HaloLight

HaloLight is a Windows desktop app that turns the edges of your display into a soft fill light for video calls. It uses a transparent overlay so you can brighten your face without giving up normal desktop interaction.

Screenshot

What it does

• Adds a soft light around the selected monitor
• Lets you adjust brightness, color temperature, and edge thickness
• Supports multi-monitor setups
• Runs from the system tray with a global Ctrl+Shift+L toggle
• Can launch at startup
• Can optionally exclude the overlay from screen capture
• Saves settings locally between launches

Tech stack

• C#
• .NET 8
• WPF

Requirements

• Windows 10 or Windows 11
• .NET 8 SDK for local development
• .NET 8 Desktop Runtime x64 only if you plan to use the framework-dependent package
• Inno Setup 6 if you want to build the installer locally

Use

1. Launch HaloLight.
2. Pick the monitor you want to light.
3. Adjust brightness, color temperature, edge thickness, and accent color.
4. Use the tray icon or Ctrl+Shift+L to toggle the overlay on and off.
5. Optionally enable launch at startup or capture exclusion from the settings window.

Build and run

Run the app in development:

dotnet run --project .\src\HaloLight\HaloLight.csproj

Build a release binary:

dotnet build .\HaloLight.sln -c Release

Create a framework-dependent publish folder:

powershell -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -File .\scripts\publish-local.ps1

Create a self-contained publish folder:

powershell -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -File .\scripts\publish-local.ps1 -SelfContained

Create the recommended Windows installer (setup.exe):

powershell -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -File .\scripts\build-installer.ps1

Build outputs land under artifacts\.

CI builds

GitHub Actions runs .github/workflows/build-windows-release.yml on pull requests targeting main, on pushes to main, and on manual dispatch. Each run builds a self-contained Windows publish and the recommended Inno Setup installer, then uploads the setup.exe artifact.

On pull requests it works as a build check only. On pushes to main it also creates or reuses a vX.Y.Z tag and publishes a GitHub Release automatically. If no release tags exist yet, it starts from the version in src\HaloLight\HaloLight.csproj. After that it bumps the patch version on each new push, unless the project version is manually moved ahead to start a new minor or major line.

Local settings

HaloLight stores settings in %LOCALAPPDATA%\HaloLight\settings.json.

License

MIT. See LICENSE.