Pennywise keeps apps transparently in front of all other windows
GitHub - kamranahmedse/pennywise: Cross-platform application to open any website or media in a floating window

  
  Pennywise
  Cross-platform application to open website or media in a floating window
    
      
    
    
    	
    
    
	    
    
  

Pennywise opens any website or media in a small floating window that remains on top of all other applications. Pennywise windows stays up all the time. No need to keep struggling with alt + tab, use Pennywise for easy multitasking.
Features

Always stays on top of any open applications
Adjustable opacity – it gets out of your way while you work
Resize and place it anywhere
Shortcuts to make you more productive
Lets you multitask while you work
Open source licensed under MIT
Lean small resource footprint, minimal User Interface.
Cross-platform works on MacOS, Windows and Linux

Installation
Download and install the relevant distribution from the releases page.
If you are on MacOS, you can use Homebrew to install it
brew install --cask pennywise

Enable Flash Support
To enable flash support, copy or link Chrome's Pepperflash plugin into your $HOME/.pennywise-flash. You can find the plugin at the installation path of the Chrome. For example, on MacOS, you can do the below to enable Flash support
ln -s ~/Library/Application\ Support/Google/Chrome/PepperFlash/[version]/PepperFlashPlayer.plugin" ~/.pennywise-flash

Usecases

Here is the list of some of the possible use cases off the top of my head


Use it as a floating window for your calendar/checklist/assigned-tickets etc
Watching tutorial while you code? Open the video in Pennywise and keep it in front of you
Making a video course? Open the demo in Pennywise and show the output in real time
Working on some web UI? Open it in Pennywise to avoid pressing alt + tab again and again
Play some video, watch some talk or play some TV series while you work
Working on something non-familiar? Open the docs in Pennywise
Open that live football match that you won't want to miss
Use it as a desktop widget

Development
Clone the repository, install the dependencies and start the app

Shortcuts

Here is the list of available shortcuts that you may use




Shortcut
Description




Cmd/Ctrl + L
Show Navbar and focus URL input


Cmd/Ctrl + Shift + D
Enable detached mode


Cmd/Ctrl + M
Refresh Page


Cmd/Ctrl + Shift + L
Toggle Navbar on WebPages


Cmd/Ctrl + Shift + Up
Increase Opacity


Cmd/Ctrl + Shift + Down
Decrease Opacity


Cmd/Ctrl + Alt + I
Show Developer Tools


Cmd/Ctrl + [0-9]
Switch Window Opacity




Note – Changing the opacity is only supported in Windows and MacOS

Detached Mode

Enabling the detached mode makes Pennywise non-interactive – it will let any interactions fall through to the window below it. To remove the detached mode, focus the window either by clicking the dock icon or by activating it using alt + tab

Screenshots

Homescreen for the application




Anything running in pennywise stays on top of everything




You can change the opacity too



Auto-embed Videos
For some video streaming websites such as Youtube, Vimeo, Twitch, Daily Motion etc, Pennywise shows you the video only web page by default (using the auto-generated embed links), showing you the video in a distract free manner. You can disable that by toggling the Edit > Embed Videos.

Note – In case of youtube, it might not work sometime when the user has put restrictions on the video – in that case, you will have to disable "Auto Embed" option from the Edit menu to make them work.

Why is it named Pennywise?
Because the application helps in floating and Pennywise loved to do that

Planned Roadmap

 Persist options and linking options to website
 Bookmarking links for later use
 Write tests

Contributions
Feel free to implement anything from the roadmap, submit pull requests, create issues, discuss ideas or spread the word.
License
MIT © Kamran Ahmed
