Orbit v0.2.0

Orbit is a background radial file converter. Shift-drag a file
anywhere, pick a petal, and the result lands beside the source as
name (converted).ext — atomically, without overwriting anything,
and without uploading a byte.

Landing page & downloads → — direct
Windows installer, macOS and Linux packages, and copyable terminal commands.

New in 0.2.0

• Shift-drag anywhere on Windows, macOS and X11. The ring appears
  under the pointer without stealing the drag; releasing without a
  drop dismisses it.
• A real settings window: trigger on/off, global shortcut, output
  folder, watch folders, and the local history. First run gets a
  short welcome.
• Watch folders: point Orbit at a folder and give it one rule.
  Existing files are left alone; new files are converted after they
  have settled. Results Orbit writes are ignored, so there is no loop.
• Local history in an append-only JSONL file, with recent files in
  the tray, reveal-in-file-manager, and clear.
• Series output: PDF page ranges become scan (page 001).png, …;
  extracted frames become clip (frame 001).png, …; presets run as
  chains with hidden intermediates.
• orbit-cli: convert, action, preset, list, history
  with --out, --option key=value and --json, using the same
  registry and defaults as the ring.
• Wayland: honest about the limits — no global Shift-drag and no
  in-app hotkey. The settings window says why, and the tray,
  Open with Orbit and a compositor binding all still work.

Install

Platform	File	Notes
Windows 10/11	.exe (NSIS) or .msi	Per-user install, no administrator prompt. WebView2 is fetched on first run if the machine does not already have it. Allow low-level input hooks if your security software asks.
macOS 12+	.dmg	Separate Apple-silicon and Intel builds. Grant Accessibility permission for Shift-drag and the global shortcut. Nothing is notarised yet, so the first launch may need Open from Finder.
Linux	.AppImage, .deb, .rpm	Needs libwebkit2gtk-4.1, libxtst6, libxi6. Shift-drag and the hotkey are X11 only; on Wayland bind Orbit in your compositor.

Summon the ring with Ctrl/⌘ +
Shift + Space (change it in the tray or
settings), by Shift-dragging a file, from the tray icon, or by handing
Orbit files: orbit-app photo.png.

The installers carry the GUI (orbit-app). The orbit launcher and
orbit-cli are repository tools — build the CLI once with
cargo build --release -p orbit-cli — and use the same registry and
defaults as the ring.

Everything runs locally through engines already on your machine
(FFmpeg, ImageMagick 7, Ghostscript, Poppler, qpdf, LibreOffice,
Tesseract…), plus the built-in engine that needs nothing at all. The
app has no telemetry and no account, and it makes no network calls at
all; the one download anywhere is the Windows installer's WebView2
bootstrap, and only on a machine that does not already have it.

Verified where it can be. Linux has been exercised end-to-end
against the real engines. Windows and macOS type-check on every push
and their installers are built on those operating systems by CI;
runtime behaviour of their input hooks still needs reports from real
machines. Details and the full test matrix are in the README.

Orbit v0.1.0

A background radial file converter and editor. Put the ring up, drop files on it, pick a petal, and the result lands beside the source as name (converted).ext — nothing is uploaded, ever.

✨ What's in 0.1.0

• 841 source → target pairs generated from a data-driven registry — 63 formats, 22 rules. Adding a format is JSON, not code.
• Convert, resize, crop, rotate, flip, grayscale, compress, strip metadata on images, audio and video.
• Merge as one job: several images → one PDF or GIF, several PDFs → one PDF, audio and video concatenated in the order you choose.
• PDF work: render a chosen page at a chosen DPI, extract a page range into one PDF, strip metadata, compress with Ghostscript presets.
• Documents: document ⇄ PDF and document → text through LibreOffice, Pandoc for Markdown, Markdown → HTML, CSV/TSV/PSV ⇄ JSON.
• OCR for images with Tesseract, in the language you pick.
• An options panel that does not cost you the one-drop flow: Alt-click a petal, hold it, right-click it, or use the ⋯. Enter runs, Esc closes the panel first, then the ring.
• A global shortcut you choose — four presets and Off under tray → Shortcut, remembered between launches. --hotkey=… / --hotkey=off for scripts.
• Four ways in: the shortcut, the tray icon, dropping files on the ring, or handing it files (orbit-app photo.png).
• A built-in engine, orbit-native, so basic raster edits, Markdown → HTML and CSV ⇄ JSON work on a machine with no external tools installed at all.
• Local only: no telemetry, no analytics, no account, no network calls.

📥 Install

Platform	File	Notes
Windows 10/11	Orbit_0.1.0_x64-setup.exe (NSIS)	Per-user, no administrator prompt. The one to pick.
	Orbit_0.1.0_x64_en-US.msi	Same app, for managed machines.
macOS 12+	Orbit_0.1.0_aarch64.dmg	Apple silicon.
	Orbit_0.1.0_x64.dmg	Intel.
Linux	Orbit_0.1.0_amd64.AppImage	Needs libwebkit2gtk-4.1.
	Orbit_0.1.0_amd64.deb / Orbit-0.1.0-1.x86_64.rpm	Declares the WebKitGTK runtime dependency.

On Windows, WebView2 draws the ring. Windows 11 has it; Windows 10 usually does. If it is missing, the installer fetches the bootstrapper from Microsoft — the only network access Orbit or its installer ever performs.

🚦 How far this is verified

• Every installer here was built by CI on its own operating system from this tag.
• The whole app is type-checked against x86_64-pc-windows-msvc on every push, and the test suite runs against real FFmpeg, Ghostscript, Poppler, qpdf and Tesseract on Linux (127 tests).
• Runtime behaviour on Windows and macOS has not been exercised yet. This is the first build you can run on either, and that is the honest state of it — please report what breaks.
• Wayland cannot deliver an in-app global shortcut: bind Orbit in your compositor (bind = …, exec, orbit-app), use the tray, or hand it a file from the shell.
• Linux needs WebKitGTK 4.1, and the full image pipeline wants ImageMagick 7 (magick). Ubuntu LTS still ships ImageMagick 6, which Orbit refuses rather than guessing; install libvips-tools or ImageMagick 7.
• Shift-drag-anywhere is the next milestone. The ring is already a real drop target; what is missing is the global trigger that summons it mid-drag.

🖱️ Summoning the ring

Ctrl/⌘ + Shift + Space by default (change it under tray → Shortcut), the tray icon, or orbit-app <files…>. On Windows, scripts/windows/install-send-to.ps1 adds right-click → Send to → Orbit, which works for any file without registering an association.

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All files are checksummed in SHA256SUMS (sha256). Orbit is MPL-2.0; third-party components and the engines it drives are listed in THIRD_PARTY_LICENSES.md.