WinUI 3 (Windows App SDK) on .NET 10.Self-contained: nothing else to install.
- Summon
- Keyboard shortcut, Ctrl Shift X by default, fully remappable
- Hot corner, any of the four, opening the orbit or a quadrant
- Notification-area icon
- Orbit
- Eight slots: six of yours, plus Settings and Close
- Groups open an outer orbit of up to eight items
- Radius 80 to 220 px · Small, Medium, Large · Circle, Squircle, Square
- Hover styles: Invert, Zoom, Tint, Animate (Pulse, Bounce, Wobble, Shake, Spin, Float)
- Item kinds
- Application, File, Folder, Web link, Shortcut (.lnk), Group, Tool.
- Built-in tools
- Data formatter, Quick Format, Secure values, Base64, Certificate.
- Appearance
- Light, Dark, Midnight, Frosted glass (three frost levels), System. Custom accent colour. Mica and acrylic throughout.
- Languages
- 19, plus System. Arabic and Hebrew mirror right-to-left.
- Accessibility
- Full keyboard support with Esc to step back. Honours High Contrast and the Windows animation setting.
- Your data
- One JSON file at
%AppData%\SwiftX\orbit.json, written atomically.Export and import from Settings. SetSWIFTX_DATA_DIRfor a portable install. - Privacy
- No telemetry, analytics or ads. Privacy policy
Get started
Up and running
in under a minute.
Download
Grab the latest release from GitHub, for x64 or ARM64. It carries its own runtime, so there's nothing else to install.
Answer two questions
The set-up guide asks what goes on the orbit and which keys and corner bring it up. Change any of it later.
Press Ctrl Shift X
That's it. SwiftX has no taskbar button. Find it in the notification area, beside the clock.
Build it from source
You'll need the .NET 10 SDK on Windows. Swap in -p:Platform=ARM64 on ARM hardware.
# Clone, build, test and run
git clone https://github.com/framedparadox/SwiftX.git
cd SwiftX
dotnet build src/SwiftX/SwiftX.csproj -p:Platform=x64
dotnet test tests/SwiftX.Tests/SwiftX.Tests.csproj -p:Platform=x64
dotnet run --project src/SwiftX/SwiftX.csproj -p:Platform=x64
Support
Questions, answered.
Is SwiftX really free?
Yes. SwiftX is open source under the MIT Licence. There's no paid tier, no account and no subscription, for personal or commercial use.
Does SwiftX collect any data?
No. There's no telemetry, no analytics and no crash reporting. Your configuration lives in one file on your PC. The only thing SwiftX ever asks the network for, on its own, is a website's icon when you add a web link to the orbit. Read the privacy policy.
I can't find SwiftX on the taskbar.
That's by design. SwiftX lives in the notification area beside the clock. Left-click its icon to summon the orbit, right-click for Settings and Quit. You may need to open the overflow arrow the first time.
The shortcut does nothing.
Another app already owns that combination, and Windows won't share it. Open Settings → General → Invoke: SwiftX says so there, and your previous shortcut stays live until you pick one that works. A shortcut must include Ctrl, Alt or Win.
The hot corner doesn't fire.
- Check it's switched on, and which corner is selected, on the Orbit screen.
- Hold the pointer in the corner for a moment. Passing through doesn't count.
- Let go of the mouse button. A held button suppresses it on purpose.
- It's the corner of the display the pointer is on, not of the whole desktop.
- Hide orbit from the tray menu turns it off until you show the orbit again.
A tool is missing from the orbit.
Tools live inside the orbit's Tools item, and each has its own switch on the Dev Tools screen. If you deleted the Tools item, add a group named Tools (or reset to defaults) and the next launch will fill it.
Where are my settings stored, and how do I start fresh?
In %AppData%\SwiftX\orbit.json. Export or import it from Settings → General → Backup & restore. To start over, use Reset, or quit SwiftX and delete the %AppData%\SwiftX folder. The next launch plants the defaults again.
Does it run on ARM?
Yes, natively. Every release is built for both x64 and ARM64.
Something looks wrong. How do I report it?
SwiftX writes a diagnostic log to %TEMP%\swiftx.log, recreated on every launch. Attach it to a new issue on the issue tracker, along with your Windows version and what you expected to happen.
Get SwiftX.
Free. Open source. Yours in a keystroke.
Version 3.0 · Windows 11 and Windows 10 1809+ · x64 and ARM64