USB_G-Scope

A lightweight, modern USB topology viewer for Windows — a fresh take on tools like Microsoft USBView and UsbTreeView, built with WinUI 3 and .NET 10.

Status: v0.1.0 functional release. The app is a complete, single-file, standalone USB explorer with real-time hot-plug updates, device resource mapping (drive letters, COM ports, Windows child nodes), multi-term search (Ctrl+F), an issues filter, dark/light themes, and JSON export (Ctrl+S).

Features

• Topology tree: Host Controllers → Root Hubs → Hubs → Ports → Devices.
• Speed & power: Bus speed badges (1.5M, 12M, 480M, 5G, 10G+), max power draw, and warnings when a SuperSpeed-capable device is throttled by a USB 2.0 port or cable.
• Resource mapping: Directly displays mounted drive letters (e.g. E:), COM ports (COM3), and Windows PnP child devices.
• Hot-plug watcher: Automatic background debounced refresh on device arrival/removal with non-intrusive connect/disconnect notifications.
• Descriptor decoding: Full device and configuration descriptor breakdown with endpoint attributes and hex viewer.
• Search & filter: Multi-word search across names, VID:PID, drive letters, and ports; instant issues toggle for devices reporting Windows errors or speed downgrades.
• Device nicknames: Assign custom friendly names (F2, right-click, or details header) that persist across app launches in local JSON. Never touches hardware firmware or the Windows Registry (strictly read-only and zero-admin). Automatically follows devices with unique serial numbers across different USB ports.
• Privacy & export: Full JSON export (Ctrl+S) with one-click serial masking.
• Standalone: Ships as a self-contained, single-file executable requiring no installation or admin elevation.

Build

Requirements: Windows 10 1809+ and the .NET 10 SDK.

dotnet build src/UsbGScope.App -p:Platform=x64

Test

dotnet test tests/UsbGScope.Core.Tests

Publish single-file executables

GUI App (USB_G-Scope.exe)

dotnet publish src/UsbGScope.App -c Release -r win-x64 -p:Platform=x64

Output: src/UsbGScope.App/bin/x64/Release/net10.0-windows10.0.19041.0/win-x64/publish/USB_G-Scope.exe

• Binary size: ~90 MB (completely self-contained, zero runtime dependencies)
• Startup time: ~1.2s cold start, < 500ms warm launch

WinUI 3 single-file apps unpack their native runtime to a temporary folder on first launch. This is how the Windows App SDK supports single-file apps; see Microsoft's docs.

Command-Line Tool (usbgscope.exe)

dotnet publish tools/UsbGScope.Cli -c Release -r win-x64 --self-contained true -p:PublishSingleFile=true

Output: tools/UsbGScope.Cli/bin/Release/net10.0-windows/win-x64/publish/usbgscope.exe

usbgscope [--all] [--verbose] [--json] [--mask-serials]

Flag	Effect
--all	Include empty ports
--verbose	Show serial numbers, instance IDs, driver details, and child devices
--json	Emit the full snapshot as JSON
--mask-serials	Replace serial numbers in descriptors and child IDs (safe for sharing)

Layout

src/UsbGScope.Core/          USB enumeration (Win32 IOCTL), descriptor parsing, topology model
src/UsbGScope.App/           WinUI 3 desktop application
tools/UsbGScope.Cli/         usbgscope command-line tool (text / JSON)
tests/UsbGScope.Core.Tests/  85 xUnit tests with real device descriptor fixtures

License

MIT — see LICENSE. Third-party attributions are listed in THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.md.