Lilt

A little more, at a glance.

Lilt is a lightweight, Dynamic Island-style companion for Windows. A small capsule sits at the top of your screen showing the time or what's playing; click it and it opens into a compact dashboard with music controls, album artwork, your agenda, system readings and quick actions. It is built to stay out of the way: idle, it uses a few megabytes of memory and no measurable CPU or GPU time.

_{Images are rendered from Lilt's real interface by its UI test suite.}

Features

• The island. A near-black capsule at the top centre of the display you choose. It stays above other windows without taking focus, lets clicks pass through its transparent surroundings, can be dragged along the top edge, follows display and scaling changes, and hides while a game, video or presentation is full screen.
• Music controls. Works with any app that reports to Windows' media controls, such as Spotify, web browsers and the Windows Media Player app: title, artist, album artwork, play/pause, previous/next, seeking and a source switcher. A short banner announces new tracks.
• Ambient colour. The expanded player picks up a restrained accent from the current album artwork: a soft glow behind the cover, a faint tint of the panel and an accent-coloured progress bar. Intensity is adjustable and it can be turned off.
• Agenda. Import an .ics file exported from Outlook, Google Calendar or Apple Calendar to see the week ahead, including recurring events and time zones.
• System readings. CPU and memory use and network throughput, sampled only while you are looking at them.
• Quick actions. One click to sound, display and brightness, Bluetooth and Wi-Fi settings, Windows Settings, the Snipping Tool, Task Manager and File Explorer.
• Settings. Widgets, sizes, display and position, ambient colour, motion, a low-power mode, start with Windows and a global shortcut.

Installation

1. Open the latest release.
2. Download Lilt-<version>-x64-setup.exe.
3. Run it. It installs for your user account only and does not need administrator rights. Optionally choose to start Lilt when you sign in.
4. Lilt starts after installation and adds an icon to the notification area.

Each release lists the installer's SHA-256 checksum. The installer is not yet code signed, so Windows SmartScreen may ask you to confirm the first time ("More info" → "Run anyway").

To uninstall, use Settings → Apps → Installed apps → Lilt.

System requirements

• Windows 11, 64-bit. Windows 10 version 22H2 is intended to work but has not been verified yet.
• No additional runtimes: Lilt does not use .NET, a web view or the Visual C++ redistributable.
• Runs on integrated graphics; Lilt draws on the CPU and does not use the GPU.

Using Lilt

To	Do
Expand or collapse the island	Click it, or press Ctrl+Alt+Space
Close the expanded island	Esc, click elsewhere, or move the pointer away for a few seconds
Move the island	Drag the compact island sideways
Open the agenda or system details	Click the calendar or system tile
Show or hide the island, open Settings, quit	Use the Lilt icon in the notification area

Music

Lilt follows the app that last started playing. Pausing never makes it jump to a different app, so the same button keeps controlling the same music. When several apps are available, the ⇄ button next to the source name switches between them. Controls an app does not support are shown disabled, and the progress bar appears only when the app reports a timeline.

Ambient colours

Each new cover is reduced to a few dozen pixels and grouped into colour clusters. Lilt picks the most characteristic colour, keeps its hue and tones it down so text stays readable (at least 4.5:1 contrast). Greyscale covers get a neutral treatment. Colours fade over 0.7 seconds when the artwork changes and stay still otherwise.

Performance

Lilt is a single process with no web view and no GPU rendering. Timers only run while their results are on screen, and media updates arrive as Windows events rather than by polling. Measured on a release build:

State	Memory (Task Manager)	CPU (all cores)
Compact, idle	6.3 MB	0.000 %
Expanded, readings live	6.4 MB	0.001 %
Expanding and collapsing every 2 s	6.5 MB	0.021 %

PERFORMANCE.md has the full results, the test machine and the method.

Privacy

Lilt works entirely offline: no telemetry, no update checks, no accounts. Media and calendar information is only displayed, never stored or sent anywhere. Details are in SECURITY.md.

Troubleshooting

• No music appears. The app must use Windows' media controls. Check that the track shows up in the volume flyout (Win+A, or the media controls on the lock screen).
• The shortcut does nothing. Another app may own it; Lilt says so in Settings → Keyboard shortcuts, where you can choose another one.
• The island is gone. It hides while a full-screen app is in front. Otherwise click the notification-area icon, or start Lilt again.
• Something else. Logs are in %LOCALAPPDATA%\Lilt\logs. Please include them in an issue.

Building from source

git clone https://github.com/shrenixcodes/Lilt.git
cd Lilt
cargo build --release

See DEVELOPMENT.md for prerequisites, tests and tooling, ARCHITECTURE.md for how Lilt is put together and RELEASE.md for packaging.

Contributing

Issues and pull requests are welcome. Please keep changes focused, run cargo fmt, cargo clippy --all-targets -- -D warnings and cargo test, and describe how you tested. New dependencies need a clear reason; Lilt's resource use is a feature.

License

Lilt is released under the MIT License.

Its interface is built with Slint, used under the Slint Royalty-free License; icons are from Lucide. See THIRD-PARTY-NOTICES.md for all acknowledgements.