Windows

Use the Windows x64 or ARM64 setup or portable ZIP. Windows ARM requires Windows 11. The app and chemistry tools run natively and work offline.

Keyboard and files

Windows uses Ctrl for application shortcuts: Ctrl+N/O/S for new/open/save, Ctrl+W to close a tab, Ctrl+Tab or Ctrl+1–9 to switch tabs, Ctrl+Z to undo, Ctrl+Y or Ctrl+Shift+Z to redo, and Ctrl+A/C/X/V to select, copy, cut and paste. Ctrl+Shift+G ungroups; Ctrl+G groups. Alt allows free bond drawing and moves without smart guides. Escape leaves the current tool or cancels a draft.

Use .rsk for an editable original, including pages, pictures and styles. SVG/PDF/PNG and EMF export figures; chemical interchange formats retain their supported subset. Windows file dialogs support paths containing spaces and Unicode.

Export → Figure → EMF for Office saves a vector picture for Microsoft Office with outlined text, the canvas background and the drawing’s physical dimensions. SVG for Office gives the same physical size and outlined text as SVG. Keep the .rsk file to edit the original drawing. See figure export for format details and limits.

Import → Choose file… also inserts .emf pictures, such as spectra, at the size recorded in the file. The .rsk file keeps the original EMF and a preview; other platforms show the preview. See pictures.

When ReShiki is running, opening another file adds it as a tab in the existing window, and a file that is already open switches to its tab. Each drawing opened from Office gets its own tab, named after its application (for example Drawing in PowerPoint.rsk), and saving it updates only that Office document. See the open-in-tab record for the transport and its limits.

Clipboard

Normal Copy/Paste within ReShiki retains editable atoms, bonds, captions, arrows, graphics, pictures and groups. Cut removes the selection only after the clipboard write succeeds. Ctrl+Shift+C copies an image; Import → Paste picture explicitly pastes a picture.

Windows Copy provides native ReShiki data, supported editable interchange data and an editable Office object containing the complete drawing and a preview. The editable preview uses vector paths for bonds and outlined text, preserving smooth edges when resized and transparency over colored pages and slides. Copy Image provides PNG, SVG, PDF and a standard bitmap. PNG preserves transparency and resolution; the standard bitmap uses a white background. PNG file export also uses a white background. Imported external formats remain subject to the clipboard limits.

To copy an embedded ChemDraw structure from PowerPoint, select the whole object on the slide and press Ctrl+C, then press Ctrl+V in ReShiki. Objects containing supported ChemDraw CDX import as editable atoms and bonds. A picture alone remains a picture; Import → Paste picture explicitly chooses the preview. See the validation and review checklist for this import path and its limits.

Edit a drawing in Office

1. Select objects in ReShiki and use Ctrl+C.
2. Paste into desktop Word, PowerPoint or Excel. If necessary, use Paste Special → ReShiki drawing object.
3. Double-click the drawing to open it in ReShiki. Keep the Office document open.
4. Edit and press Ctrl+S. ReShiki confirms when Office accepts the update.
5. Close the drawing’s tab (Ctrl+W) and save the Office document.

The Office file contains the drawing; it does not depend on an external .rsk file. ReShiki must be installed to edit it. The installer registers the editor, and the portable version registers its current location when you copy. After moving a portable installation, copy once from its new location. If Office closes or rejects an update, ReShiki reports the error and retains a local copy. Use Save as to keep a separate editable original.

Use Copy Image for a static figure or for applications that only accept pictures. Its SVG outlines text so Office cannot shift atom labels. Existing pictures are not converted into editable chemistry by installing this update. To refresh an existing embedded ReShiki object’s older bitmap preview, double-click it, press Ctrl+S in ReShiki, then save the Office document.

Excel adds its own white fill and outline to newly pasted OLE objects. Select the object, press Ctrl+1, and choose Colors and Lines → Fill → No fill to show worksheet cells through the transparent preview. Its outline is also controlled by Excel. ReShiki’s preview itself contains no background fill.

Share with a Mac

The .rsk file format works on both platforms. For a document that needs editing on a Mac, keep that original alongside the Office document and replace the figure after editing it. The Windows OLE double-click workflow is not available in Mac Office. ReShiki’s macOS clipboard, native printing and renderer remain separate from the Windows implementation. See platform boundaries.

Printing

Use Page setup to choose the paper, orientation, margins and page grid, and preview the drawing. Ctrl+P or Export → Print opens the Windows print dialog. Choose the printer, page range, copies and driver preferences. Microsoft Print to PDF produces a local PDF when that Windows printer is installed. Print selection uses a separate snapshot of the selected objects.

The drawing retains publication dimensions. Text prints as vector outlines, and pictures preserve their placement and transparency. Export PDF when you need the application’s embedded-font PDF rather than printer output. Cancelling printing leaves the drawing, selection and undo history intact.

Release performance and debugging

Use cargo run --release --locked to measure performance. Debug builds perform substantially more work in drawing and layout. Measure idle CPU after the drawing and chemistry finish loading.

Windows includes both Iced’s WGPU renderer and its Tiny Skia software fallback. Automatic startup uses Direct3D 12 for adapter discovery and WGPU initialization, avoiding unnecessary initialization of OpenGL and Vulkan drivers. If no adapters are available, or all are CPU adapters such as Microsoft’s WARP, ReShiki selects Tiny Skia directly. Otherwise Iced tries WGPU first and falls back to Tiny Skia if initialization returns an error. An unclassified adapter is allowed to try WGPU. A native graphics driver crash cannot be recovered by this fallback. GPU rendering accelerates the interface and canvas; it does not move chemistry calculations or file export onto the GPU.

To inspect the adapters and automatic startup preference in PowerShell:

.\reshiki.exe --graphics-info | Write-Output

This reports adapter discovery, not successful window or device creation. requested_wgpu_backends lists the APIs used for discovery and allowed when WGPU runs; startup_preference includes any explicit renderer preference. automatic_preference reports the choice based on the discovered adapters. When an explicit renderer list contains no wgpu candidate, discovery is skipped: adapter_probe_performed is false, automatic_preference is null and the adapter and backend lists are empty. For an explicit comparison, set ICED_BACKEND before launching the same release build. wgpu forces WGPU (including WARP when that is the only adapter), while tiny-skia forces software rendering. wgpu,tiny-skia tries both in that order. An explicit preference bypasses the automatic CPU-adapter check.

$env:ICED_BACKEND = 'wgpu'
.\reshiki.exe
# Close that test window before starting the comparison.
$env:ICED_BACKEND = 'tiny-skia'
.\reshiki.exe
# Restore automatic selection for subsequent launches in this shell.
Remove-Item Env:ICED_BACKEND

WGPU_BACKEND also constrains adapter discovery, matching Iced’s WGPU backend selection; for example, dx12, vulkan, or gl,dx12. Existing values are preserved. WGPU ignores unknown names; an empty value or a list containing no recognized names enables no backends. An empty or comma-only ICED_BACKEND uses automatic selection. A nonempty renderer preference bypasses both the automatic CPU-adapter check and the Direct3D 12 default, retaining Iced’s usual backend selection unless WGPU_BACKEND is set. Software-only VMs cannot establish a hardware acceleration speedup; measure on a machine that exposes a hardware adapter to Windows as well.

For a repeatable desktop CPU comparison, run this from an interactive Windows session after the release build finishes:

.\scripts\benchmark_windows_renderer.ps1 -Executable .\target\release\reshiki.exe

The script opens isolated copies of the built-in shortcut drawing, samples idle CPU, then moves the pointer and scrolls over the canvas at a fixed cadence. It runs software and WGPU twice in opposite order plus one automatic-selection trial. Results and desktop captures go under artifacts/windows-renderer-benchmark. It temporarily controls the pointer and foreground window, then restores them and the previous environment settings. CPU percentages are normalized across all logical processors. This measures CPU cost for the input workload, not achieved frame rate or input latency. See the Windows VM validation for measured results and their limits.

The idle timer correction from v0.4.0 remains in place. The original Windows software-only choice avoided expensive editing through WARP; it was separate from the v0.3.0 idle-redraw issue that continuously used about 89% CPU on the earlier test VM.

Windows clipboard, printing and process detection are implemented in Rust and linked into the application. No .NET runtime, C# compiler or extra native helper is needed. The editor forbids unsafe Rust; Win32 FFI is isolated in native/windows, with bounded data and ownership guards.

The experimental reshiki.exe --cli commands (ReShiki 0.12.0 and later) follow the same rule as --graphics-info: release builds have no console, so their output and error messages appear only when piped or redirected, for example .\reshiki.exe --cli info | Write-Output or .\reshiki.exe --cli convert --smiles CCO -o ethanol.mol 2> errors.txt. Piping also makes PowerShell wait for the command to finish, and $LASTEXITCODE then holds its exit status. MCP clients connect pipes when they start reshiki.exe --mcp, so the MCP server is unaffected. See Connect AI agents and the command-line reference.

Verification scope

Windows integration tests exercise the real clipboard, editable and image round-trips, standard bitmap resolution, malformed data, active-process detection and the actual Windows print renderer’s physical dimensions and placement. The full shared test suite covers drawing, chemistry, templates, labels, reactions, graphics, pictures, page layouts, file formats, recovery and asynchronous assistant state. Windows x64/ARM and macOS Rust checks and Python tests passed for the vector-preview change in this CI run.

Desktop Word, PowerPoint and Excel were checked with normal Copy/Paste, double-click editing in ReShiki, and Ctrl+S updates accepted by Office. Saved documents retain the native drawing and a transparent vector preview. Enlarged figures were inspected in all three applications; Excel’s separate object fill was set to No fill for the transparency check.

The earlier worker-based Windows x64 package was extracted outside the checkout and checked for missing-uv guidance, first-use setup and offline reuse. Its installer was checked for installation, in-place upgrade, chemistry and uninstallation without removing user data. The live assistant connected and produced a validated ethanol drawing through the user’s installed Codex executable.

Local desktop checks use Windows 11 x64. ARM CI does not establish graphical acceptance on ARM hardware. Windows 10, physical printers, other display scales and every external application’s clipboard behavior require testing on those systems. See the visual Windows guide for screenshots.