Ready for review - [MouseJump] Long lived background exe

[mikeclayton]

Summary of the Pull Request

Changes the way activation works in Mouse Jump to use a long-lived background process, rather than having the main runner launch a short-lived instance of MouseJumpUI.exe every time the activation keys are pressed.

This reduces the time to display the preview popup since the Mouse Jump application itself doesn't have to load up from scratch for every activation.

PR Checklist

• Closes:
  • Guidance needed - Mouse Jump long-lived background task for faster activation #26073
• Communication: I've discussed this with core contributors already. If work hasn't been agreed, this work might be rejected
  • sorta-kinda discussed in Guidance needed - Mouse Jump long-lived background task for faster activation #26073
• Tests: Added/updated and all pass
  • no new features added. existing tests all pass
• Localization: All end user facing strings can be localized
  • no new localisation strings added
• Dev docs: Added/updated
• New binaries: Added on the required places
  • no new binaries added
• Documentation updated: If checked, please file a pull request on [our docs repo]
  • no new features added

Detailed Description of the Pull Request / Additional comments

The main PowerToys runner now simply starts MouseJumpUI.exe when the tool is enabled, and terminates the process when the tool is disabled - this is similar to how FancyZones works, except there's no graceful IPC at present to signal to the MouseJumpUI.exe instance to close itself before it gets terminated.

The Mouse Jump C++ modulestill handles the hotkey and sends a Windows Event to the long-lived MouseJumpUI.exe to signal activation. When the UI exe receives a Windows message it displays the popup form, and hides it again when the user clicks or cancels the popup form.

Validation Steps Performed

• Workflow tests
  • Automated tests passing locally
  • Minimal actions workflow (spelling check) passing for PR
  • Full actions workflow (msbuild) passing for PR
• UI tests
  • Happy path
    • preview image appears when activated
    • clicking the preview image moves the mouse cursor to the correct location
    • right-click dismisses the preview image without moving the mouse
    • pressing escape dismisses the preview image without moving the mouse
  • Works on multiple monitors with different dpi scaling settings (e.g. 100% vs 150%)
    • [Mouse Jump] - new feature - #23216 #23566 (comment)
    • [Mouse Jump] - new feature - #23216 #23566 (comment)
  • Handling negative coordinates on non-primary monitors if higher or "lefter" than primary monitor
    • [Mouse Jump] - new feature - #23216 #23566 (comment)
  • Mouse crosshair moves when Mouse Jump moves the cursor (mouse clicks and keyboard shortcuts)
    • Mouse pointer Crosshair & Mouse Jump Issue #24523
    • [MouseJump]Also simulate mouse input event #24527
  • Activating when the preview window is already visible moves the form to the new mouse position
  • Number and key shortcuts (1-9, Home / End, Left / Right Arrow) jump to the appropriate monitor
• Lifecycle tests
  • Starting PowerToys Runner launches MouseJumpUI.exe when enabled, and not when disabled
  • Enabling / disabling Mouse Jump in settings starts / stops MouseJumpUI.exe
  • Exiting PowerToys Runner stops MouseJumpUI.exe
  • Killing runner exe via Task Manager stops MouseJumpUI.exe
  • Stopping Visual Studio local debug run stops MouseJumpUI.exe
    • note - runner needs to be in non-admin mode otherwise Visual Studio debugger disconnects at launch
  • Hotkey and size settings are automatically reloaded when config file is modified from Settings UI
  • Hotkey and size settings are automatically reloaded when config file is modified manually (e.g. in notepad) while runner and MouseJumpUI.exe are running
• Internal Test Suite
  • Enable Mouse Jump. Then:
  • Press the activation shortcut and verify the screens preview appears.
  • Change activation shortcut and verify that new shorctut triggers Mouse Jump.
  • Click around the screen preview and ensure that mouse cursor jumped to clicked location.
  • Reorder screens in Display settings and confirm that Mouse Jump reflects the change and still works correctly.
  • Change scaling of screens and confirm that Mouse Jump still works correctly.
  • Unplug additional monitors and confirm that Mouse Jump still works correctly.
  • Disable Mouse Jump and verify that the module is not activated when you press the activation shortcut.

[jaimecbernardo]

Thanks a lot for the contribution @mikeclayton !
The code changes look good, but I've given it a test and found the following issues:

• When we kill PowerToys.exe (from Task manager or just stop debugging from VS), a PowerToys.MouseJumpUI.exe process gets leaked. Something seems to be wrong with WaitForPowerToysRunner specifically for Mouse Jump. Perhaps something different needs to be called or another resource cleaned up so it exits correctly.
• When we change a Setting like the Thumbnail size, it takes disabling and re-enabling the module for this change to take effect. Using a File Watcher like we do on other utilities may help solve this.

Please let me know if you need any help with these. 😉

[mikeclayton]

@jaimecbernado - thanks for the feedback - my comments below...

When we kill PowerToys.exe (from Task manager or just stop debugging from VS), a PowerToys.MouseJumpUI.exe process gets leaked. Something seems to be wrong with WaitForPowerToysRunner specifically for Mouse Jump. Perhaps something different needs to be called or another resource cleaned up so it exits correctly.

Ah, I only tested gracefully exiting the runner with the "Exit" context menu command. I'll try this out and see how other modules are doing it...

When we change a Setting like the Thumbnail size, it takes disabling and re-enabling the module for this change to take effect. Using a File Watcher like we do on other utilities may help solve this.

Didn't even think to try this. I'll take a look and update (and add it to my regression test list 😄)...

[mikeclayton]

@jaimecbernardo - the latest commit adds a FileSystemWatcher to monitor the config file (based on the same code for PowerOCR / TextExtractor).

I've not done a full regression test, but it seems to superficially work - I'll run some more tests over the next couple of days and update again once I've done that...

[jaimecbernardo]

Sounds good. Thank you!
By the way, here's some tests we run manually each release, from https://github.com/microsoft/PowerToys/blob/5bc7201ae2b75b53d3a4bc35119c867ecf71c5f6/doc/releases/tests-checklist-template.md#mouse-utils :

Enable Mouse Jump. Then:
- Press the activation shortcut and verify the screens preview appears.
- Change activation shortcut and verify that new shorctut triggers Mouse Jump.
- Click around the screen preview and ensure that mouse cursor jumped to clicked location.
- Reorder screens in Display settings and confirm that Mouse Jump reflects the change and still works correctly.
- Change scaling of screens and confirm that Mouse Jump still works correctly.
- Unplug additional monitors and confirm that Mouse Jump still works correctly.
- Disable Mouse Jump and verify that the module is not activated when you press the activation shortcut.

[mikeclayton]

@jaimecbernardo - I've worked through all the tests in the "Validation Steps Performed" section of the PR description at the top, and they all seem to work fine, including your internal Test Checklist, so I think this is now (finally) ready for review :-).

I've not tried specifically measuring the activation time, but it feels like it's a lot snappier - it would be interesting to know if it seems that way to you as well...

[jaimecbernardo]

Did plenty of testing, and it's working well for me. The issues I've encountered before seem to be gone too. Couldn't see much of a difference in terms of startup, perhaps just a bit faster, but I have a pretty powerful machine. Let's see how this pans out.
Code looks good too.
Thank you for the contribution!

I'll still fix a tiny telemetry issue I found (not caused by you, but was checking show preview code and verified the telemetry event there was wrong, so I just fixed it) and merge main in, do an installer to make sure everything is OK and after that I'll merge.

[crutkas]

What is needed to get this in

[jaimecbernardo]

Just tested installer. All looks good. I'll merge after CI passes.