AltSnap is a native Windows desktop utility that lets users move, resize, and manage windows by holding Alt and dragging with the mouse. In production it runs as a tray application and loads a companion hooks.dll into its own process; that DLL installs low-level keyboard and mouse hooks, detects Alt+click/drag gestures, and manipulates window placement through Win32 APIs. It also implements Aero-style snapping, configurable snap layouts/zones, blacklists, global hotkeys, MDI handling, a large action system assignable to mouse buttons/titlebar clicks, and an optional elevation path. The project deliberately avoids DLL injection into other processes; instead, input is captured via WH_KEYBOARD_LL/WH_MOUSE_LL and heavy window movement is offloaded to a worker thread to keep the hooks responsive.
Tiling Shell is a GNOME Shell extension that provides advanced, customizable window tiling and management. It replaces the default window snapping with a flexible layout system where users can define custom tile arrangements (via a built-in editor or JSON files), use snap assist for precise placement, enable edge tiling with multiple modes (default, adaptive, granular), and auto-tile new windows. The extension also adds a panel indicator, keyboard shortcuts, window border customization with dynamic corner radius detection, and a window suggestions feature that proposes layouts after tiling. The architecture follows a manager pattern: per-monitor subsystems (TilingManager, ResizeManager, WindowBorderManager, RaiseTogetherManager) are created and destroyed by the main extension lifecycle. Communication is event-driven via GObject signals, with a central GlobalState singleton and a Settings wrapper around GSettings. The codebase is written in TypeScript, compiled for GJS, and supports GNOME Shell versions 42–50 on both X11 and Wayland. It includes a complex build pipeline that produces separate outputs for modern and legacy GNOME versions, along with full internationalization (10+ languages). While the extension is actively maintained and feature-rich, it relies heavily on private GNOME Shell APIs and contains version-specific workarounds, which introduces maintenance risk as the shell evolves.
PersistentWindows is a Windows desktop utility that automatically captures and restores window positions and sizes when display configurations change (e.g., monitor connection/disconnection, resolution changes, docking/undocking, RDP sessions, or waking from sleep). It runs as a system tray application with no visible main window, using Win32 API hooks to monitor window events and LiteDB for persistent storage of window layouts. The core logic resides in a monolithic ~3000-line class (PersistentWindowProcessor) that handles event-driven capture, multi-pass restoration with timeout/retry, snapshot management, and virtual desktop awareness. The application also includes a 'webpage commander' overlay for keyboard-based browser tab navigation (Alt+W). While functionally robust and well-tested in the field (2000+ stars), the codebase exhibits significant technical debt: heavy use of deprecated patterns (Thread.Abort, magic numbers, hardcoded constants), no unit tests, and tight coupling of all logic into a single file. The Win32 API bridge and logging utilities are the most reusable components, though the overall architecture is monolithic and not designed for extension. GPLv3 licensed.