ActiveAppView

Accessibility tool for active application / explorer quick selection

Hotkeys

• F1: Applications
• F2: Explorer
• F3: Scripts
• F4: Console instances
• F6: Desktop
• F7: ShortCuts
• F8: Machine Overview
• F5: Refresh all lists

Machine Overview

• The rightmost panel shows current CPU, memory, GPU, responsiveness, disk, application, and incident signals. CPU, RAM, and I/O ranks aggregate processes with the same executable name; each row shows up to five PIDs and Ctrl+Shift+C diagnostics include the complete PID lists. It is enabled by default and can be disabled with [MachineOverview] Enabled=0 in settings.ini.
• F8 focuses the row list, Ctrl+E freezes or resumes display updates, and Shift+F8 toggles Full View without changing the saved layout.
• Ctrl+C copies the complete selected row. Ctrl+Shift+C copies a timestamped diagnostic snapshot. Enter on Incidents opens history, and Alt+H opens the shipped help.
• Collection, incident detection, and bounded SQLite history run in the background. Freeze affects only visible updates; provider and history failures degrade to explicit stale/unavailable status without stopping live monitoring.

TerminalPatterns.txt (next to ActiveAppView.exe)

• One wildcard pattern per line (* and ?), case-insensitive.
• Lines starting with # or ;, or empty lines, are ignored.
• Patterns match against the full executable path (e.g., C:\Windows\System32\cmd.exe).

Window title polling

• Terminal window titles in the Console list are refreshed periodically.
• Configure the interval in settings.ini under [WindowTitlePolling] RefreshIntervalSeconds.
• Set RefreshIntervalSeconds=0 to disable periodic title polling.

Focus sound

• ActiveAppView plays the WAV file configured by [FocusSound] File when the application gains foreground focus.
• Relative paths start from the executable directory. An absent, blank, or missing file stays silent.

Shadow Journal rename history

• Successful Applications and Console Rename, Reset, and observed expiration transitions can be appended to Shadow Journal's schema-v5 window_caption_override_events table.
• Configure [save-renames-to-journal] in settings.ini with enabled=1 and the exact existing SQLite filename in db-file.
• ActiveAppView sends immutable lifecycle events to one background SQLite writer in FIFO order, with a 64-event non-blocking queue. Queue overflow is logged and leaves the local caption override intact.
• ActiveAppView does not create or migrate the journal database. Missing databases, missing migration 005, locked-database failures, and other SQLite write failures leave the local caption override intact.
• After the Rename dialog closes, ActiveAppView verifies that the HWND still exists and belongs to the captured PID before saving or journaling the new caption.
• Reset ends the current label with user_reset; the worker also emits expired for observed window disappearance, process exit, identity change, or local prune. The retained boot/process identity lets those end events identify a process after its window has gone.
• Local caption overrides use typed StateVersion=2 records with boot, process-start, PID, HWND, caption, and lifecycle metadata. The existing caption-only INI is upgraded once when its boot and live process identity can be verified.
• The same owned background worker prewarms Windows identity, loads/upgrades the state file, coalesces rapid changes to one latest snapshot, and atomically replaces the state file. Rename and Reset handlers perform no filesystem or process-start identity queries.
• Windows has no durable HWND generation. The worker expires every observed disappearance or identity change, but same-process HWND reuse between observations remains a documented residual limitation.

Scripts folder

• The Scripts list shows runnable files from Scripts next to ActiveAppView.exe.
• Supported runnable extensions are .cmd, .bat, .ps1, .exe, and .py.
• Add helper scripts to Scripts\.ignore, one filename per line, to keep them out of the F3 Scripts list.
• .ignore entries are matched case-insensitively by filename. Empty lines and # comments are ignored.

ShortCuts.txt (next to ActiveAppView.exe)

• One mapping per line: KEY=VALUE (KEY may include spaces).
• VALUE is everything after the first =.
• Lines starting with # or ;, or empty lines, are ignored.
• Unquoted file/folder paths with spaces are supported. If the unquoted value also has arguments, the parser uses the longest existing file/folder prefix as the target.
• Command aliases without path separators keep the traditional command args split.
• Double-quoted VALUE is supported for paths with spaces and explicit arguments, e.g.:
  • putty="C:\Program Files\PuTTY\putty.exe" --start prod

ChatReviewMask.txt (next to ActiveAppView.exe)

• PrefixMask-style file used to select which apps are reviewed by chat monitoring.
• One comma-separated key=value rule per line.
• Supported include keys: caption, filename, AppUserModelID, CmdParams.
• Supported exclude keys: excludeCaption, excludeFilename, excludeAppUserModelID, excludeCmdParams.
• Exclude keys are checked against the same metadata and suppress review if they match.
• Lines starting with # or ;, or empty lines, are ignored.
• Behavior:
  • This file is the only source for selecting monitored apps.
  • If file is missing or has no active rules, no apps are reviewed.
  • If rules exist, an app is reviewed only when it matches at least one rule.
• Within one rule line, all populated include keys (caption, filename, AppUserModelID, CmdParams) must match (conjunctive / logical AND).
  • Exclude rules can remove apps from selection even if another rule matches.
  • Unread state is detected by caption pattern (\d+) (number inside parentheses).

Chat Notification Sound Toggle

• Main form includes Play chat notification sounds checkbox.
• Checkbox value is persisted to settings.ini under [ChatMonitor] SoundEnabled.
• Toggle applies immediately and controls unread + PWA-closed sound notifications.