EdgeSwitch

Switch between apps and Remote Desktop windows from a compact toolbar at the edge of your screen.

Illustrative preview with fictional session names.

Download

Download EdgeSwitch for Windows x64

Portable ZIP with the Copilot plugin — extract the entire ZIP into a writable folder. The standalone executable still works without plugins.

Requires Windows 10/11 x64 and the .NET 10 Desktop Runtime (x64). The runtime is not bundled.

Run EdgeSwitch.exe—there is no app installer. The executable is unsigned, so Windows may display a reputation warning.

Use

Run EdgeSwitch on the computer where your Remote Desktop client windows are open. By default, it appears on the left edge and includes Remote Desktop Connection (mstsc.exe) and Remote Desktop (msrdc.exe).

Rest the pointer against the part of the screen edge where the toolbar appears. It opens after a short pause; the rest of the edge does not trigger it.

Action	What it does
Click an app icon or session name	Switch to that window, restoring it if minimized.
Left-click the EdgeSwitch icon	Minimize local windows to show the host desktop. Remote Desktop sessions stay open.
Right-click the EdgeSwitch icon	Open Settings.
Press Esc or Alt+F4	Hide the toolbar.

The desktop action is not a toggle—select an app or session entry to restore it. After hiding the toolbar, move outside its edge segment before hovering there again.

The notification-area menu provides Show toolbar, Settings, and Exit EdgeSwitch. Check Windows' Show Hidden Icons if you cannot see it.

Settings

• Apps: select which applications to include, or use Add / Browse for other executables. Both Remote Desktop clients are listed even when they are not running. “Capture” selects windows; it does not record your screen.
• Position: choose from 12 centered or corner-aligned locations. Top-left is horizontal; Left-top is vertical.
• Display: Automatic ignores seams between monitors. Select a specific display to allow its shared edges.
• Hide delay: adjust how quickly the toolbar hides when idle.
• Always maximize remote desktop sessions: on by default. When enabled, clicking a desktop-session entry for mstsc.exe or msrdc.exe requests the same action as its title-bar Maximize button. The remote client controls whether maximizing enters fullscreen. Already-maximized or fullscreen sessions stay unchanged; ordinary apps, connection dialogs, and RemoteApps are not resized. This does not apply just by revealing the toolbar. Explicit maximize-off and app selections in the INI are respected.
• Plugins: enable trusted toolbar indicators and configure their fields. Plugins are off by default and start only after Save.
• Startup: enable Start EdgeSwitch when I sign in to launch automatically when you sign in to Windows. Off by default; applies only to your account and needs no administrator rights.

Choose Save to apply your changes; Cancel leaves them unchanged. Toolbar settings are stored in settings.ini alongside EdgeSwitch.exe. The startup preference uses the EdgeSwitch entry under HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run.

If you move the portable executable, run it from the new location and choose Save with startup enabled to update its path. Disable startup and save before deleting the executable. Windows Startup Apps can independently block automatic launch; if disabled there, re-enable EdgeSwitch there as well.

Portable settings file

settings.ini is created when you choose Save, not on first launch. Keep it beside EdgeSwitch.exe when moving or copying the app. The executable's folder must be writable; save failures are reported rather than falling back to a user-profile folder. The launch working directory does not affect the settings path.

[Toolbar]
Edge=Left
MonitorDeviceName=
HideDelayMilliseconds=700
MaximizeOnActivate=true

[CapturedProcesses]
0=mstsc
1=msrdc

• Edge uses the location names Left, Top, Right, Bottom, LeftTop, LeftBottom, TopLeft, TopRight, RightTop, RightBottom, BottomLeft, or BottomRight.
• An empty MonitorDeviceName means Automatic. The Settings dialog writes the selected display's device name.
• HideDelayMilliseconds accepts integers from 200 to 5000; MaximizeOnActivate accepts true or false.
• [CapturedProcesses] uses unique nonnegative integer keys, read in numeric order, with one executable name or path per value. An empty section captures nothing; an absent section uses the default clients. Missing toolbar keys also use defaults.
• The file is UTF-8. Section/key names are case-insensitive; surrounding whitespace and full-line ; or # comments are accepted. Values have no inline comments, so commas, semicolons, and = in executable names are preserved. Unknown sections/toolbar keys are ignored; duplicate keys and invalid supported values are rejected.

Edit the INI while EdgeSwitch is closed. Invalid or unreadable files produce a warning and defaults without overwriting the file. Choosing Save rewrites supported settings; comments and unknown entries are not preserved.

The former %LOCALAPPDATA%\EdgeSwitch\settings.json is no longer read or imported and is left untouched. Reapply previous preferences in Settings and choose Save to create the portable INI. Windows startup registration remains per-user in the registry, not in this file.

Plugins

Plugins live in plugins/<id>/ beside EdgeSwitch.exe. Each folder contains plugin.json and any scripts or executables it needs. Install or update plugins while EdgeSwitch is closed. Open Settings, review the plugin's fields, check its name, and Save. Cancel neither starts plugins nor changes their settings.

Plugins run as your Windows user, not in a security sandbox. They can read files, access credentials and make network requests. Only install and enable code you trust. EdgeSwitch isolates process lifetime: each enabled plugin polls independently, with no overlapping runs; disabling it, saving new settings or exiting cancels its process tree. A hung or failed plugin shows Unavailable instead of retaining a stale percentage.

Copilot AI-credit usage

The bundled plugin requires PowerShell 7 (pwsh.exe) and GitHub CLI (gh), not the Copilot SDK. Install PowerShell 7 using the MSI installer so the host can launch a real executable directly rather than a Microsoft Store execution alias. Ensure pwsh.exe is on PATH and restart EdgeSwitch after installation. There is no fallback to Windows PowerShell 5.1. Install a current GitHub CLI with multi-account gh auth token --user support, then check the runtime and sign in:

pwsh --version
gh auth login --hostname github.com
gh auth status --hostname github.com

In EdgeSwitch Settings, enable Copilot and enter:

• GitHub host: github.com, or your enterprise's hostname under ghe.com for Enterprise Cloud with data residency.
• GitHub username: the exact account to read. For an Enterprise Managed User, include its enterprise shortcode. For a ghe.com account, use that same hostname with gh auth login and gh auth status.

Personal and managed accounts use their own authenticated quota, not an administrator's organization billing report. The plugin selects stored credentials by host and username and verifies the returned identity before reading usage. It does not change gh's active account or store tokens in settings.ini. Inherited token environment variables are ignored inside the plugin to prevent silently reading another account. Enterprise authentication, SSO and Copilot policies still apply.

The toolbar shows AI credits used / cycle allowance × 100 to one decimal place. For example, 29,326 / 1,000,000 displays 2.9%. Hover for the selected account, usage, allowance, quota-reset date and fetch time. Readings refresh every five minutes; saving Settings triggers a fresh reading. Overage can exceed 100%. Unlimited allowance displays Unlimited; missing or invalid quota and legacy request-based billing display Unavailable, never an invented credit percentage.

API caveat: this lightweight integration uses GitHub's undocumented /copilot_internal/user quota endpoint. Its schema or permissions can change. It requires an AI-credit snapshot with token_based_billing, credits_used and entitlement; it does not infer an allowance from the plan name. Managed-account access has not been verified against a live EMU credential.

If unavailable, hover for the reason and check the configured account, gh auth status, network access, enterprise authorization and Copilot entitlement. Script execution must be allowed by your Windows/organization policy; EdgeSwitch does not bypass execution policy. Review downloaded scripts before unblocking them where your policy permits. Missing plugin files remain visible as an unavailable indicator when enabled.

Writing a toolbar plugin

The process protocol is language-independent: PowerShell, Python, Node.js or a compiled program can implement it. A manifest example:

{
  "protocolVersion": 1,
  "name": "My indicator",
  "description": "Describe the measurement and any prerequisites.",
  "executable": "pwsh.exe",
  "arguments": ["-NoProfile", "-NonInteractive", "-File", "indicator.ps1"],
  "refreshSeconds": 300,
  "timeoutSeconds": 30,
  "settings": [{"key": "Source", "label": "Source", "defaultValue": ""}]
}

• The folder name is the plugin ID. IDs and setting keys use 1–64 ASCII letters, digits, _ or -.
• Discovery reads metadata only; it never executes installed plugins. Malformed manifests do not stop other plugins.
• No shell is inserted. Arguments are passed individually; the working directory is the plugin folder. Relative executable paths resolve there first; bare executable names otherwise use the normal Windows executable search. Use an explicit path when executable identity matters.
• Refresh is 30–86,400 seconds after the previous run finishes. Timeout is 1–120 seconds and cannot exceed refresh. The host closes the process job on timeout, disable, reload and exit, including descendants that retain pipe handles.
• Read one UTF-8 JSON request from standard input, then EOF: {"protocolVersion":1,"settings":{"Source":"configured value"}}. Settings are single-line text, not a secret store.
• Write exactly one UTF-8 JSON object to standard output and exit successfully: {"protocolVersion":1,"text":"42.1%","toolTip":"Explain the reading and when it was measured."}. Do not print progress to stdout. No commands or links in the response are executed.
• text is required, nonblank, single-line and at most 64 characters; toolTip is required and at most 4,096 characters. Long labels/text are visually trimmed. Each stdout/stderr stream and the request are capped at 16 KiB; stderr is not displayed. plugin.json is limited to 32 KiB, 32 arguments and 32 settings.

Plugin preferences are kept in the portable INI:

[Plugins]
copilot=true

[Plugin.copilot]
GitHubHost=github.com
GitHubUser=YOUR_LOGIN

Section/key names are case-insensitive. Surrounding option whitespace is trimmed consistently when saving and applying settings. Duplicate keys and multiline/NUL values are rejected. An options-only section does not enable its plugin. Preferences for temporarily missing plugins survive Save; missing or malformed plugins cannot be newly enabled in Settings.

Good to know

• If only the EdgeSwitch icon appears, check the selected apps in Settings and choose Save.
• Each window gets its own entry. Multiple sessions kept as tabs inside one window appear as a single entry.
• Hover over an entry to see its full window title.
• EdgeSwitch is intended for regular app and Remote Desktop fullscreen windows. Windows lock/UAC screens and exclusive-fullscreen games can block the toolbar or window switching.
• EdgeSwitch maximizes sessions without injecting keyboard shortcuts or changing held modifier keys. A maximized window counts as success even if the remote client does not enter fullscreen. If the request fails, try the session's Maximize button directly.

Build from source

On Windows with the .NET 10 SDK installed:

dotnet build EdgeSwitch.csproj -c Release
.\bin\Release\net10.0-windows\EdgeSwitch.exe

Check native maximize behavior and window guards on an idle interactive desktop using .NET 10 PowerShell. This uses disposable windows, not a connected RDP session:

pwsh -NoProfile -STA -File tests/MaximizeWindowSmoke.ps1

Check INI parsing, executable-relative storage, and save/startup rollback in isolated file and registry locations:

pwsh -NoProfile -File tests/SettingsStoreSmoke.ps1

Check Copilot quota edge cases without credentials or network access, and plugin subprocess isolation/lifecycle with disposable processes:

pwsh.exe -NoProfile -NonInteractive -File tests/CopilotPluginSmoke.ps1
pwsh -NoProfile -STA -File tests/PluginSmoke.ps1