InstantClone 0.1.14: Stream delay hotkeys, MIDI, a dashboard password and Linux

Hey everyone, s1moscs here.

Two things in this one. First, you can finally drive the delay without leaving your game: global hotkeys and MIDI pads, both working while you're fullscreen. Second, InstantClone now runs on Linux, and the dashboard can have a password on it.

There's also a pile of fixes, including a few that have been quietly sitting there since the very first release.

Drive the delay without alt-tabbing

Arming a delay meant finding the dashboard, which is the one moment you can't afford to be looking somewhere else. Five actions are now bindable:

• Delay on/off
• Arm or disarm the buffer
• Activate the armed delay
• Cut back to live
• Schedule a cut for the moment the current live edge airs

Bind them to a keyboard combo, a MIDI pad, or both. Hotkeys are registered with Windows itself, so they fire under a fullscreen game where a normal keypress never reaches the browser.

Combos need a modifier (Ctrl, Alt, Shift or Win). A bare key would fire by accident mid-game, so it's not allowed on purpose.

If another app already owns a combo, the row tells you instead of silently doing nothing. And if you press an action that can't run right now, a tray balloon says why, where you actually are, instead of on a dashboard you're not looking at.

MIDI, with a learn mode

Click Learn, press the pad, done. Each mapping remembers which device it came from, so two controllers can drive different actions even when they send the same note.

InstantClone only holds a MIDI device open when something is actually bound to it, so it won't take your controller hostage from your DAW or deck software the rest of the time. If you use both, narrow Listen to down to the one controller you want.

A password for your dashboard, if you want one

Off by default, and nothing changes if you leave it off.

• Dashboard password in System → Network. Rate-limited, and the first password can only be set from the machine itself, so nobody on your network can claim it before you do.
• Ingest key, so a second machine on your LAN can't push into your delay if you've turned on "listen on all interfaces".
• OBS dock token, separate from your password, so a docked panel inside OBS can run the delay but can't change your settings.

Caution

There is no reset link, by design: one reachable over the network wouldn't be much of a lock. If you forget it, delete the dashboard_password_hash= line from instantclone.config.json next to the app and restart.

Your overlays keep working with a password on. They read a separate feed that only carries the numbers they draw, so nothing that names you or your destinations ever reaches a page that's composited into your stream.

Linux builds

instantclone-v0.1.14-linux-x64 runs headless on a VPS or on an Ubuntu desktop. There's no system tray there, so the dashboard is the whole control surface and Quit and Restart live in its System tab. One-click update works there too.

Global hotkeys and MIDI stay Windows-only, since both sit on Win32 APIs.

This is the first Linux release, so treat it as new. If something's off, tell me and I'll fix it.

Fixes

A few of these have been there since the beginning:

• A delay running for 49.7 days straight would empty its own buffer. RTMP timestamps roll over at that mark and the buffer trim followed them backwards. Only reachable by streaming without interruption for seven weeks, so it's the unattended-relay case rather than the streamer one.
• A stream key or webhook URL with non-Latin characters crashed the app. The bit that hides your key on the dashboard counted bytes where it should have counted characters, so any Japanese, Cyrillic or emoji character in the value took the whole process down, then did it again on every dashboard load until you hand-edited the config.
• A crafted /overlay?lang= link could run script on InstantClone's own origin, which is enough to read your stream key.
• Video could be pushed into the delay without publishing first, which skipped the stream key check entirely.
• "Start with Windows" died at launch with "Access is denied". Windows starts autostart entries from System32, so the config next to the exe was never read and the buffer was aimed at a folder no normal program can write.
• "Failed to connect" when OBS is set to IP Family = IPv6. The registered service now uses localhost, which resolves under every IP Family setting.
• The Register button could stick, both on a services.json OBS had rewritten and after an unregister.
• Recording a hotkey no longer fires the action you're recording, hotkeys aren't torn down and rebuilt on every arm and cut any more, and a MIDI controller swapped between polls gets noticed.

Updating repairs your OBS service entry by itself. If you'd registered the InstantClone service, an update used to leave that entry pointing at the old shape of things. It now fixes itself quietly, and waits for OBS to close first so the repair isn't undone.

Thanks

• @4amMagic on X for the hotkeys and MIDI idea. This whole release started there.
• @GM0NIE on X for reporting the autostart crash, and for testing the fix.

Keep them coming. Most of what ends up here starts as someone telling me something is annoying.

InstantClone is open source and the build isn't code-signed yet, so Windows Defender may show a false positive on first download OR even block it. You can verify the file against SHA256SUMS.txt, scan it on VirusTotal, or build it yourself. A signed build is on the way.