OpenLogi Introduces Per-App Overlays That Switch with Focus

OpenLogi isn’t trying to reinvent your desktop—it’s just trying to stop reinventing your overlays every time you switch apps. The trick it’s using is simple in concept but rare in practice: per-application overlays that turn on the moment your focused window does. No manual toggles, no global settings bleeding into places they don’t belong, just the right translucent chunk of UI appearing exactly where you need it.

What makes this worth your time isn’t the feature itself—it’s how OpenLogi gets there. No account, no telemetry, no cloud middleman holding your layout hostage. Everything runs locally from the first install, which is still surprising in 2024. The overlays themselves ship in an upcoming release, but the configurator is already in your hands if you know where to look.

Technical Overview

Logitech’s hardware is consistently excellent—MX Master mice, MX Keys keyboards, and Litra Glow lights all deliver the polish you’d expect from a company that’s refined its craft over decades. But their software has never quite matched the quality of the devices it’s meant to control. OpenLogi, a community-driven project, is the closest thing we’ve seen to fixing that gap, though it’s still a work in progress.

The project exposes low-level control over Logitech devices, letting you remap buttons, adjust DPI settings, and tweak RGB lighting without relying on Logitech’s bloated Options+ software. It’s particularly useful for power users who want fine-grained control, but the documentation is patchy in places. For example, the MX Keys S’s thumb wheel can be rebinded to control volume or navigate pages—something Logitech’s software won’t let you do cleanly—but the process isn’t always intuitive.

Here’s a minimal config.toml to get you started with an MX Master 4, binding the thumb wheel to volume control:

[devices."2b04:2"]
bindings = {
    "MiddleClick" = "MissionControl",
    "DpiToggle" = "CycleDpiPresets",
    "Thumbwheel" = "VolumeUp",
    "Forward" = "BrowserForward"
}

The project’s biggest hurdle is documentation. The GitHub README lists supported devices, but the mappings aren’t always up-to-date, and some features (like per-device RGB profiles) require digging through source code. Still, for users frustrated by Logitech’s software limitations, OpenLogi is a breath of fresh air—even if it’s not quite plug-and-play yet.

If you’re comfortable with configuration files and willing to tinker, it’s the best alternative out there. If you expect something polished, you’ll hit walls. But given Logitech’s track record, that’s not exactly surprising.

Industry Impact

The per-application overlay approach hits a real pain point—users who bounce between contexts want tools that don’t fight against the OS’s existing window management. If the overlays are tied to the app gaining focus, it’s not just a gimmick; it’s a functional constraint that prevents the kind of jarring state drift we’ve all experienced when switching from a browser tab full of notifications to a terminal session. But the fact it ships in a later release means the real test starts now. The community’s reaction isn’t just skepticism about Logitech’s software—it’s a broader indictment of AI-generated UI elements masquerading as “smart” features. That’s not a hardware problem; it’s a design problem, and the overlays will only work if they respect the user’s intent rather than assuming it.

I don’t think per-app overlays fix the underlying issue if the defaults are still assuming you’re a power user who wants AI writing your mouse settings. The community’s frustration with Logitech’s software isn’t unique to them—it’s the same energy I’ve seen directed at any vendor that treats configuration as an afterthought. Steermouse and Solaar exist because someone, somewhere, realized that even basic remapping shouldn’t require parsing an opaque JSON file. If these overlays ship with the same AI-first assumptions, they’ll just add another layer of indirection between the user and the hardware they paid for.

The open question is whether Logitech—and others—will treat overlays as a workaround or a blueprint. If the latter, we might finally see settings that stay where you left them instead of resetting with every firmware update. If the former, it’ll be yet another thing users have to disable before getting real work done.

Conclusion

The per-app overlays are either going to feel like a neat trick or the first real evolution in peripheral UX in years—and I’m still not sure which.

Either way, the technical details hold up: local execution, no telemetry, and standards like HID++ 0x2111 for the MX Master and 0x2150 for the Keys. The rest is up to how well the overlays adapt to real workflows, not slide decks.

One thing’s clear—if OpenLogi ships this without jank, the bigger question won’t be “does it work,” but whether the industry even cares.