Atlas QuickPinner

Quickly pin your workspace- or favourite folders and open them quickly and easily!

A lightweight, always-on-top, fully resizeable and scaleable with automatic button addition/removal with memory, Windows sidebar for instant access to your active folders, instead of Windows' terrible Pin feature. No more digging through File Explorer — pin your folders once, open them with a single click.

What It Does

QuickPinner is a compact floating panel that sticks to the edge of your screen. Each row ("bar") holds one pinned folder — select it once, then open it instantly anytime. The window resizes dynamically: stretch it taller to get more bars, shrink it to get fewer.

Features

• Always on top — stays visible while you work in other apps
• Native dark title bar — uses the Windows DWM API for a clean Windows 11 look
• Unlimited folder bars — auto-adjusts to window height (60px per bar)
• One-click folder access — Select, Open, or Clear any pinned folder
• Drag anywhere — click and drag the window body to reposition
• Auto-save — window size, position, and all pinned folders persist across sessions
• Zero dependencies — ships as a single self-contained .exe

NOTE! It's a large single binary, because .NET 9 is embedded into it.

Quick Start

build.bat        # compile (produces publish\AtlasQuickPinner.exe)
Launch.bat       # run

1. Drag the window to a screen edge
2. Click Select on any bar to pin a folder
3. Click Open to jump straight to it in File Explorer
4. Click Clear (red) to unpin

Building from Source

Requirements

	Minimum
OS	Windows 10 build 1809+
SDK	.NET 9 SDK (build only)
Runtime	None — self-contained build bundles .NET

Self-contained release build (recommended)

build.bat

Produces publish\AtlasQuickPinner.exe (~160 MB) — a single-file executable with the .NET 9 runtime embedded. Runs on any Windows 10/11 machine with nothing else installed.

Debug build

dotnet build QuickPinner.csproj

Output: bin\Debug\net9.0-windows\AtlasQuickPinner.dll (requires .NET 9 Runtime).

Clean

clean.bat

Removes bin/, obj/, and publish/ directories.

Configuration

All state is saved to config.json in the same directory as the executable:

{
  "size": [220, 325],
  "location": [0, 100],
  "paths": ["C:\\Projects", "D:\\Downloads", null, null, null]
}

Field	Description
size	Window width and height in pixels
location	Window X and Y screen position
paths	Array of pinned folder paths (null = empty bar)

The config is written automatically when you close the app or change a pin. You can also edit it by hand.

Project Structure

├── QuickPinnerForm.cs   # All UI and logic (~525 lines)
├── Program.cs           # Entry point
├── QuickPinner.csproj   # .NET 9 WinForms project
├── config.json          # Saved state (auto-generated)
├── build.bat            # Self-contained publish script
├── clean.bat            # Artifact cleanup
└── Launch.bat           # Quick launcher

Technical Notes

• Dark title bar: P/Invoke into dwmapi.dll using DwmSetWindowAttribute with DWMWA_USE_IMMERSIVE_DARK_MODE (attribute 19). Works best on Windows 11; functional on Windows 10 1809+.
• Dynamic layout: On resize, the form calculates Math.Max(1, (Height - 35) / 60) to decide how many bars to show, then adds or removes controls accordingly.
• Folder display: Shows only the leaf folder name via Path.GetFileName(), with special handling for drive roots like C:\.
• Window style: SizableToolWindow border gives a minimal title bar while keeping resize handles.

License

MIT