Mighty Screen Ruler

Mighty Screen Ruler is a transparent on-screen ruler which stays on top of other windows. It provides a rectangular ruler and a triangular drafting ruler with metric and imperial scales, keyboard control, pivot-based rotation, configurable sizing, and angle annotations.

Screenshots

Figure 1: Rectangular ruler in default orientation

Figure 2: Rectangular ruler rotated 20° about its pivot point

Figure 3: Triangular ruler in default orientation

Figure 4: Triangular ruler rotated -30° about its pivot point

Features

• Always-on-top ruler
• Rectangular and triangular ruler modes
• Metric and imperial units
• Pivot-based rotation with fine and fast keyboard increments
• Keyboard resizing with configurable increments
• Pivot screen-position and current-angle annotation
• Highly configurable through a JSON config file
• Triangle edge angle scales with optional secondary inner scale
• Triangle origin guide lines

Future enhancement ideas are tracked in TODO.md.

Usage

Drag the ruler to move it. Hold Shift while dragging to rotate around the current pivot point. Press H in the app to open the help popup.

Figure 5: Help popup with ruler controls

Keyboard Shortcuts

Shortcut	Action
H	Toggle help popup
Esc	Quit
Space	Switch between rectangular and triangular ruler
M	Toggle metric / imperial units
Left / Right	Fine rotate counter-clockwise / clockwise
Shift+Left / Shift+Right	Fast rotate counter-clockwise / clockwise
Cmd+Arrow / Ctrl+Arrow	Pan the ruler by 1 px
Shift+Cmd+Arrow / Shift+Ctrl+Arrow	Pan the ruler by 10 px
Up / Down	Increase / decrease opacity
I / D	Increase / decrease ruler size
P	Cycle pivot point
V	Set a custom pivot value
R	Reset angle
A	Set angle
E	Toggle triangle edge angle scale
N	Toggle triangle inner angle scale
L	Cycle triangle angle label mode

Releases

The release/ folder is the deployment folder. Each OS folder should contain one ZIP file.

macOS

Use:

release/macos/Mighty_Screen_Ruler-macos-x86_64.zip

Unzip it and open Mighty_Screen_Ruler.app.

The macOS app is unsigned. If macOS says Apple cannot verify the app, use one of these workarounds after unzipping:

1. Open System Settings -> Privacy & Security, then choose Open Anyway for Mighty_Screen_Ruler.app. You may need to try opening the app once or twice before the button appears.
2. Or remove the download quarantine flag in Terminal:

xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine /path/to/Mighty_Screen_Ruler.app
open /path/to/Mighty_Screen_Ruler.app

Windows

Not available yet. Planned release file:

release/windows/Mighty_Screen_Ruler-windows-x86_64.zip

Linux

Not available yet. Planned release file:

release/linux/Mighty_Screen_Ruler-linux-x86_64.zip

Run From Source

Requirements:

• Python 3.12 or newer
• PySide6-Essentials

requirements.txt also includes Nuitka for building release ZIPs.

From the repository root:

python3 -m pip install -r requirements.txt
python3 Mighty_Screen_Ruler.py

Build macOS Release

From the repository root:

scripts/build_macos.sh

The script uses the ruler conda environment, builds the app with Nuitka, stages Mighty_Screen_Ruler.app, and writes the release ZIP to:

release/macos/Mighty_Screen_Ruler-macos-x86_64.zip

Configuration

Most behavior can be adjusted in the per-user ruler_config.json, stored at:

• macOS: ~/Library/Preferences/Mighty_Screen_Ruler/ruler_config.json
• Windows: %APPDATA%\Mighty_Screen_Ruler\ruler_config.json
• Linux: ${XDG_CONFIG_HOME:-~/.config}/Mighty_Screen_Ruler/ruler_config.json

Configurable behavior includes:

• default units
• size increments
• angle increments
• ruler dimensions
• branding text and color
• triangle angle scales
• triangle origin guide lines
• keyboard bindings

An example config is available at examples/ruler_config.example.json.

License

MIT License. See LICENSE.