MiniPreview

A tiny floating live thumbnail of any window on your screen — keep an eye on a game, a stream, or a render while you do something else.

Hover any toolbar button for a hint	Pick a window from the dropdown	Language and hotkey settings

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What it does

Pick any window on your PC and MiniPreview will display a small always-on-top live preview of it. Pause it when you don't need it, drop the framerate to 1 FPS when you only care that something is happening, or crank it to 30 FPS when you want it smooth.

Because it uses Windows Graphics Capture — the same path Game Bar and OBS take — the impact on the source app's FPS is negligible. Borderless games, fullscreen videos, hidden corners of the desktop: it all works.

Features

• Floating top-most preview — drag it anywhere, resize from the corner. Position and size are remembered.
• Adjustable FPS — 1, 2, 5, 10, 15 or 30. Default 5.
• Pause / resume — fully tears down the capture session, so paused = zero overhead.
• Per-process mute — silence the target app without touching system volume. State syncs with the Windows volume mixer.
• Force minimize / restore the target app from the toolbar.
• Global hotkeys — defaults Ctrl+Alt+P (pause), Ctrl+Alt+M (mute), Ctrl+Alt+L (picker), Ctrl+Alt+H (minimize target). Customizable in Settings.
• Click-to-pick or pick from a list of every open window (with their icons).
• Languages — English (default) and Czech, switchable in Settings.
• Single-file portable executable — no installer, no admin rights, drop the .exe anywhere and run.

Quick start

1. Grab MiniPreview-win-x64.exe from the latest release.
2. Double-click it. (Windows SmartScreen may warn on first run — More info → Run anyway.)
3. Click the monitor icon in the toolbar and pick any window you want to watch.

The .exe is self-contained — it carries the .NET runtime with it, so it works on any Windows 10/11 x64 machine without installing anything.

Downloads

File	Architecture	Type	Size	Notes
MiniPreview-win-x64.exe	x64	Self-contained	~78 MB	Recommended for most PCs
MiniPreview-win-x86.exe	x86 (32-bit)	Self-contained	~74 MB	For 32-bit Windows
MiniPreview-win-arm64.exe	ARM64	Self-contained	~76 MB	Surface Pro X, Snapdragon laptops
MiniPreview-portable-x64.zip	x64	Framework-dependent	~2 MB	Requires .NET 8 Desktop Runtime installed

Settings

All settings live in %APPDATA%\MiniPreview\settings.json. From the Settings dialog you can configure:

• Language — English / Čeština (requires restart)
• Hotkeys — format like Ctrl+Alt+P. Modifiers: Ctrl, Alt, Shift, Win. Key: A-Z, 0-9, F1-F24.
• Start with Windows — adds an autostart entry under HKCU\…\Run.
• Always on top — keeps the preview above all other windows (on by default).

Building from source

Requires the .NET 8 SDK.

git clone https://github.com/iamLukyy/MiniPreview.git
cd MiniPreview
dotnet build -c Release
dotnet run --project src/MiniPreview/MiniPreview.csproj

For a single-file release executable:

dotnet publish src/MiniPreview/MiniPreview.csproj `
  -c Release -r win-x64 --self-contained true `
  -p:PublishSingleFile=true `
  -p:IncludeNativeLibrariesForSelfExtract=true `
  -p:EnableCompressionInSingleFile=true `
  -o ./dist

Replace win-x64 with win-x86 or win-arm64 for the other architectures.

How it works

Target window  →  Windows.Graphics.Capture (free-threaded frame pool)
              →   D3D11 staging texture copy
              →   pacing gate (drops frames over the FPS budget)
              →   raw BGRA bytes
              →   WriteableBitmap on the UI thread

Audio mute uses the WASAPI session API via NAudio, matching sessions by the target process ID.

Limitations

• Some fullscreen-exclusive games will deliver black frames — Windows Graphics Capture works best with borderless windowed mode. Switch the game's display mode and the preview should light up.
• Minimized targets produce no frames (this is a WGC restriction, not a bug). The toolbar's restore button brings the target back.
• Windows 10 1903 or later is required (for the WGC API).

License

MIT — see LICENSE.