Lua Apps

Lua Apps (installable app platform)

🐱📦 Contributed — the Lua runtime + app platform were contributed by Caliun (PR #2); integrated here as an opt-in feature.

⚠️ Experimental — off by default. You must enable it in Settings before it does anything (see below). It runs scripts from the SD card in a sandbox.

Install and run small Lua apps straight from the SD card — no firmware rebuild, no toolchain. Great for community apps and quick tools.

Enabling it

It ships disabled. To turn it on:

1. Settings ▸ Features ▸ Lua apps → toggle on.
2. Confirm Reboot when prompted (the change applies on boot).

When off, there is zero Lua activity — no App-manager tile, no SD scan, nothing runs. When on, an App manager tile appears in the launcher along with a tile for each installed package.

Installing an app

Copy a package folder to /apps/<name> on the SD card (each has a manifest.ini + main.lua). It appears in the launcher after the next scan (or open App manager). A Hello Meow example ships in the repo under sd files/apps/hello_meow.

What Lua apps can do

• Draw a simple button/label UI on screen.
• Bounded execution: memory / instruction / time quotas and capability checks, so a misbehaving app can't hang or crash the device.
• Access the media/audio service (the same engine MeowPlayer uses).

APIs and packaging: see the in-repo docs LUA-APPS.md, LUA-AUDIO-API.md, and LUA-BUILD.md.

Notes

• The Lua runtime is always compiled in (~3% flash) but dormant until enabled.
• Music does not depend on this — MeowPlayer is a native app and always works whether Lua is on or off.

Credit

Lua 5.5.1 runtime, sandbox, app manager and the media/audio service by Caliun (PR #2). Thank you!