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Documentation Index

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Prevent Screen Saver follows an incremental release model — each version ships a small, well-defined set of features that are fully tested before the next iteration begins. This page documents what has shipped, what is planned, and how to contribute.

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Current Release — v0.2.0

Version 0.2.0 is the current stable release. It builds on the v0.1.0 tray MVP with the addition of a global hotkey system, delivering keyboard-driven toggle without requiring any mouse interaction with the tray.

Global Hotkey Toggle

Press a keyboard shortcut from anywhere on the desktop to activate or deactivate screen saver protection instantly, without opening the tray menu.

Five Built-in Presets

Choose from Ctrl+Alt+P (default), Ctrl+Shift+F12, Ctrl+Shift+F11, Ctrl+Shift+F10, or Ctrl+Shift+F9 via the tray Hotkey submenu.

Hotkey Enable/Disable

Toggle the hotkey on or off from the tray menu without changing the selected preset. The preference is persisted across restarts.

Tray Balloon Notifications

A system tray balloon appears when the hotkey is enabled, disabled, or when a new preset is selected, confirming the active shortcut.

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All Features in v0.2.0

v0.2.0 includes everything from the v0.1.0 foundation plus the hotkey system:
  • Tray icon with two visual states — grey pause icon when idle, green checkmark icon when active. Both icons are generated programmatically at runtime.
  • Left-click tray toggle — clicking the tray icon toggles between Active and Idle protection states.
  • Tray context menu — Activate, Deactivate, Open, Start with Windows, Hotkey, Help, About, and Exit actions.
  • SetThreadExecutionState protection — uses ES_CONTINUOUS | ES_DISPLAY_REQUIRED to prevent screen saver activation without simulating any keyboard or mouse input.
  • Start with Windows — reads and writes HKCU\...\Run to control auto-launch. No admin rights required.
  • Single-instance guard — a named Mutex (PreventScreenSaver.SingleInstance) prevents multiple copies from running simultaneously.
  • Settings persistence — StartMinimized, LastProtectionActive, HotkeyEnabled, and HotkeyPresetId are saved to %LocalAppData%\PreventScreenSaver\settings.json.
  • Diagnostics log — timestamped entries appended to %LocalAppData%\PreventScreenSaver\log.txt for all lifecycle events.
  • Help and About dialogs — built-in Windows Forms dialogs accessible from the tray menu.
  • Clean shutdown — protection is always stopped and the hotkey is unregistered before the application exits or the session ends.

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Planned Features

The following items are on the roadmap for future releases, drawn from the project’s README:

Background-Only Launch Mode

A startup argument that launches the application directly to the tray without ever showing the main window, useful for auto-start scenarios.

Automated Checks and Tests

Lightweight automated validation to cover settings parsing, toggle routing logic, and service lifecycle behavior.

Signed Installer and Release Workflow

Code-signed installer and a repeatable automated release pipeline to improve trust and distribution reliability.

Expanded Configuration Options

Additional user-facing settings surfaced through the application UI, beyond the current hotkey and startup options.
The docs/implementation-plan.md and docs/hotkey-plan.md files in the repository contain the detailed design rationale behind the existing v0.1.0 and v0.2.0 implementations — including the options that were considered and rejected (such as simulated keyboard input and mouse movement) in favor of the SetThreadExecutionState approach.

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Contributing

Contributions and feedback are welcome. The project is MIT-licensed and hosted on GitHub.

Open an Issue

Report a bug or request a feature at the GitHub issue tracker. Include reproduction steps for bugs or a clear description of the desired behavior for feature requests.

View the Repository

Browse the source, read the implementation docs, and follow release activity on GitHub.

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License

Prevent Screen Saver is released under the MIT License. You are free to use, modify, and distribute the source under the terms of that license.

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