FluentFlyout: A Sleek, Modern Flyout Menu for Windows Devs Who Crave Polish
If you've ever used a modern Windows app and thought, "This flyout menu could look a lot better," you're not alone. Microsoft's Fluent Design System is great on paper, but actual implementation in third-party tools often feels clunky or half-baked. That's where FluentFlyout comes in. It's a lightweight, open-source flyout menu built with Fluent Design in mind, and it's refreshingly simple to use.
I stumbled across this on GitHub while looking for a way to add a clean volume/brightness overlay to my Windows dev setup. Instead of hacking together something ugly, I found a project that just works and looks damn good doing it. Let's dig in.
What It Does
FluentFlyout is a Windows native flyout widget. Think of it as a modern replacement for the old-school volume or brightness popups that Windows still ships. It displays a smooth, animated overlay with controls for things like volume, brightness, or any custom action you bind to it.
Under the hood, it's built with C# and WinUI 3, using the Windows App SDK. So it's not another Electron monstrosity — it's lean, native, and integrates with the OS via system APIs. You can trigger it with a keyboard shortcut, mouse gesture, or even a hotkey from your own app.
Why It’s Cool
A few things make this stand out from the usual "I made a volume slider" project:
Fluent Design done right. The animations feel buttery smooth — acrylic blur, reveal highlights, and light/dark mode support. It doesn't try to do too much.
Modular and extensible. The flyout is container-based. You can swap out the volume display for a brightness slider, a media playback control, or even a custom action. The codebase is small and well-structured, so extending it is straightforward.
System tray integration. It lives in the system tray and respects DPI changes, multi-monitor setups, and Windows scale settings. Not just a toy — it's production-ready for your own tooling.
No garbage UI frameworks. WinUI 3 means it feels like a first-class Windows component, not a web wrapper. Startup is instant, memory usage is negligible.
How to Try It
You need Windows 10 1809+ and the Windows App SDK runtime. That's it.
Clone the repo, build it, or grab the precompiled binary from the releases section:
git clone https://github.com/unchihugo/FluentFlyout.git
cd FluentFlyout
dotnet build -