SteelSeriesSvc

SteelSeries Integration Service

🔆 Tints MSI SteelSeries keyboards with Windows accent color.

What's this?

This is a tiny utility that synchronizes the Windows accent/Aero color and your SteelSeries keyboard tint in real time.

It's actually a Windows program that runs (preferably) as a service.

Quick start

1. Download this and extract in any folder not directly writable by you(e.g. C:\Program Files, C:\Windows, etc.).
2. Open an elevated command prompt and run SteelSeriesSvc install.
3. Start the service on services.msc or run net start SteelSeriesSvc. Alternatively, you can just log out and in again.

The service is set to run automatically with Windows. You can change some settings by using the standard sc utility or using the services.msc snap-in.

Compatibility

This software has only been tested on the latest Windows 10 April build, but will theoretically work in any Windows OS starting from Windows 7.

Only the MSI laptop keyboard has been tested and I'm not sure it will work with other SteelSeries keyboards, as I don't know if they share the same HID features or hardware IDs. Pull requests welcome.

Also the PID/VID matching is "a bit" hacky, but it Works On My Machine™. Again, pull requests more than welcome.

Security

By default, the service runs as the .\LocalSystem account. This is probably okay, but if you are overly paranoid there's a way you can work around that. More on that just right below.

Usage and Installation

Grab the latest release and extract it to somewhere kinda safe. Like, you don't want the executable to be in a user writable location, because it will be executed as SYSTEM by default. Not good.

As a standalone program

> cd <your safe directory where the .exe file is>
> SteelSeriesSvc start

That's it. It will keep running until you issue a Ctrl-C or close the console window.

As A Service™

Open an elevated command prompt and

> cd <the directory containing the .exe file>
> SteelSeriesSvc install
> net start SteelSeriesSvc

Congrats! You just installed and started the service! It runs automatically so you don't have to worry about changing its start type or anything.

Running as your user account

Because the service runs as SYSTEM user, it has "some extra" privileges that may affect security under some circumstances (i.e. the .exe file is replaced by something else) You can use services.msc to change the user account the service runs on or type the following command in an elevated prompt:

> sc config SteelSeriesSvc obj=<your user name> password=<optional>

Restart the service and it should be up and running, with no extra privileges.

Uninstalling the service

Execute the following command in an elevated prompt:

> sc delete SteelSeriesSvc

Voilà! No more integration. You can now safely remove the .exe file, too.

Building

In a Native Tools Command Prompt, Visual Studio Command Prompt or equivalent:

> git clone https://github.com/my-nick-is-taken/SteelSeriesSvc
> cd SteelSeriesSvc
> MSBuild /p:Configuration=Release

Or just clone and open the SteelSeriesSvc.sln file and build from Visual Studio.

Open-source code

This software has no external dependencies, and is subject to the terms of the GNU GPL v2 license. You can find a copy of the license terms in the LICENSE.md file.

SteelSeriesSvc -- Tints MSI SteelSeries keyboards with Windows accent color
Copyright (c) 2018 Angel P.

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or
modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License
as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2
of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software
Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA  02110-1301, USA.