A minimal, fast, graphical UEFI boot manager written in C.

Visor draws an icon-based boot menu which combines the efficiency and speed of grub with the beauty of refind, capable of booting Linux (EFI stub kernels / Unified Kernel Images) or chainloading Windows (Windows Boot Manager). It is intentionally small: a single ~170 KB .efi, no external dependencies, no scripting bs — just a config and ur imagination.

• Graphical, double-buffered menu — flicker-free rendering via the UEFI Graphics Output Protocol (GOP).
• Fluid Animations — smooth animations for switching between entries.
• Customizable UI — almost everything you see can be customized.
• Auto-detection — if boot.conf is missing, Visor scans for common Linux and Windows loaders and builds a menu automatically.
• Self-pruning logs — boot.log keeps only the last 3 boots, with descriptive messages at every fallible step for easy debugging.

• An x86_64 UEFI system
• gnu-efi development files.
• GCC and binutils (objcopy).
• (Optional) Python 3 + Pillow — only to re-bake a different font; the default font is committed, so normal builds need neither.

make

This produces visor_x64.efi in the project root. The Makefile auto-detects the gnu-efi headers and crt0-efi-x86_64.o across distros; if yours installs them somewhere unusual, override the paths:

make GNU_EFI_INC=/path/to/efi CRT0=/path/to/crt0-efi-x86_64.o

If gnu-efi is missing, make stops early with an explanatory message instead of a cryptic compiler error.

sudo ./install.sh

Options:

After installing, **edit `<ESP>/EFI/visor/boot.conf`** to point at your real
kernels and set your root partition.

# 1. Mount the ESP (skip if already mounted at /boot/efi).
sudo mount /dev/sdXn /mnt/esp

# 2. Copy the binary and assets.
sudo mkdir -p /mnt/esp/EFI/visor/icons /mnt/esp/EFI/visor/backgrounds
sudo cp visor_x64.efi              /mnt/esp/EFI/visor/
sudo cp assets/icons/*.png         /mnt/esp/EFI/visor/icons/
sudo cp assets/backgrounds/*.png   /mnt/esp/EFI/visor/backgrounds/
sudo cp boot.conf.example          /mnt/esp/EFI/visor/boot.conf

# 3. Register a boot entry (disk = whole disk, part = ESP partition number).
sudo efibootmgr --create --disk /dev/sdX --part n \
                --label "Visor" --loader '\EFI\visor\visor_x64.efi'

Config lives at \EFI\visor\boot.conf on the ESP. A fully-commented reference is in boot.conf.example.

Path rules: all paths are relative to the root of the ESP and use back-slashes, e.g. \EFI\visor\icons\arch.png. Colors are #RRGGBB.

linux {
    name    = "Arch Linux"      # shown under the icon
    type    = linux             # linux | windows
    icon    = \EFI\visor\icons\arch.png
    color   = #1793D1           # optional: overrides name_color for this entry
    kernel  = \vmlinuz-linux    # EFI stub kernel or UKI .efi
    initrd  = \initramfs-linux.img        # optional (omit for a UKI)
    cmdline = "root=PARTUUID=... rw quiet" # optional (omit for a UKI)
}

windows {
    name   = "Windows 11"
    type   = windows
    icon   = \EFI\visor\icons\windows.png
    kernel = \EFI\Microsoft\Boot\bootmgfw.efi
}

Set title_size and name_size (pixels) in the global section. For example:

title_size=120
name_size=28

Leave them out (or 0) for the defaults (screen_height/12 and 16).

The font is baked into the binary from a TTF, so a normal build needs no font tooling. To swap it, regenerate the atlas (needs Python 3 + Pillow) and rebuild:

make bakefont FONT=/usr/share/fonts/TTF/YourFont.ttf FONT_PX=64
make

Instead of scattering UI tweaks through boot.conf, you can keep a whole look in a theme file and switch with a single line.

1. Create \EFI\visor\themes\<name>.conf on the ESP (a themes/ folder is made for you at install time, with a sample nord.conf).
2. Put any UI keys in it — the same keys used in boot.conf (colors, sizes, icon_*, underline_*, power_position, background, title, …).
3. In boot.conf, set theme=<name>.

When a theme is set, its values override whatever boot.conf specifies for those keys. Keys the theme doesn't mention keep their boot.conf/default value. Boot entries (linux {} / windows {}) always live in boot.conf — themes are UI-only.

# boot.conf
theme=nord

# themes/nord.conf  (overrides boot.conf's UI)
title=Visor
title_color=#88C0D0
name_color=#ECEFF4
underline_color=#A3BE8C
underline_thickness=8
icon_size=128
power_position=bottomright
shutdown_color=#BF616A
reboot_color=#EBCB8B
firmware_color=#A3BE8C
background=\EFI\visor\backgrounds\default.png

To boot via the EFI stub, the kernel must be built with:

CONFIG_EFI=y
CONFIG_EFI_STUB=y

Most distributions enable these by default. Unified Kernel Images (e.g. from systemd-ukify or dracut --uefi) already bundle the stub, initrd, and cmdline — point kernel at the .efi and omit initrd/cmdline.

Recommended: Unified Kernel Images (no driver). A UKI on the FAT ESP at \EFI\Linux\*.efi bundles the kernel, initrd and cmdline into one EFI binary and boots with zero extra code. This is the simplest and most portable setup — prefer it unless you specifically want raw vmlinuz+initrd off a Linux filesystem.

Optional: bring-your-own filesystem driver. Visor ships no filesystem drivers Instead it loads whatever EFI driver you place in \EFI\visor\drivers\ — every *.efi there is started at boot and connected to your disks.

Obtain a driver yourself — the open-source efifs set provides btrfs_x64.efi, ext4_x64.efi, etc.:

mkdir -p <ESP>/EFI/visor/drivers
cp <your>/btrfs_x64.efi <ESP>/EFI/visor/drivers/

boot.log reports drivers: started N, connecting controllers when this works. If Secure Boot is on, the driver must be signed/enrolled (e.g. via sbctl) too.

Visor writes a log to \EFI\visor\boot.log on the ESP. It is overwritten each boot but retains the last 3 boots, and logs every fallible step (config parse, PNG decode, image load, hand-off). Read it first when something fails — most problems are one descriptive line away.

MASSIVELY INSPIRED BY rEFInd!!