Hey everyone,

Whenever I recorded coding tutorials or gave live software demos, viewers constantly asked things like *"Wait, what shortcut did you just press?"* or *"Did you middle-click or right-click there?"*.

I tried several existing keystroke visualizers, but most either felt bloated, lagged behind fast inputs, or struggled to display modern mouse features (like side buttons and horizontal scrolling wheels).

So I decided to build **MouseKeyShow**, a lightweight, native Windows overlay built with **Qt 6.8 and C++**.  


# Key Features:

* **Smart Keystroke Clean-up**: Hitting modifier combinations (`Ctrl`, `Alt`, `Shift`, `Win`) or function keys automatically clears previous standard keystrokes, making hotkeys like `Ctrl + Alt + Delete` instantly readable instead of showing a cluttered mess of text.
* **Dynamic Card Sizing**: The overlay card smoothly resizes and animates depending on whether you're tapping a single key or a long combo.
* **Native Mouse Telemetry**: Captures physical clicks and scrolling via Windows Raw Input, accurately showing left/right clicks, middle button, side forward/back buttons, and even horizontal thumb wheels (like on the Logitech MX Master series).
* **Cursor Halo Overlay**: An optional pointer halo that tracks your cursor with visual click and wheel-speed phase indicators.
* **Auto-Dodge Logic**: If your cursor moves directly over the overlay card, it automatically shifts away to avoid blocking the UI you're trying to demonstrate.
* **WYSIWYG Positioning & Theming**: Built-in interactive preview allowing you to drag the card anywhere on screen, adjust opacity, scaling, and switch color presets (Nord, Dracula, Sublime, etc.).

# Tech Stack & Performance:

* Pure native desktop build using **Qt 6.8 & modern C++**.
* Uses Windows Low-Level Hooks and Raw Input to ensure reliable event capture with negligible CPU/memory overhead.
* Supports multiple UI languages (English, Chinese, French, Japanese, Russian).

**Links:**

* **GitHub (Releases)**: \[[Releases · sjhmaster/MouseKeyShow](https://github.com/sjhmaster/MouseKeyShow/releases)\]
* **Demo GIF / Screenshots**: \[\]

I'd love to hear your feedback, edge-case suggestions, or any shortcut display features you feel are missing for your screen-recording or streaming workflow!

:I built an open-source, lightweight keystroke and mouse visualizer for Windows (Qt 6.8 / C++)