KeyOverlay v0.2.0 – Windows Preview Release
Pre-release
KeyOverlay v0.2.0
KeyOverlay is a lightweight Windows utility that displays keyboard presses, mouse clicks, scrolling activity, and cursor highlights in a clean, customizable overlay.
It is designed for presentations, classroom demonstrations, software tutorials, livestreams, and screen recordings where viewers need to clearly see keyboard and mouse input.
✨ Features
Keyboard and Mouse Overlay
- Display keyboard presses in real time
- Show modifier-key combinations such as
Ctrl + Shift + S - Display left, middle, and right mouse clicks
- Optional mouse-click text and mouse icons
- Display mouse-wheel scrolling
- Control how many recent events remain visible
- Adjustable display and fade-out durations
Cursor Highlight
- Optional cursor highlight ring
- Multiple cursor colour themes
- Adjustable ring size, thickness, opacity, and glow
- Animated feedback when clicking
- Choose whether the cursor hotspot appears in the centre or along the edge of the ring
- Automatically hide the highlight after a selected period of inactivity
Customizable Appearance
- Dark, light, and custom colour themes
- Custom colours for keys, modifiers, mouse clicks, and scroll events
- Adjustable font size
- Adjustable overlay scale
- Separate content and background opacity controls
- Customizable key-pill rounding
Position and Layout Controls
- Position the overlay in common screen locations
- Horizontal and vertical layout options
- Manual X and Y positioning
- Adjustable margins, width, and height
- Display-resolution and scaling presets
- Improved support for multi-monitor arrangements
Keystroke Sounds
- Optional keystroke sound effects
- Adjustable volume
- Included sound presets:
- Typewriter
- Mechanical
- Soft Click
- Pop
🛠 Improvements in v0.2.0
- Improved input-processing and rendering performance
- Reduced unnecessary per-frame configuration updates
- Added safer, atomic settings-file saving
- Added validation and recovery for older or damaged configuration files
- Improved Windows release behaviour by hiding the console window
- Embedded the application icon directly into release builds
- Expanded automated testing for keyboard input, positioning, cursor highlighting, and overlay behaviour
- Improved continuous-integration checks across the complete Rust workspace
🐛 Fixes
- Fixed the main overlay ON/OFF control requiring an unreliable mouse interaction
- Fixed keystroke sounds remaining silent after being enabled
- Fixed cursor-click animation frames occasionally remaining visible
- Fixed the cursor ring appearing briefly in the upper-left corner of the screen
- Fixed cursor-ring centring when click animation was enabled
- Fixed lower-right cursor-edge positioning
- Fixed mouse events displaying text such as
Left Click Click - Fixed UI controls becoming inconsistent with their enforced setting ranges
- Fixed several dependency, formatting, Clippy, and Windows build issues
💾 Installation
- Download the Windows build from the Assets section below.
- Extract the downloaded archive if necessary.
- Run the KeyOverlay executable.
- Configure the overlay using the settings window.
KeyOverlay is currently intended for Windows 10 and Windows 11.
📝 Notes
This is an early preview release. Additional testing and refinement may still be required across different monitor layouts, display-scaling configurations, and Windows systems.
Bug reports and suggestions can be submitted through the repository's Issues page.
Full Changelog: Compare this release with the previous version using GitHub's generated changelog link after publishing.