XVW

A high-performance, modern binary & hex editor built with Rust and GPUI.

⚡ Fast. GPU-Accelerated. Interactive Structure Parsing. Intuitive. ⚡

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📖 Overview

XVW (X-View) is a next-generation binary and hex editor designed for reverse engineers, security researchers, firmware engineers, and system developers.

Built on top of the ultra-fast GPUI framework (the hardware-accelerated UI toolkit powering the Zed editor) and backed by Rust and Tokio, XVW combines the blistering speed of memory-mapped native execution with a sleek, modern IDE-like interface.

Whether analyzing proprietary firmware, reverse engineering protocol packets, inspecting multi-gigabyte disk images, or diffing binaries, XVW offers a complete suite of professional binary exploration tools.

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✨ Key Features

🏎️ GPU-Accelerated Fluid Rendering & Memory-Mapped I/O

• Instantaneous 120 FPS Rendering: Leveraging GPUI's hardware-accelerated rendering pipeline for jitter-free, smooth scrolling.
• Large File Support: Employs zero-copy memory mapping (memmap2) to open and navigate multi-gigabyte binary files instantly without memory bottlenecks.

🧬 Dynamic Binary Structure Parsing (Kaitai Struct)

• Runtime .ksy Loading: Load Kaitai Struct YAML format specifications on the fly (Cmd+Shift+S) without rebuilding or restarting.
• Interactive Structure Tree: Explore complex nested headers, variable-length fields, bit flags, and sub-structures.
• Bi-directional Navigation: Clicking any field in the structure tree instantly focuses and highlights the corresponding byte range in the Hex View, and vice-versa.
• Inline Structure View: Toggle inline annotations directly within the hex buffer (Cmd+Shift+V).

🔍 Real-Time Data Inspector

• Click anywhere in the hex grid to inspect the byte sequence interpreted across multiple types simultaneously:
  • Integers: int8 / uint8, int16 / uint16, int32 / uint32, int64 / uint64
  • Floating Point: float32 (Single precision), float64 (Double precision)
  • Timestamps: 32-bit & 64-bit Unix Epoch to formatted UTC Date & Time
  • Text Encodings: ASCII, UTF-8, UTF-16
  • Hex Representations: 8-bit, 16-bit, 32-bit, 64-bit
• Supports instant switching between Little Endian and Big Endian byte ordering.

🗺️ 2D Visual Map & Entropy Visualization

• Visualize binary data distributions across configurable columns and pixel scales.
• Multiple color modes:
  • Grayscale: Density and raw byte magnitude.
  • Data Category: Instantly distinguish null bytes, ASCII printable text, control characters, and high-byte sequences.
  • Rainbow: High-contrast spectrum for locating embedded assets, encrypted blocks, and compressed data streams.

🎨 8-Color Multi-Layer Highlights & Annotation Management

• Highlight byte ranges in 8 distinct colors (Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Cyan, Blue, Purple, Pink).
• Dedicated Highlights Panel to list, filter, jump between, and delete highlights.
• Import / Export Highlights: Save and share analysis bookmarks as JSON files across sessions.

📐 Custom Line Breaks & Adaptive Grid Formatting

Break free from rigid 16-byte hex rows:

• Custom Line Breaks: Insert custom line breaks (Enter) to align lines with logical packet or struct boundaries.
• Join Lines (Shift+J): Combine lines dynamically.
• Reset Layout (Cmd+Shift+Backspace): Revert back to the standard grid layout instantly.

🌓 Universal Radix, Grouping & Encoding Engine

• Radix Switching: Hexadecimal (Base 16), Decimal (Base 10), Octal (Base 8), and Binary (Base 2).
• Byte Grouping: Group columns by 1 Byte (8-bit), 2 Bytes (16-bit), 4 Bytes (32-bit), or 8 Bytes (64-bit).
• Text Encodings: Real-time side-by-side interpretation in ASCII, UTF-8, UTF-16 LE, and UTF-16 BE.

⚖️ Side-by-Side Binary Diffing

• Compare two binary files with synchronized dual-pane scrolling.
• Visual difference indicators highlighting insertions, deletions, and modifications.
• Step through differences sequentially (Next Difference / Prev Difference).

🧮 Checksum & Hash Calculation Panel

• Real-time checksum calculations over whole files or active selections:
  • Sums: Sum 8-bit, Sum 16-bit, Sum 32-bit, Sum 64-bit
  • CRCs: CRC-16 (CCITT, ARC), CRC-32, Adler-32
  • Cryptographic Hashes: MD5, SHA-256

📋 Rich "Copy As" Export Formats

Copy selected bytes in one click into ready-to-use formats:

• Hex Dump (Cmd+Shift+C)
• C/C++ Array (const uint8_t data[] = { ... })
• Rust Array (const DATA: [u8; N] = [ ... ])
• JSON Array ([0, 255, ...])
• Base64 String
• Hex Stream (00FF...) & Hex with Spaces (00 FF ...)
• Escaped String (\x00\xFF...)
• Printable Text & Binary Strings

🖥️ Modern IDE Workspace & Vim Keybindings

• Tab & Multi-Pane Layout: Open multiple files in tabs, with horizontal (Cmd+\) and vertical (Cmd+Shift+D) split panes.
• Collapsible Sidebar: Access File Tree, Kaitai Structure, Highlights, and Checksum panels via the Activity Bar.
• Vim Navigation: Use h, j, k, l to move, Shift+H/J/K/L to expand selection, / to search, and n / N for next/previous match.
• Full Search Support: Incremental search with Hex, Text, and Regex modes.

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⌨️ Keybindings Cheat Sheet

Navigation & Cursor Movement

Shortcut	Action
h / Left	Move Left
l / Right	Move Right
k / Up	Move Up
j / Down	Move Down
Shift + h/j/k/l	Expand Selection
Home / Cmd+Home	Jump to Beginning of File
End / Cmd+End	Jump to End of File
PageUp / PageDown	Page Scroll

Search & Layout

Shortcut	Action
Cmd+F / /	Toggle Search Bar
Cmd+G / n / F3	Next Search Match
Cmd+Shift+G / Shift+N / Shift+F3	Previous Search Match
Enter	Insert Custom Line Break
Shift+J	Join Line
Backspace / Delete	Remove Line Break (Backward / Forward)
Cmd+Shift+Backspace	Reset All Custom Breaks

Structure & Workspace

Shortcut	Action
Cmd+O	Open File Dialog
Cmd+Shift+O	Open Directory / Folder
Cmd+B	Toggle Left Sidebar
Cmd+W / Ctrl+W	Close Active Tab
Cmd+\	Split Editor Pane Right
Cmd+Shift+D	Split Editor Pane Down
Cmd+1 .. Cmd+9	Switch to Tab 1–9
Cmd+Shift+S	Load Kaitai Structure Definition (.ksy)
Cmd+Shift+V	Toggle Inline Structure View
Cmd+,	Open Settings
Cmd+Shift+C	Copy Selection as Hex Dump

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🚀 Getting Started

Prerequisites

• Rust (edition 2024 / latest stable)

Build & Run

# Clone the repository
git clone https://github.com/your-username/xvw.git
cd xvw

# Run directly
cargo run

# Or open a specific file or folder directly from command line
cargo run -- path/to/binary_file.bin
cargo run -- path/to/folder

# Build an optimized release binary
cargo build --release

# Run the unit test suite
cargo test

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📄 License

This project is licensed under the MIT License / Apache-2.0. See LICENSE for details.