TopPin

English | 简体中文

A tiny always-on-top toggle for Windows. Press Win+T to pin or unpin the active window. Single C file, no dependencies beyond Win32, ~130 KB exe.

⬇ Download the latest installer

Features

• Win+T toggles always-on-top for the foreground window
• Audio feedback: hardware-connect sound = pinned, disconnect sound = unpinned, ding = can't pin (e.g. elevated windows blocked by UIPI)
• System tray icon with right-click menu: run at startup, language (English / 简体中文), about, exit
• All pinned windows are automatically restored when TopPin exits
• Single instance; survives Explorer restarts (tray icon re-adds itself)
• Excludes the desktop and taskbar from pinning

Security warnings

The exe and installer are not code-signed, and TopPin uses a low-level keyboard hook (to intercept Win+T), so Windows SmartScreen or antivirus software may show a warning when downloading or running it. This is a false positive — the full source is in this repo and you can build it yourself. You can safely ignore the warning and continue: in SmartScreen click More info → Run anyway.

Why a low-level keyboard hook?

Explorer already registers Win+T (focus taskbar) via RegisterHotKey, so a plain hotkey registration fails. TopPin installs a WH_KEYBOARD_LL hook, which runs before hotkey dispatch, swallows the combo, and injects a dummy keystroke so releasing Win afterwards doesn't open the Start menu. Note that while TopPin is running, the original "focus taskbar" function of Win+T is unavailable.

Build

Requires Visual Studio 2022 Build Tools (MSVC + Windows SDK):

build.bat

This compiles the resources (toppin.rc) and toppin.c into TopPin.exe.

Installer

The Inno Setup script toppin.iss builds a per-user installer (no UAC) with English and Simplified Chinese, sets autostart, and launches TopPin after install:

iscc toppin.iss

Output lands in dist\TopPin-Setup-<version>.exe.

Settings

Stored under HKCU\Software\TopPin (Language, FirstRunDone); autostart uses the standard HKCU\...\CurrentVersion\Run key. First run enables autostart by default — turn it off from the tray menu.

Files

File	Purpose
toppin.c	The whole application
toppin.rc / toppin.ico	Icon resource
build.bat	MSVC build script
toppin.iss / ChineseSimplified.isl	Inno Setup installer
make_icon.py	Generates toppin.ico
audition_sounds.py	Preview Windows sounds used for feedback
verify.py	Post-build sanity checks

License

MIT