Dropwheel

Overlay launcher for Windows 10/11: a floating orb that expands into a radial wheel of targets (folders and apps). Drop files to copy or move them, drop text from a browser or editor to save it as a file, or route files into subfolders with sorter rules. The wheel opens by itself when a drag approaches the orb.

In action

The interface comes to life in an interactive demo, rendered live in your browser — no video files:

▶ Open the live demo  ·  English  /  Русский

It replays the wheel opening, dropping files (copy/move badges), the wheel auto-opening as a drag approaches the orb, entering a group, and saving dropped text to a file. The demo source lives in docs/demo/.

Install

Grab Dropwheel.exe from the latest release and run it — a single file that needs the .NET 10 Desktop Runtime installed. Config lives in %AppData%\Dropwheel\config.json.

Build from source

cd src/Dropwheel
dotnet run

Requires the .NET 10 SDK (Windows). run.cmd at the repo root wraps the common loops: run.cmd [run|build|publish|stop]. Run the tests with dotnet test (xUnit, in tests/Dropwheel.Tests).

Controls

Action	How
Open the wheel	hover the orb (250 ms), click it, or drag a file near it
Drop a file	drag onto a target tile; the badge names the action — Copy / Move
Drop text	drag selected text onto a folder → saves text_<date>.txt (.md if it looks like Markdown)
Open with an app	drag files onto an .exe/.bat/.ps1/… target → runs it with them as arguments
Force copy / move	hold Ctrl / Shift while dropping on a target tile
Undo last action	click “Undo” in the toast — covers file drops, adds, sorts, and deleting a target
Edit a target	right-click its tile
Add a target	drop a folder/exe/link onto the “+” tile or the orb
Send from Explorer	enable Explorer SendTo shortcut in the tray menu, then use Explorer → Send to → Dropwheel
Pin a target from the desktop	Alt+Shift-drag the orb onto a folder, app or file in Explorer or on the desktop — it’s pinned first, next to the hub
Create a group	right-click the orb → “New group…”
Enter a group	click its tile, or hover it for 0.5 s while dragging
Enter by group code	hover the orb and type the group's one- or two-digit badge
Sort a sorter now	middle-click a sorter tile
Reorder tiles	left-drag a target tile onto another tile; drop on “+” to move it last
Move the orb	Alt + left-drag (any monitor); add Shift to pin instead
Wheel at cursor	Ctrl+Alt+Space (configurable)
Wheel at the orb	optional second hotkey — opens the wheel at the orb's home spot without moving the mouse; off until set in Settings
Pause sorting	tray icon → Pause auto-sort (watched folders only) or Pause sorting (manual sorter drops land unrouted too); both reset on restart
Export / reload settings	tray icon → Export settings… saves a copy of config.json; Reload settings re-reads a hand-edited file and applies it live
Recent drops	tray icon → Recent drops opens destinations, reveals created files, copies the list as text, or clears the journal
Settings	tray icon or orb context menu

The orb hides automatically in full-screen apps (games, presentations) — while it's hidden the tray menu shows an Orb hidden — fullscreen app active status so you know where it went — and it can fade out when idle (see Settings).

Turn on Skip duplicate targets in Settings and dropping a folder, app or link that already sits on the current wheel level won't add a second tile — a toast says it's already there and the existing tile gives a quick pulse so you can spot it. The same folder can still live on different group levels. Off by default.

Group codes stay attached to their groups when tiles are reordered. If both 1 and 11 exist, 1 opens after the configurable sequence timeout, while typing the second 1 before that timeout opens 11 immediately. Right-click a group to edit or disable its code.

Feedback, dialogs & broken targets

Every action reports back in the same place: a short toast on the wheel names what happened in plain words — Copied, Moved, Sorted, Undone — with an Undo link where it applies. How long a toast stays up is a setting (1–60 s; error and undo toasts last twice as long, hovering pauses the timer), and warning/error toasts can play a short system sound. All the windows (new group, target editor, settings, and a themed message box) share one frame and one button layout, follow the active theme, and validate inline instead of popping up error dialogs, and settings are grouped into sections. Hotkeys are picked, not typed: both hotkey fields in Settings are read-only displays — click one of the suggestion chips under a field (Default Ctrl+Alt+Space, Ctrl+Shift+Space, Ctrl+Alt+D, Ctrl+Shift+D, Ctrl+Alt+F12) or press Record (it flips to Stop) and hit any combination, Win modifier included. The optional second hotkey — Open at orb — starts with an Off chip that disables it, and a combination held by the other hotkey shows struck through so the two can never clash. A live status under each field reads Available or Already taken by another app, blocking Save until both combos are fine; Reset restores Ctrl+Alt+Space. If a target's folder or file goes missing, its tile shows a small warning mark — not a silent fade — and a click offers Locate… or Remove.

Tiles can be personalised in the target editor: an emoji replaces the icon as the tile's face (it keeps its own colours if it has them, or takes the tile colour), and a tile colour swatch paints the tile border — handy for making one target stand out. Hovering a tile shows its full path in a tooltip, and while a drag hovers a folder target the status chip's second line reports the free space left on that drive. The tray menu is grouped by topic with theme-tinted icons; its toggles show an accent check mark when on.

The tray menu also keeps a short Recent drops journal backed by %AppData%\Dropwheel\drop-history.json. Entries open the destination folder, reveal a single file Dropwheel created (for example saved text), and show full paths in tooltips. The same menu can copy the whole list as plain text, open the JSON file, or clear the journal. Next to it live Export settings… (saves a dated copy of config.json wherever you point it) and Reload settings — re-reads a hand-edited config.json and applies it without a restart; a file with a JSON typo is reported and the current settings stay untouched, so hand-editing is safe.

When Explorer SendTo shortcut is enabled, Dropwheel installs a normal Windows SendTo shortcut. Selecting files or folders in Explorer and choosing Send to → Dropwheel opens the wheel at the orb's current position; folders and other target-like items can be added as targets, while ordinary files can be sent to an existing wheel target without dragging them a second time.

A living interface

The wheel reacts before you click it. As a drag approaches the orb, a halo glows, the core breathes and leans toward the cursor, and at the threshold the wheel unfolds on its own — the inhale flowing straight into the reveal. During an Alt+Shift capture the ghost orb arms as it nears a valid target: its core fills with the accent colour, a frame lights around the object in Explorer or on the desktop, and a radar aura pings outward while it holds the lock. On release the ghost furls back into the orb with a confirming ring, and the wheel opens with the freshly pinned tile first. Every one of these moments plays live in the interactive demo.

While a drag hovers the open wheel, each tile grows a small confidence layer: a coloured ring, a short chip, and an action badge. The colour reads the intent at a glance — blue for an informational action, green for a plain copy, amber for a move, sort or run, and red for a target that can't take the drop. The tile you're over is emphasised, its label lifted with a one-line status such as Drop to copy to Downloads., while tiles that can't receive the payload dim back so the valid choices stand out.

The open wheel is fully keyboard-operable and screen-reader aware. With the wheel open, Tab and the arrow keys move focus between tiles — focus wraps around the rim and the focused tile shows a Focus chip — Enter or Space activates the focused tile, and Escape closes the wheel. The focused or hovered target is announced through a live region, so a screen reader reads out where the drop would land.

The opening animation is configurable in Settings. A style chooser offers Pop (the default), Radial burst, Clock sweep, and Magnetic settle, and a speed slider scales the reveal from 0.5x to 2.0x.

Crowded levels (overflow)

A level with only a few targets always draws as the classic single ring. When a level fills up you can let the surplus flow onto a second, outer ring instead of cramming everything onto one rim. The layout is chosen in Settings:

• None — the classic wheel: every tile stays on one ring, however many there are. No second ring ever appears. This is the default, so existing wheels are unchanged.
• Split balanced — tiles split evenly across two equal-size rings.
• Overflow band — the inner ring stays the familiar single wheel up to its cap; only the surplus lands on a new outer band, staggered into the gaps.
• Petals — tiles alternate between rings, the outer row offset into the gaps — the most compact layout.
• Columns — tiles form radial pairs on shared spokes (inner + outer per column).

The threshold setting is how many real targets a level holds before the second ring appears, clamped to 4–16. The always-present tiles — the "+" add tile and, inside a group, "Back" — don't count toward it, so they never push a level into overflow on their own.

Interface names

Use these names when describing the wheel in issues, docs, or UI changes. The interactive demo shows the same parts numbered on a live wheel.

Name	Meaning
Orb	The small floating Dropwheel button that sits on the desktop when the wheel is closed.
Wheel	The expanded radial overlay that opens around the orb.
Hub	The center of the open wheel; dropping on it follows the same add-target behavior as dropping on the orb.
Rim	The outer circular band that target tiles sit around.
Spokes	The radial guide lines from the hub to each tile.
Target tile	A square drop destination on the rim, such as Downloads, Documents, Desktop, or Pictures.
Tile label	The text under a tile, for example Downloads or Pictures.
Add tile	The dashed + tile used to create a new target in the current level.
Folder target	A target tile backed by a folder path; dropped files are copied or moved into it.
Run target	A target tile backed by an executable or script; dropped files are passed to it as arguments.
Sorter target	A folder target with routing rules, shown with an amber border and a Sort badge.
Group target	A target tile that opens another wheel level instead of receiving files directly.
Badge	The small marker on a tile that names an action or state in plain words — Copy, Move, Sort, Run — plus a group's shortcut number.

Sorter targets & routing rules

A sorter distributes dropped files into subfolders by rules (amber-bordered tile, Sort badge). Right-click a target and press Convert to routing rules, or start from a Presets ▾ category (Images, Documents, Archives, …). Rules are an ordered list edited in a master–detail panel — the first rule whose conditions all match wins:

• Extension — png jpg webp (space- or comma-separated, dots optional)
• Type — a media kind (image, video, audio, document, archive) instead of spelling out extensions
• Name contains / Name regex — match against the file name
• Size (MB), Age (days) (since last change) and Created (days ago) — with >, <, ≥, ≤
• a rule with no conditions is a catch-all

Tick not on a condition to invert it — the rule then matches everything except it, so a not extension jpg png even catches files with no extension at all. A whole rule can be switched off with its Enabled checkbox without deleting it: a disabled rule is skipped and shown dimmed with an (off) mark in the list. The ❐ button in a rule's header duplicates it with all its conditions, for when two rules differ only by destination.

Each rule sends its matches to a subfolder (relative to the target Path) or an absolute folder. The Test files box previews which sample files land in the selected rule. Presets live in config.json under Presets and are yours to edit.

Token destinations — a rule's destination can lift fields out of the file name with ${name} placeholders. Add a Name regex condition with named groups, e.g. (?<ep>ep\d+)_(?<sq>sq\d+)_(?<sh>sh\d+), and set the destination to episodes\${ep}\${sq}\${sh}; a file ep001_sq001_sh001_playblast_v001.mov then lands in episodes\ep001\sq001\sh001\. Tokens fill from the rule's own Name regex groups, so one pattern both matches and routes, and the editor shows the tokens a rule can use as clickable chips right under the destination box — click one to insert it at the cursor. A file that matches the rule but leaves a token empty goes to the target root rather than into a half-built path.

Besides the name groups there are built-in tokens that need no regex. Drop-time date and time: ${date} (ISO 2026-07-13, so folders sort by date), ${year}, ${month}, ${day}, ${time}, ${week} (ISO week number) and ${quarter} (Q1…Q4). Each of these has two file-date twins that read a date out of the file itself instead of the drop time: an f-prefix for the last-modified date (${fyear}, ${fmonth}…) and a c-prefix for the creation date (${cyear}, ${cmonth}…). And three file-name pieces: ${ext} (extension), ${stem} (name without extension) and ${initial} (first letter, for A/B/C buckets). Add a .NET format after a colon on any date token to shape it — ${date:dd-MM-yy}, ${date:yyyy-MM}, ${month:MMMM}. So Downloads\${date} files everything dropped today into a dated folder, and Archive\${cyear}\${cmonth} lays files out by the month they were created. One more built-in sorts by size: ${size} drops a file into a coarse bucket — tiny/small/medium/large/huge by default, or your own with ${size: tiny 0.5, small 10, big 100, huge} (each bucket is a name and its upper bound in MB, the last one with no number catching the rest). And ${slug} is the first non-blank line of a file's text, handy for filing dropped text by its opening line — notes\${slug}. The Presets menu has a Dated folders section with the date tokens and a By size section with the size buckets, ready to add in one click.

Files, folders, or both — each rule has an Applies to setting: Files (the default), Folders, or both. A rule only catches the kinds it is set to, so an existing file rule never starts grabbing folders on its own — you opt a rule in. Folders carry no extension (so extension conditions skip them) and report size 0, but their created/modified dates work, so ${cyear}\${cmonth} files whole folders by the month they were made. The dated presets are set to catch both. Two safety rules apply to folders: a folder is never moved into itself, and a folder that already sits at a location matching the rule's destination shape (for example a 2026-07-13 folder the sorter itself created) is left in place, so a watched sorter never re-files its own dated output.

Watch a folder — a folder sorter can watch itself. Tick Watch folder, auto-sort new files in the rule editor and Dropwheel routes items that appear in the folder by the same rules, in the background — files always, and subfolders too when a rule's Applies to includes folders. When watch is enabled, Dropwheel immediately sweeps existing top-level items once, then keeps watching for new arrivals. It waits for a file to finish copying before moving it, watches only the top level (items routed into subfolders don't re-trigger it), and leaves an item in place when no rule matches. A tray notification reports how many files were sorted. Auto-sort moves files and is not tracked by Undo — revert from Explorer if needed. While Watch is on, dropping files onto the sorter by hand is confirmed first: a Sort with watched rules? dialog — warning that the target also moves future files automatically while Watch is enabled — with a Sort button and Cancel appears before the drop is routed. Plain copy or move drops onto ordinary folders are never gated this way.

The legacy extension map still loads and is migrated to rules on first edit:

{ "Name": "Sort", "Path": "D:\\Sorted",
  "SortRules": { "jpg png webp": "Images", "pdf docx": "Docs", "*": "Other" } }

Undo reverts the whole batch.

Text drops

Drag selected text from a browser, editor, or chat onto a folder tile and Dropwheel writes it to text_YYYY-MM-DD_HH-mm-ss.txt — or .md when the text looks like Markdown (headings, code fences, links). Dropped on a sorter, the new file is routed by the rules; Undo removes it.

Settings has a Saved text file name template for this: leave it empty for the classic text_<date> name, or use the same ${name} tokens as sorter destinations — ${slug} is the first line of the text, plus ${date} ${time} ${year} ${month} ${day}. So ${slug}_${date} turns a dragged article heading into Review of the finale_2026-07-14.md.

Run targets (open with)

If a target is an executable or script (.exe, .com, .bat, .cmd, .ps1, .py, .pyw, .vbs, .wsf, .js, .jar, or a .lnk to one), dropping files on its tile runs it with the dropped files as arguments — the Windows "open with" behaviour, shown with a Run badge. The launch is confirmed first: dropping files on a run target opens a themed Run dropped files? dialog (Dropwheel will run <name> with N item(s) as input.) with a Run button and Cancel, and the program only starts once you confirm. Scripts the shell would only open in an editor (.ps1, .py, .jar) are launched through their interpreter. PowerShell scripts run with -ExecutionPolicy Bypass (otherwise the drop would open an editor instead of running), so only add scripts you trust as run targets. This is a launch, not a file operation, so it isn't undoable.

Link targets

Drop a link such as https://example.com, tg://resolve?domain=telegram, or https://t.me/c/4379453334/1 onto the orb or the “+” tile to create a quick-access target. Browser URL drags keep the page title when the drag payload includes one, and Dropwheel fetches a favicon in the background when the page exposes a PNG/JPG/ICO/WEBP icon.

Selecting several links in text and dropping that selection on the orb or the “+” tile makes one tile per distinct link at once, de-duplicated — three lines of URLs become three tiles, not one.

Telegram web links are converted to desktop deep links where possible, so clicking a t.me tile opens Telegram Desktop when the tg:// protocol is registered. Dropping files or selected text onto a Telegram tile is confirmed first: a Send through Telegram? dialog (Dropwheel will copy this payload to the clipboard, open Telegram, and paste it when Telegram is active.) with a Send button and Cancel appears before anything happens. On confirm, Dropwheel copies the payload to the clipboard, opens the chat or topic, and pastes it once Telegram is foreground; review and press Send in Telegram.

Renaming, conflicts, and the clipboard

A folder target can rename what lands in it. Its Rename dropped files template uses the same ${name} tokens as sorter destinations — for example archive-${date}-${stem} turns report.pdf into archive-2026-07-14-report.pdf, keeping the extension. Leave it empty to keep the original names; Undo covers renamed drops too.

Each target also has an On name conflict choice for when a dropped file's name already exists at the destination: Ask (the system Replace/Skip dialog, the default), Keep both (adds a number), Overwrite (the replaced file still goes to the Recycle Bin), or Skip (leaves the file and reports how many were skipped).

Turn on Copy destination path to clipboard after a drop in Settings and every successful drop puts its destination on the clipboard — the created file for a single saved file, the destination folder otherwise — so you can paste the path straight into a chat or an email.

Themes

Four themes — chosen in Settings. Each carries a full palette: the wheel, the target editor and settings windows, the orb context menu, and the tray menu all follow the theme (accent colour, surfaces, text); group and sorter tile borders are tuned per theme. Switch themes live in the demo to compare Fluent, Dark, Light and Neon.

Project layout

src/Dropwheel/
  Models/    TargetItem, AppConfig, SortRule (conditions), FilePreset
  Services/  storage: TargetStore (JSON config), PresetService, SortMigration;
             files & drops: FileOps (SHFileOperation), DropDispatch,
             VirtualFileService, TextDropService, LinkTargetService,
             TelegramDropService, FileMeta;
             launching: LaunchService, ShortcutResolver, StartupService;
             input & presence: MouseHook, KeyboardHook, HotkeyService,
             OrbGesture, GroupShortcutActivation, GroupShortcutSequence,
             CursorTargetLocator, ProximityState, FullscreenDetector;
             sorting & layout: SortService, WheelLayout, WatcherService
             (auto-sort watched folders), HintPolicy, IconService,
             LinkMetadataService, ErrorLog;
             journal & bridge: DropHistoryService (recent drops),
             ExplorerBridgeService (SendTo shortcut + single-instance pipe)
  UI/        OverlayWindow (hub + rim + spokes wheel, partial classes),
             DialogShell (shared dialog frame) + DwMessageBox + ToastHost,
             TargetEditorWindow (+ .Rules master-detail),
             SettingsWindow (two-pane sections),
             Themes, Palette (colour roles), MenuTheme.xaml
tests/       Dropwheel.Tests (xUnit: SortService, SortMigration, FileMeta,
             TextDropService, WatcherService, HotkeyService, VirtualFileService,
             LinkTargetService, LinkMetadataService, TelegramDropService)
docs/demo/   live interactive JS demo (GitHub Pages)

Known limitations

• Dragging from elevated (admin) processes does not work — Windows UIPI.
• Virtual files (Outlook attachments, browser drags) and dropped text are always copied; files auto-renamed on a name clash (the system conflict dialog, or the Keep both policy) are not tracked by Undo. A target's own Rename dropped files template is tracked.
• One orb (multi-monitor placement works; one wheel instance).

Contributing

Contributions are welcome. See CONTRIBUTING.md for how to propose changes, CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md for community expectations, and SECURITY.md for reporting vulnerabilities privately. Bug reports and feature requests use the issue templates.

Note: the per-folder README.md files inside src/ and docs/demo/ are written in Russian, the maintainer's working language; code and comments are English.

License

MIT © Ivan Larin