Call-In Clean

Clean your keyboard and mouse without messing up your Windows.

Call-In Clean is a tiny Windows tray utility that temporarily blocks keyboard and/or mouse input, so you can wipe your peripherals without typing gibberish, clicking things, or closing windows by accident.

Status: early development. It works, but it has not been tested on a wide range of hardware yet. See Known limitations.

Features

• Three lock modes: keyboard only, mouse only, or both.
• Auto-unlock: input always comes back when the timer ends (5 minutes by default).
• Early unlock: hold a gesture for 5 seconds to end the lock (see below).
• Fullscreen overlay with a countdown, kept on top and covering every monitor.
• Tray app: lives in the system tray, started from a menu.
• Optional "Start with Windows", off by default.
• Lightweight: one small native .exe, no runtime, no installer, no admin rights.

Using it

1. Run CallInClean.exe. A tray icon appears (on Windows 11 it may be under the ^ overflow arrow).
2. Click the icon and choose Lock keyboard, Lock mouse, or Lock keyboard + mouse.
3. Clean your hardware. The overlay shows the time left.
4. The lock ends by itself when the countdown reaches zero, or earlier with the unlock gesture.

Unlock gestures

Each gesture uses a device that is not locked (or, in full lock, a deliberate chord), and must be held for 5 seconds. Releasing early restarts the timer.

Mode	Locked	Unlock gesture (hold 5 s)
Keyboard	keyboard	Right mouse button
Mouse	mouse	Esc + Alt
Both	keyboard + mouse	Esc + Alt + Right mouse button

If anything ever goes wrong, Ctrl+Alt+Del is never blocked by this app, and ending CallInClean.exe in Task Manager restores input immediately.

How it works

Call-In Clean uses the standard Windows low-level input hooks (WH_KEYBOARD_LL and WH_MOUSE_LL) from user mode. No driver is installed and no administrator rights are needed.

• Hooks are installed only while a lock is active. When idle, the app is just a tray icon.
• The hook callbacks check the deadline themselves, so a lock cannot outlive its timer even if the rest of the app misbehaves.
• If the process crashes or is killed, Windows removes its hooks automatically and input returns.
• No keystrokes are logged, stored, or sent anywhere. The hooks only decide whether to pass an event on or discard it, and watch for the unlock gesture. The source is short, so you can verify this yourself.

Known limitations

A user-mode hook cannot block everything. These are not blocked, by design or by Windows:

• Ctrl+Alt+Del, Win+L, and anything on the secure desktop (UAC prompts, the lock screen).
• The power and sleep buttons, and some laptop Fn keys handled by firmware.
• Some precision-touchpad gestures (for example, three-finger swipes) and touchscreen input.
• Input to windows running as administrator may not be blocked, because Windows isolates elevated windows from non-elevated hooks.
• Exclusive-fullscreen games may draw above the overlay.

On a laptop touchpad you usually can't press left and right buttons at once, which is why the single-mouse gestures use only the right button.

Antivirus and SmartScreen

Because the app installs keyboard hooks, some antivirus tools or Windows SmartScreen may flag an unsigned build. This is a false positive caused by how hooks work, but you should not take that on trust: the full source is in this repository, and you are welcome to build it yourself.

Building

Requirements: a Windows C++ toolchain with g++, mingw32-make (or make), and windres (all included with MinGW / MinGW-w64).

git clone https://github.com/AddisionS/callin-clean.git
cd callin-clean
mingw32-make

This produces CallInClean.exe in the project root. mingw32-make clean removes build output.

Project layout

assets/        icon files
src/main.cpp   tray icon, menu, and app lifecycle
src/hook.cpp   input hooks, lock timer, and unlock gestures
src/overlay.cpp  fullscreen countdown window
src/autostart.cpp  optional "Start with Windows" (per-user registry key)
src/resources.rc   embeds the icon in the executable
Makefile

Roadmap

• Release held keys and buttons cleanly when a lock starts, to avoid stuck modifiers.
• End the lock cleanly on session lock, sleep, and resume.
• Hardware test matrix (laptops, desktops, touchpads, multi-monitor, elevated windows).
• On-screen "hold to unlock" button.
• Configurable timeout and signed releases.

License

Released under the MIT License.

Download

See the latest release.