A SteamVR-style XR orchestrator & overlay for Monado on Linux
Built for a Monado and xrizer-only workflow, where Envision's design didn't fit.
The in-headset game-library dashboard
 In-headset settings |
 Playspace tools |
 Desktop control panel |
AI usage: This project was developed with AI assistance (Anthropic's Claude), under human direction, testing, and review.
Monadeck is two halves that share one library: an in-headset overlay you live in while you're in VR, and a small desktop control panel that looks after your Monado runtime.
- 🎮 Your whole library, curved around you: Steam games and non-Steam shortcuts together on a SteamVR-style dashboard, with cover art, hero banners, and logos pulled from your Steam artwork.
▶️ Launch and stop without leaving VR: start a game from the dashboard; an active-game card shows what's running, with the cover, a Stop button, and how long the current session has gone.- 🪟 Juggle multiple VR apps: Monado can run several VR apps at once, so the Monado tab lists them and lets you pick which one your headset shows, freeze an app's controllers in place, or kill it. The freeze action only shows on a runtime that supports it.
- 🥽 Flat games in VR with UEVR: toggle VR Mod on a non-Steam Unreal Engine game and Monadeck launches it with UEVR injected automatically (via chihuahua, under Proton; needs
protontricks). - 🔍 Find things fast: search with an on-screen keyboard, ⭐ favourite the ones you reach for, and sort any list by recent · name · playtime · size.
- 🗂️ Your own collections: group games into named collections (Seated, Standing, whatever) and browse them as their own shelves.
- ⏱️ A handy timer: set a countdown from the Tools tab; when it's up it rings a chime and drops an in-headset notification, even over a running game. Low-battery warnings work the same way.
- 🛋️ Comfortable placement: move the dashboard closer or further, resize it, flatten the curve, tilt it to match where you're looking, or just grab it and put it where you want.
- 🧭 Playspace tools, OVRAS-style: nudge your floor and whole play area on any axis (height, forward/back, left/right) and rotate it, in fixed steps, with recenter and reset. Your offsets persist and re-apply when the runtime restarts.
- 🔋 At-a-glance status: a bottom bar with the time and live controller/tracker batteries.
- 📦 Get a runtime in one click: install a prebuilt build of the Monado fork and the latest xrizer straight from GitHub (no compiling), or point Monadeck at your own.
- 🚀 Run your Monado service: start and stop it with your own environment variables.
- 🎛️ Switch runtimes safely: register xrizer as the OpenVR runtime and point OpenXR at Monado, backing up and restoring your existing config so it never eats a working SteamVR setup.
- ⚡ One-click
CAP_SYS_NICE: the permission Monado wants after a rebuild, applied with a single authorised click. - 🎮 Manage your games: per-game launch options and xrizer controller-binding overrides.
- 🧩 Plugins by explicit path: no
$PATH, no.desktopfiles. - 🔌 Live device list: HMD, controllers, trackers, and battery via libmonado.
It deliberately doesn't build Monado from source or manage drivers, though it can fetch a prebuilt build of the fork and the latest xrizer for you (see Requirements). For source builds, driver profiles, and full dependency management, that's what Envision is for.
Two parts, one configuration:
- Desktop app: where you set up the runtime, manage your games, artwork, bindings, and launch options. It sits in a normal window with custom chrome.
- In-headset overlay: an OpenXR dashboard the desktop app launches for you when VR starts. The overlay is bundled inside the desktop app, so there's nothing extra to install.
- Linux. That's the only hard requirement to get started.
- A Monado-based OpenXR runtime and xrizer for OpenVR/SteamVR games, but not up front: Monadeck can install a prebuilt build of the fork and the latest xrizer for you (Settings → General → Install built-in), or use your own existing build / fork.
- Steam (with Proton for Windows games), which Monadeck reads for your library and Steam's cover art.
- A headset exposing info through libmonado for the live device and battery strip (optional).
cd desktop
pnpm install
pnpm tauri buildThis produces a .rpm, .deb, and .AppImage in desktop/src-tauri/target/release/bundle/, install the one for your distro. On Fedora/Nobara the rpm and AppImage work out of the box; the .deb needs dpkg. The in-headset launcher is bundled inside the package, so there's nothing else to set up.
- Launch Monadeck and open Settings → General. Either click Install built-in Monado / Install built-in xrizer to download a prebuilt fork build and the latest xrizer, or set your own Monado build prefix (e.g.
~/monado/build/install) and xrizer runtime path. Monadeck also tries to autodetect both from$PATHand your current active runtime. - Start the runtime, then register xrizer/OpenXR (your existing config is backed up automatically). If a rebuild left Monado without
CAP_SYS_NICE, accept the prompt to apply it. - Put the headset on, the dashboard opens. Press the system button on your left controller to summon or dismiss it; point + trigger to select, grip to grab and move it.
- Browse, search, favourite, and drop games into collections. The Tools, Playspace, and Settings tabs live at the bottom of the left rail; tune the dashboard under Settings → Placement and your floor / play area under Playspace.
Artwork tip: Monadeck reads JPEG/PNG cover and hero art from Steam's grid folder and library cache. If a cover came down as AVIF (some SteamGridDB downloads are, even with a .png name) it won't decode, so re-save it as PNG/JPEG, then hit Settings → Refresh library to re-scan without restarting.
# Desktop app (the control panel + UI)
cd desktop && pnpm install && pnpm tauri dev
# Overlay on its own (normally the desktop app launches it)
cargo run -p monadeck-overlayThe project is a Rust workspace: crates/core (runtime orchestration, library and artwork scanning, shared config) and crates/overlay (the OpenXR dashboard), alongside desktop/, a Tauri 2 + SvelteKit (Svelte 5) app with custom window chrome. desktop is excluded from the root workspace so its webkit dependency tree stays out of the core build. Config and overlay preferences live under ~/.config/monadeck/.
Overlay environment variable: MONADECK_OVERLAY_FLAT forces a flat quad panel instead of the curved cylinder (for runtimes without cylinder-layer support, or comparison).
Uses the wayvr-org/libmonado-rs pin (dlopen-based). It dlopens whatever libmonado.so the active runtime points at (your fork's), so an older client against a newer library stays on the safe side.
MIT.