Dynamic Notch for Windows
A native desktop companion for Windows 10 and Windows 11 that brings media controls, notifications, system information, reminders, and AI coding usage into a compact glass notch.
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.
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
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.
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
- 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
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.
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
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
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.
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.
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
Venu is designed to run quietly in the background.
- System tray support
- Quick controls from the tray
- 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
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.
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
Download venu-x.y.z.exe from the Releases page and run it directly. No installation, no admin rights.
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. Only one Venu runs at a time.
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 --releaseThe 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.issThe 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.
- Move your cursor to the configured edge of the screen.
- The Dynamic Notch expands automatically.
- Scroll over the notch to move between active slides.
- Use the pin control to keep it expanded.
- Configure placement, size, monitor, and behavior from Settings > Notch.
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.
- Open Settings > Text.
- Enter the text you want to display.
- Open Settings > Appearance and select the screen edges.
- Adjust thickness, spacing, color, and opacity.
- Configure speed, direction, and click-through behavior under Settings > Behavior.
- Open any Venu color setting.
- Select the color capsule to open the color editor.
- Adjust saturation, brightness, hue, and opacity.
- Use HEX, RGB, or HSV input when precise values are required.
- Select a surface theme such as Dark, Frosted, Transparent, Blurred, or Acrylic.
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.
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: Plus Jakarta Sans and Noto Sans Devanagari
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.
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
Contributions, ideas, and bug reports are welcome.
Before submitting changes, run:
cargo fmt --check
cargo checkPlease keep changes focused and ensure the project builds without warnings where practical.
Venu is licensed under the MIT License.
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