MuralDesk

What is MuralDesk?

MuralDesk is a desktop mural layer. You drop images, videos, smart embeds, links, and notes onto a transparent overlay that floats over your real workspace. Cards stay fully interactive — drag, resize, hover controls — while empty space clicks through to whatever's underneath.

It also runs as a clean Progressive Web App in any modern browser. Same board, same shortcuts, same files.

Why it exists

Visual references end up scattered across browser tabs, screenshot folders, second monitors parked on Pinterest, and Slack DMs to yourself.

MuralDesk gives them one quiet wall — pinned next to the work, not on top of it. No account, no cloud, no analytics.

Core features

Desktop overlay

• Transparent, frameless Electron window — only the cards are drawn.
• Empty regions click through to the apps underneath.
• System tray with Show / Toggle Desktop Mode / Quit.
• Toolbar is always compact in Electron (single clean row at any width — Image · Video · Note · Link · Sample · More · Desktop · Min · Close), with a More menu holding every advanced action. The web/PWA build keeps the full inline pill row above 1500 px and collapses to the same compact layout below it.

Mural objects

• Images — local files or direct URLs.
• Videos — local files or direct URLs, silent looping by default with hover controls.
• Notes — editable text cards with a small color palette.
• Links — see Smart link behavior below.
• Per-card hover-only controls: opacity · fit (cover / contain) · lock · duplicate · delete.
• Tidy shelf-packs every card into a clean grid inside the viewport.
• Focus mode centers and enlarges a card with a dimmed backdrop. Esc to exit.
• Snap guides while dragging, with a soft 24 px grid.
• Board opacity, theme, and accent controls in the toolbar.

Smart embeds

A single Add-Link input becomes the right card based on the URL — no source picker, no manual toggles. Embeds support an Interact toggle so playable cards (YouTube, Spotify, CodePen, etc.) can be left ambient or activated on demand.

Local-first storage

• No account. No backend. No cloud.
• Layout in localStorage, media blobs in IndexedDB.
• Per-origin, per-profile — your board never leaves the device unless you export it.

Backup & export

• One-click Backup writes a single portable .muraldesk.json file (layout + base64-inlined media).
• Layout-only Export for quick sharing without media.
• Import auto-detects which of the two formats it's reading and re-sanitizes link URLs on the way in.

Desktop Mode

The Electron build is where MuralDesk earns its name.

• The window itself is transparent — your wallpaper and other apps show through unchanged.
• A renderer-side hit-test flips click-through on the fly: cards stay clickable, empty regions don't capture mouse events.
• Ctrl/Cmd + Shift + D (or the toolbar Desktop pill) expands the overlay to cover the current display using window bounds — not OS-level fullscreen — so cards can move freely across the whole screen.
• The toolbar tucks into a thin reveal-zone at the top — bring the cursor up to show it again.

Multi-monitor support

Capability	Status
Move MuralDesk to any monitor (drag the window)	✅ Available
Cover the current monitor as a transparent mural layer	✅ Available
Span all displays as one big mural canvas	✅ Available (Display toggle in Desktop Mode)
Separate independent boards per monitor	⏳ Not available yet — see Roadmap

Drag the window to whichever monitor you want, then press Ctrl/Cmd + Shift + D to make it cover that screen. The Display toggle in the toolbar switches between current display and all displays and is remembered between launches.

Smart link behavior

Pasted URL	Becomes
YouTube video	Embedded player
Vimeo video	Embedded player
SoundCloud track	Embedded widget
Spotify track / album / playlist	Embedded widget
CodePen pen	Embedded pen
Direct image URL (.png .jpg .gif .webp .svg)	Image card
Direct video URL (.mp4 .webm .mov .ogg)	Looping video card
Any other normal http(s) website	Favicon + title web link card
javascript: / data: / file: / other unsafe URL	Blocked — no card created

Anything that isn't http: or https: is stripped before a card is ever created — both on paste and on backup import.

Local-first storage

• No account, no backend, no cloud sync.
• Layout / metadata lives in localStorage under muraldesk-board.
• Uploaded media blobs live in IndexedDB (muraldesk / media, keyed by UUID).
• Cross-machine portability is handled by the explicit one-click .muraldesk.json backup.
• The brand wordmark uses Vastago, loaded locally from public/fonts/ — no third-party font CDN.