Install · Features · Hotkeys · Configuration · Contributing

RustCast is a fast, keyboard-first launcher for Linux. Press Alt + Space to open apps, find files, do maths or just say what you want in plain words. It also ships a full screenshot studio, text recognition (OCR), a window-locking screen recorder and clipboard history, all in one small native app written in Rust.

RustCast for Linux is a fork of RustCast by Umang Surana, the original macOS launcher. This fork ports it to Linux and adds the screenshot studio, OCR, screen recorder, Jev and clipboard history.

Why RustCast

• One shortcut for everything. Apps, files, maths, emoji, screenshots, recordings and your clipboard live behind the same keystroke.
• Native and light. A single Rust binary. Heavy tools like OCR and the screenshot editor start only when you use them and exit straight after, so the launcher itself stays small.
• Private by default. Everything runs on your machine. Text recognition happens locally with Tesseract. Nothing is uploaded unless you ask for it.
• Made for Linux. Works on X11 and on GNOME/Wayland through XWayland, follows your desktop's apps, icons and file manager, and registers proper GNOME shortcuts.

Features

⚡ Launcher

Start typing and RustCast finds it:

• Apps from your desktop entries, ranked by how often you use them
• Files and folders in the places you choose
• Maths like 1280 * 3 / 4 and unit conversion like 10 km to miles. Press Enter to copy the answer.
• Emoji: type fire, press Enter, paste 🔥
• Web search for anything else, with your search engine of choice
• Commands to capture, record, tile windows, quit apps and more

🗣️ Jev: say what you want

Type jev and describe what you need in plain words. Jev turns it into actions you run with Enter, and chains several steps into one.

You type	Jev does
jev open downloads · jev go to desktop/projects	Opens folders, even nested ones
jev open report.pdf in documents · jev find invoice	Finds and opens files
jev launch firefox · jev switch to terminal · jev close spotify	Controls apps and windows
jev create folder Ideas on desktop · jev make todo.txt	Creates folders and files
jev tile left · jev show desktop	Manages windows
jev screenshot firefox in 5 seconds · jev copy table from screen	Captures
jev record firefox · jev stop recording	Records
jev open downloads and firefox then show desktop	Runs several steps at once

More Jev examples

📸 Screenshot studio

Super + Shift + S freezes the screen. Drag to select, click a window, or press F for the whole screen. A magnifier shows exact pixels and colours. Then mark it up right there, without opening another app.

Key	Tool	Key	Tool
A	Arrow	T	Text (click again to edit)
L	Line	N	Numbered steps 1, 2, 3…
R	Rectangle (outline or filled)	B	Censor: pixelate, blur or solid
O	Ellipse	H	Spotlight (dims everything else)
P	Pen	I	Colour picker (copies #RRGGBB)
M	Highlighter	V	Select, move, recolour, delete

Finish with Enter to copy, Ctrl+S to save, Ctrl+P to pin it above every window, or Ctrl+B to beautify it with a gradient backdrop, padding, rounded corners and a shadow. Every capture then floats as a thumbnail you can drag straight into any app.

Censor and pin. Hide private details, then keep the capture floating on top while you work.	Colour palette. Pick the dominant colours from any area as HEX, RGB, HSL or CSS variables.
Compare. Put your last two screenshots side by side, scrub a before/after slider, or see every changed area numbered.

🔤 Copy text from anything

Super + Shift + T, select an area, and the text is on your clipboard. It works on images, videos, terminals, dark themes and PDFs, and it runs entirely on your machine.

Tables. Real rows and columns that paste into a spreadsheet, or save as CSV.

Smart actions. Links, emails, phone numbers, colours, sums and QR codes become one-click buttons.

Choose Text, Code (indentation rebuilt exactly) or Table. Any Tesseract language works, e.g. ocr_languages = "eng+hin".

🎥 Screen recorder

Super + Shift + R opens the recorder. Lock onto one window and the video shows only that window: anything you drag over it never appears, and neither does RustCast.

• Follows the window when you move it, switch workspaces or even minimise it
• Add more windows mid-recording, placed where they are or as picture-in-picture tiles
• Full-screen recording of any monitor, with RustCast painted out of every frame
• Fixed output size (1920×1080 by default), so resizing never changes the video
• Safe by design: closing the window, logging out or a crash still saves the video and restores your windows

📋 Clipboard history

Super + Shift + C shows everything you've copied, text and images, with a large preview. Filter with ← →, type to search, and press Ctrl+1…9 for quick picks. History is kept on disk, so it survives restarts.

Install

Download a release

Get rustcast-v*-x86_64-linux.tar.gz from the latest release, then:

tar xzf rustcast-v*-x86_64-linux.tar.gz
cd rustcast-v*-x86_64-linux
./install.sh --start

This installs RustCast to ~/.local/bin, adds it to your app grid, starts it on login and launches it now. Remove it any time with ./uninstall.sh.

Build from source

You need Rust and the development packages below.

git clone https://github.com/shashank03-dev/rustcast
cd rustcast
make install-start     # build, install, enable autostart and launch

make install does the same without launching, and make uninstall removes everything.

Dependencies

Ubuntu / Debian

sudo apt install libgtk-3-dev libayatana-appindicator3-1 libxcb1-dev libxtst-dev \
                 tesseract-ocr ffmpeg gstreamer1.0-pipewire libnotify-bin

Fedora

sudo dnf install gtk3-devel libayatana-appindicator-gtk3 libxcb-devel libXtst-devel \
                 tesseract ffmpeg-free pipewire-gstreamer libnotify

Arch Linux

sudo pacman -S gtk3 libayatana-appindicator libxcb libxtst \
               tesseract tesseract-data-eng ffmpeg gst-plugin-pipewire libnotify

Release downloads only need the runtime libraries; the -dev / -devel packages are for building. Tesseract is only needed for OCR and ffmpeg only for the recorder.

What each package is for

Package	Used for
GTK 3, Ayatana AppIndicator	Tray icon, screenshot editor, OCR window
libxcb, libXtst	Windows, hotkeys, tiling, pasting (X11 / XWayland)
Tesseract	Text recognition. Add tesseract-ocr-<lang> for more languages.
ffmpeg	Encoding screen recordings
PipeWire GStreamer plugin	Recording native Wayland windows through the system picker
libnotify	"Recording saved" and similar notifications
translate-shell (optional)	Translating recognised text in place

Compatibility

Desktop	Status
GNOME on Wayland (Ubuntu 24.04)	✅ Tested. Hotkeys are registered as GNOME shortcuts.
GNOME / other desktops on X11	✅ Native X11 path
KDE Plasma, Xfce, Cinnamon	🟡 Should work through X11 / XWayland. Reports welcome.
Wayland-only compositors without XWayland	❌ Not supported

Hotkeys

Action	Default
Open the launcher	Alt + Space
Clipboard history	Super + Shift + C
Screenshot	Super + Shift + S
Copy text from screen	Super + Shift + T
Screen recorder (press again to stop)	Super + Shift + R

Change them in Preferences (tray menu) or in ~/.config/rustcast/config.toml. Any capture mode can also be bound to a key of your own, such as Print, by running rustcast rustcast://capture/<mode> with area, window, fullscreen, quick, ocr, ocr-code, ocr-table, palette or compare.

Configuration

RustCast creates ~/.config/rustcast/config.toml on first run. Most settings are also in Preferences.

Screenshot and recorder settings

screenshot_hotkey = "SUPER+SHIFT+S"
ocr_hotkey = "SUPER+SHIFT+T"
recorder_hotkey = "SUPER+SHIFT+R"

[screenshot]
save_dir = "~/Pictures/Screenshots"
format = "png"                # png, jpg or webp
jpeg_quality = 90
enter_action = "copy"         # what Enter does in the editor: copy or save
show_magnifier = true
window_snap = true            # click a window to capture it (X11)
ocr_languages = "eng"         # Tesseract codes, e.g. "eng+hin+deu"
translate_to = ""             # empty = system language
show_thumbnail = true
thumbnail_seconds = 10        # 0 = stays until you close it

[recorder]
fps = 30
aspect_lock = true            # fit every frame into output_width × output_height
output_width = 1920
output_height = 1080
keep_recording_when_minimized = true
show_cursor = true
record_audio = false
show_indicator = true         # floating ● REC pill
picture_in_picture = false    # layout for windows added to a locked recording
output_dir = "~/Videos/RustCast"

Search, theme and clipboard settings

docs/default.toml shows the main defaults and docs/config.toml is an example with modes, aliases and shell commands. Anything you leave out of your config keeps its default.

Privacy

RustCast works offline. It only goes online when you ask it to:

• Web search opens your browser with the search engine you configured
• Translate in the OCR window uses translate-shell if installed, otherwise opens Google Translate in your browser
• Jev's smart fallback is off unless you add an AI Gateway key (AI_GATEWAY_API_KEY or ~/.config/rustcast/ai_gateway_key). When enabled, only the sentence you typed is sent, and only when Jev can't work it out itself.

Known limitations

Show the list

• Window tiling works for X11 / XWayland windows. Native-Wayland-only windows can't be moved by other apps, by design.
• Drag and drop from the capture thumbnail targets X11 / XWayland apps; some native-Wayland-only apps may not accept the drop.
• Recorder on Wayland: native-Wayland windows are recorded through the system picker, so minimising and adding windows only work for X11 / XWayland windows. In a Wayland full-screen recording the compositor draws everything, so the ● REC pill is hidden (stop with the hotkey) and opening the launcher mid-recording will show in the video.
• Screenshots on Wayland go through the desktop portal. Clicking a window to capture it needs X11; on Wayland, drag around the window instead.
• The Events page is empty for now; there's no portable Linux calendar source wired up yet.

Development

cargo run                  # debug build
cargo test                 # unit tests
cargo clippy --all-targets
cargo fmt --all

Live recorder tests

These need an X server, a window manager and ffmpeg. They create their own windows and check real video pixels: overlaps never leak into a locked recording, added windows do appear, RustCast never appears, and minimised or other-workspace windows keep recording.

Xvfb :99 & DISPLAY=:99 openbox &
cargo build
DISPLAY=:99 cargo test recorder::live -- --ignored --test-threads=1

Project layout

Path	What's there
src/app/	Launcher window, pages (clipboard, recorder, settings, emoji) and tray menu
src/jev.rs	The Jev command parser
src/snap/	Screenshot overlay, annotation editor, OCR, palette, compare, pin
src/recorder/	X11 and portal capture, encoder and the ● REC pill
src/platform/linux/	Desktop entries, hotkeys, window management, overlays
assets/brand/	The RustCast logo (scripts/brand/ regenerates it)
launch-video/	Scripts and the Remotion project behind the launch video

Contributing

Bug reports, ideas and pull requests are all welcome.

• Found a bug? Open an issue. The form asks for your distro and session type, which makes it much faster to fix.
• Want to help? Look for issues labelled good first issue or help wanted.
• Before opening a pull request, read CONTRIBUTING.md.

If RustCast saves you time, a ⭐ helps other people find it.

Acknowledgements

RustCast for Linux builds on RustCast by Umang Surana, the original open-source launcher for macOS. Thank you for making it open source; this project wouldn't exist without it.

License

RustCast is released under the MIT License. The original RustCast copyright notice is kept in the license file.