RawInputViewer

A utility to test, visualize, and map WM_INPUT messages. Windows only.

What it does

RawInputViewer listens for WM_INPUT keyboard messages and shows each event in a list view: virtual key, scan code, flags, SAL, Raylib, and GLFW key name mappings, and which physical device sent the input.

Download

Ready made Windows binaries are attached to GitHub Releases:

File	Description
RawInputViewer-x64.exe	64 bit Windows (recommended)
RawInputViewer-x86.exe	32 bit Windows

Download and run. If SmartScreen complains, choose More info and then Run anyway. The release builds are not code signed. To compile your own copy, see How to Build.

Using the app

Press keys on any connected keyboard. Each key down and key up appears as a new row. Values that Adjust mode changed are drawn in bold.

Clear the list with the Clear button on the main toolbar, or with a right click anywhere. The app registers for raw mouse input and treats a right button release as clear.

Main toolbar

Button	Type	Description
Clear	action	Removes every row from the list and resets internal key sequence state.
Adjust	toggle (on by default)	Normalizes raw keyboard data before display. It fills in missing make codes from the virtual key, handles E0 and E1 scan code sequences, tells left from right Shift, Ctrl, and Alt, and resolves Pause/Break versus Num Lock on scan code 0x45. Turn it off to see the unmodified RAWINPUT keyboard fields.

Status bar (right side)

These toggles call RegisterRawInputDevices again with different flags. Both start checked, which matches ordinary Windows behavior.

Button	Type	Checked (default)	Unchecked
No Hotkeys	toggle	System hotkeys such as Alt+Tab behave normally.	RIDEV_NOHOTKEYS is set. Hotkey combinations reach this app as raw keyboard input instead of triggering the system action.
No Legacy	toggle	Legacy WM_KEY* and WM_MOUSE* messages are still generated alongside raw input.	RIDEV_NOLEGACY is set. Legacy keyboard and mouse messages for the registered devices are suppressed.

If re-registration fails, the toggle returns to its previous state.

List view column headers

Click the arrow on a numeric column header to change the display format where that is supported:

• Decimal, Hexadecimal, or Binary for virtual key, make code, flags, and key code columns
• SAL, Raylib, or GLFW for the key code name column

Window size, column widths, and display formats are saved under HKEY_CURRENT_USER and restored on the next launch.

How to Build

Build on Windows with Visual Studio. There is no Linux or macOS port and no cross compilation. The x64 and x86 binaries both come from native MSVC on the same machine, using different CMake architecture presets.

The project uses Visual Studio with C++23 and modern C++ features such as concepts and ranges.

What you need

• Visual Studio 2022 or newer with the Desktop development with C++ workload installed.

Steps

1. Clone the repository

   git clone https://github.com/RealBitdancer/RawInputViewer.git && cd RawInputViewer

2. Configure with CMake

   The Visual Studio generator comes from the host default, so any installed version will do.

   64 bit:

   cmake --preset default

   32 bit:

   cmake --preset msvc-x86

3. Build

   From the command line:

   cmake --build --preset release

   Presets are debug, release, x86-debug, and x86-release.

   Or open the generated solution in Visual Studio, choose Debug or Release, and press F5 or Ctrl+F5:

   start build\msvc-x64\RawInputViewer.sln

   Recent CMake and Visual Studio versions may produce RawInputViewer.slnx instead of RawInputViewer.sln.

Background

While working on a personal platform abstraction library (SAL), I kept running into WM_INPUT quirks. I wrote a small Windows desktop program to test keyboard input on different machines. It was meant for my own use. After reading more about raw input, I thought others wrestling with the same API might find it useful, so I cleaned it up enough to show in public. Here it is.

Attribution

Icons and bitmaps were assembled with Axialis IconWorshop.

License

MIT. See LICENSE. Copyright (c) 2025-2026 Bitdancer (github.com/RealBitdancer).

See also Changelog, Contributing, and Security.