devbits

A lightweight CLI toolkit for daily development utilities — video/image processing, project file management, and more.

Installation

pip install devbits

Requires Python ≥ 3.9.

Usage

All commands are available in two ways:

# As subcommands of devbits
devbits <command> [options]

# As standalone commands
<command> [options]

Use --help on any command for detailed usage and parameter descriptions:

devbits editvideo --help
editvideo --help

Commands

Video

Image

Project / Files

Network

Windows

Examples

# Trim video from 5s to 20s
editvideo movie.mp4 --start 5.0 --end 20.0

# Open interactive clip editor in the browser
editvideo movie.mp4 --gui

# Convert video to GIF (3.5s–10s at 15 fps)
video2gif movie.mp4 --start 3.5 --end 10.0 --fps 15

# Extract every 5th frame as PNG
video2images movie.mp4 --every 5 --format png

# Recolor a logo's foreground to black (keeps the background)
recolor logo.png

# Recolor a logo's foreground to a custom color (hex or R,G,B)
recolor logo.png --color '#1a73e8'
recolor logo.png --color 0,178,179

# Open the Paint-style editor on a blank canvas, or on a photo
draw
draw photo.jpg

batchimages ./photos -o ./resized --size 800,600

# Clean Python caches
clearcache . --all

# List every device on your local network
netscan

# Also identify each device's manufacturer (online OUI lookup)
netscan --lookup

# Scan a specific subnet, faster, without hostname lookups
netscan --network 192.168.1.0/24 --timeout 0.5 --no-resolve

# Map every network segment and address around you (passive, ~2s)
netsurvey

# Segments and conflicts only, no address lists
netsurvey --summary

# Also ping-sweep your ranges and the discovered ones
netsurvey --sweep

# Check specific ranges before assigning them at a venue
netsurvey --include 192.168.1.0/24 --include 10.0.0.0/24

# Show the Wi-Fi networks in range (Linux / Windows)
wifi list

# Pick a Wi-Fi network with the arrow keys, then type the password
wifi connect

# Join a specific network without the picker
wifi connect MyHome-5G

# Turn the Wi-Fi radio on / off
wifi on
wifi off

# Stop a network from auto-connecting
wifi forget OldCafe

# Stop Shift / Alt / Space from switching the input method while gaming
ime disable-hotkeys        # once, applies at the next sign-in
ime start                  # before you play
ime status
ime stop

# Only guard specific games, and leave everything else alone
ime start --apps valorant.exe,cs2.exe

# For exclusive-fullscreen games: remove the other input languages outright
ime start --strict

netscan reports IP, MAC, hostname and (with --lookup) the hardware manufacturer — a network scan can't read a device's CPU/RAM/OS. Phones and laptops that use a randomized/private MAC show up as (private) and can't be attributed to a vendor.

Drawing

draw starts a local server and opens a Paint-style editor in your browser. With no argument you get a blank canvas (--size W,H, default 1280×720); give it an image to edit that instead. Nothing is uploaded anywhere — the page talks only to the devbits process on 127.0.0.1, and closing it with Ctrl+C stops it.

What it covers, following Windows Paint:

Save writes next to the opened image as <stem>_drawn.<ext> — the original is never touched unless you pick its name in Save as — or to ./untitled.png for a blank canvas. -o / --output sets the file directly. An existing file is only replaced after you confirm.

Shortcuts: Ctrl+Z / Ctrl+Y undo / redo, Ctrl+S save, Ctrl+Shift+S save as, Ctrl+O open, Ctrl+A select all, Ctrl+C / X / V clipboard, Ctrl+Shift+X crop, Ctrl+E canvas size, Ctrl+G gridlines, Ctrl+± / Ctrl+0 / Ctrl+1 zoom, Delete, Esc / Enter to finish, arrows to nudge, [ / ] size, X swap colors, and P / B / E / F / I / T / S / Z / U for the tools.

Surveying a shared network

netscan answers "who is on my subnet?". netsurvey answers "what is on this wire?" — the question that matters in an exhibition hall, an office, or a co-working space where other people's routers hand out their own ranges:

INTERFACES
  en0         192.168.0.122/24      gateway 192.168.0.1
  utun6       10.2.244.44/32

SEGMENTS  (3 total, 2 yours, 9 address(es) in use)
  192.168.0.0/24      local (en0)             swept     6 host(s)
    192.168.0.1     06:f2:67:75:4d:e2   gateway,arp,ping      gateway / router
    192.168.0.122   4e:e5:41:93:7c:1f   self,arp,mdns         this device
    ...
  10.77.0.0/24        foreign                 passive   2 host(s)
    10.77.0.9       de:ad:be:ef:00:01   ssdp,arp

CONFLICTS  (2)
  ! [duplicate-ip] 192.168.0.50 answers from 2 MAC addresses (…) — two devices claim the same address
  - [shared-l2] 1 foreign segment(s) share this link: 10.77.0.0/24

Three independent sources are combined, so segments you have no address in still show up:

• every local interface with its real netmask (ip / ifconfig / ipconfig);
• the ARP / neighbour cache, which lists link neighbours regardless of subnet — this is what exposes somebody else's range on the same switch;
• SSDP and mDNS answers, sent out of each interface (skip with --no-passive).

The default pass is passive and takes about two seconds. --sweep additionally ping-sweeps your ranges and the discovered ones so each address list is complete; --include CIDR sweeps a specific range you are about to assign. Ranges larger than --max-sweep (4096 hosts) are narrowed to the /24 around your own address or skipped, with a note on stderr.

Reported conflicts:

Survey only networks you are entitled to. netsurvey sends ordinary pings and standard discovery multicast — nothing privileged — but probing networks you don't administer may still violate policy or law.

Wi-Fi

wifi connect lists everything in range — move with ↑/↓, press Enter to join, Esc to cancel. The password prompt is hidden, skipped for open networks, and skipped again for networks your system already remembers. When stdout isn't a terminal the picker degrades to a numbered prompt, so the command still works over pipes and in scripts.

Each subcommand drives the platform's own tooling, so no extra dependency or driver access is needed:

Scanning support

--password exists for automation but lands in your shell history — prefer the interactive prompt. On Linux, NetworkManager itself takes the passphrase as a command-line argument, so it is briefly visible in the process list.

Linux: polkit and sudo

NetworkManager's polkit rules usually let a local desktop session toggle Wi-Fi without a password, but deny the same thing over SSH. When an operation is refused, wifi says so and re-runs just that nmcli command under sudo, which prompts for your password on the terminal:

Error: Failed to set radio: Not authorized to enable/disable WiFi.
Retrying with sudo (you may be asked for your password) ...

The escalation only happens on an interactive terminal. In a script or pipeline the command fails with the permission error instead of hanging on a prompt.

If you have a shell function or alias named wifi (a common nmcli wrapper), it takes precedence over this command — shell functions win over PATH. Use devbits wifi ..., or remove the function.

macOS: no scanning

wifi list is unsupported on macOS, and wifi connect without an SSID picks from the networks this Mac already remembers rather than what's in range:

$ devbits wifi connect
Listing nearby Wi-Fi networks is not supported on macOS. ...

Falling back to your saved networks.
Select a network to join:
❯ MyHome-5G                     (saved)
  CoffeeShop                    (saved)

Joining by name — wifi connect MyHome-5G — always works, as do on, off and forget.

The reason is that the last remaining macOS API that enumerates networks, system_profiler SPAirPortDataType, replaces every SSID with the literal string <redacted> unless the calling process holds Location Services authorization. That is a TCC privacy permission, not a file permission: sudo does not bypass it, the authorization database is SIP-protected, and a CLI cannot request it — only a bundled app linking CoreLocation can. Rather than ship a pyobjc dependency for one platform, devbits doesn't scan on macOS at all.

Input methods while gaming (Windows)

Games bind Shift, Alt and Space to actions, and Windows binds the same keys to input-method switches. Mid-fight you end up composing Chinese instead of shooting. Three separate mechanisms cause it, each living somewhere different:

So the two commands are complementary: run ime disable-hotkeys once, and ime start before you play.

disable-hotkeys backs up what it replaces (restore-hotkeys puts it back exactly) and takes effect at your next sign-in — the settings are cached by ctfmon.exe, which Windows protects from being restarted.

start runs a background watcher that forces the foreground window back to the English keyboard layout. A layout with no IME attached has no Chinese/English mode to toggle, which is what kills the bare-Shift case. It only posts window messages — no keyboard hook, no DLL injection — so anti-cheat drivers have nothing to object to.

Two things follow from being that well-behaved:

• Elevated games need an elevated watcher. Windows' UIPI silently drops messages posted from a lower integrity level, so a game running as Administrator can only be reached from an Administrator terminal. The watcher detects windows it cannot switch, backs off instead of retrying forever, and names them in ime status.
• Exclusive fullscreen may ignore the messages. Borderless-windowed mode avoids it.

ime start --strict covers both by removing every non-English input language for the duration, which no keystroke can undo. ime stop puts them back; if the watcher is killed without it, ime restore-languages recovers them.

State, backups and the watcher log live in %LOCALAPPDATA%\devbits\ime\.

Output Defaults

When -o / --output is omitted, the output filename is derived from the input:

editvideo movie.mp4          →  movie_clip.mp4
video2gif movie.mp4          →  movie.gif
resizeimage photo.jpg        →  photo_resized.jpg
recolor logo.png             →  logo_revised.png
contactsheet ./photos        →  photos_sheet.jpg
draw photo.jpg (Save)        →  photo_drawn.jpg

License

MIT