GUI tour

Launching the binary with no subcommand opens the desktop GUI. On the released installers this is what double-clicking the app does (or running it from the Start menu / gtk-launch etch341 on Linux). From a source build, cargo run does the same.

Layout

The window is split into three regions:

• Sidebar (left) — vertical pane selector. The top half is a stepper showing the canonical SPI workflow (Detect → Read → Erase → Write → Verify); click any step at any time, no enforced ordering. Below a thin divider sit the inspection / diagnostic tools (Blank check, Status regs, Hex viewer), and ⚙ Settings is pinned to the bottom.
• Main pane (top right) — the current pane’s controls and content.
• Activity log (bottom) — chronological log of operations, results, and errors. Resizable: drag the splitter to give it more or less vertical space. The height is persisted across launches.

The window’s own size + position is also persisted, so it opens where you left it.

Header

The top header always shows the connection state and the active operation’s progress bar (when one is running). Click the chip name to re-run JEDEC detection — useful after swapping chips without restarting.

Detect

The simplest pane. Click the “Detect chip” button → reads the JEDEC ID via opcode 0x9F → looks up the chip in the embedded database. The log shows the raw JEDEC bytes; the header shows the friendly chip name + capacity once a match lands.

MISO floats high (returns 0xFFFFFF) means the chip isn’t responding — typically clip orientation, missing VCC, or a held HOLD#/CE# pin. MISO stuck low (0x000000) means an in-circuit host controller is actively pulling the line low. See Wiring + voltage for the recovery paths.

Read

Picks a known chip, reads its full contents to a file. The file goes to a timestamped path under ~ by default; the Hex pane can then open that file for inspection.

Erase, Write, Verify

Each of these is arm-then-confirm: first click sets the button to “Click again to confirm” with an amber warning banner; second click within the same pane visit fires the actual destructive operation. Switching panes resets the arm state — there’s no way to accidentally erase a chip by mis-clicking once.

Write does erase + program + verify in one pass by default (the CLI --no-erase / --no-verify flags aren’t exposed in the GUI because the destructive variants are the rare cases).

Hex

The Hex pane has its own internal toggle between Hex view (per-byte hex + ASCII columns, virtualised so it scrolls 32 MB files smoothly) and Strings view (extracted printable ASCII runs, with offset on the left).

Find bar

The unified Find input sits below the Browse button and applies to both Hex and Strings views.

• 55 AA or 55AA → searches for the hex byte pair 0x55 0xAA.
• Award BIOS → searches for the ASCII string (case-insensitive on letters, exact for non-letters).
• 0x10000 → jumps to that offset.

When matches are found, the chevron buttons step between them and a counter shows i+1 / N. The matched bytes get a blue tint in the Hex view; matching strings get bolded in the Strings view.

Byte selection + Cmd+C

Click a byte to anchor a selection. Drag (within a row, or across rows) to extend it. Shift+click to extend the existing selection without resetting the anchor. The footer shows Selection: 0x{lo}..0x{hi} ({N} bytes). Cmd+C copies the selected range as space-separated upper-case hex to the system clipboard. Cmd+C only fires when the Hex pane is the visible pane — typing Cmd+C in any Input still gets normal text copy.

Keyboard shortcuts

Cmd+F (Ctrl+F on Linux/Windows)	Focus the Find input
Cmd+G / Cmd+Shift+G	Next / previous match
Cmd+C	Copy hex selection (Hex pane only)

Status regs

Reads SR1 / SR2 / SR3 and decodes the standard bit fields. Same view (and same logic) as the etch341 sr CLI command — useful for diagnosing “writes silently failing” (block-protect bits set) or “quad mode not enabled” (QE clear). SR1 works on any SPI NOR chip; SR2 / SR3 follow the W25Q convention and show “didn’t respond” on chips that don’t implement them. Raw hex shown for every register so you can cross-check the datasheet.

Settings

The pane is configuration-only — the activity log is hidden while Settings is the active pane so the body has room to breathe. Three sections:

• SPI clock speed selector — 20 / 100 / 400 / 750 kHz. Picks the bus rate every CH341A op uses; saved immediately, the next op picks up the new value when it opens the device.
• Window — restore window position on startup toggle. Off by default; when on, the window’s last bounds are snapshotted on graceful close and restored on next launch.
• Preferences file displays the on-disk prefs path (~/.config/etch341/prefs.toml on Linux/macOS, %APPDATA%\etch341\prefs.toml on Windows) with an Open folder button that pops the containing directory in the OS file manager (open / explorer / xdg-open).

Activity log

Every operation logs [HH:MM:SS] message lines, scrollable, with the most recent at the bottom. Long lines wrap. Drag the splitter above the log to resize it; the height persists.