Streamer Stats Overlay

Streamer Stats Overlay

An optional set of small, always-on-top windows that draw over Elite Dangerous itself.

It is not a second dashboard. EDLD already is one, and it is better at it: a second screen has room for everything and you can look at it whenever you want. The overlay exists for the subset you cannot look away for — and for the subset someone else is looking at, which is where the name comes from. If you are streaming or recording, this is what puts your commander, your balance and your session numbers on camera without a scene full of browser sources.

Off by default. Nothing draws over exclusive fullscreen on any platform — run the game borderless windowed.

Platform	Status
Linux / X11	Released. Requires a running compositor — see below
Windows	Experimental. Untested; --overlay-probe reports what a machine can do
macOS	Experimental. Untested, and largely moot since Elite does not run natively there
Linux / Wayland	Not supported. A Wayland client cannot request always-on-top or place itself absolutely

The compositor is a dependency on Linux, not a nicety: without one there is no alpha channel to composite into. EDLD detects the case and falls back to an opaque panel so the text is readable, but transparency needs picom or equivalent running.

Quick start

1. Options → Overlay → Show overlay → On.
2. In the panel list, set something to On — commander is a good first test because it needs nothing but a loaded commander.
3. Apply & Save. The overlay redraws without a restart.

If nothing appears, python edld.py --overlay-doctor walks the chain and names the first link that breaks.

Panels

A panel belongs to the component that owns its data, so what a panel can show is whatever that part of EDLD already knows.

Panel	Shows
commander	CMDR <name> as the header, then squadron and location
ship	Ship name and ident as the header, what you are currently in, type, value
income	Credits, and the session's earnings with its rate
powerplay	Your power and your rank — nothing at all if you are unpledged
cargo	How full the hold is; both holds when you are in an SRV
survey_compass	Distance and bearing to the nearest deposits recorded on this body, leaving out any marked depleted
combat, exploration, exobiology, mining, trade, missions_session, odyssey	That activity's figures

The survey_compass panel with every visibility tweak on, over a stand-in background

Placement

Three zones across the top — left, center, right — plus dock-left and dock-right, separate windows against the side edges, each a single stacked column. Every zone takes positions 1–9.

Mode

On draws the panel whenever it has anything to draw. Off never draws it. Auto lets the panel's own component decide — the survey compass appears only when you are in an SRV near a recorded deposit, PowerPlay only when you are pledged, cargo only when there is a hold.

On still needs content: it means always show this, not invent something.

Shows — career, session, or both

Offered only on panels that have both kinds of figure, because choosing between career and session where only one exists is a control that does nothing.

• Session — this session only. Absent until something happens.
• Career — lifetime totals. Drawn from the first frame, whether or not anything has happened today.
• Career (Session: ) — the career figure with the session in parentheses, so you can see what today added to the total without doing the subtraction.

Hidden panels

When an auto panel is not currently relevant, its stack either closes up or holds the space:

• Collapse — denser, no wasted screen, but the panels below move when one appears or goes, and something that moves has to be re-found rather than glanced at.
• Reserve — everything stays where you put it, at the cost of gaps. Steadier to read, and the better choice with the overlay on camera.

Appearance

Spacing

Two layers, and they are different things:

Margin   monitor edge  →  window edge   (moves the whole overlay)
Pad      window edge   →  first glyph   (breathing room inside the box)

MarginY is what moves the top bar down the screen. DockTop is the same measurement for the side windows.

Type and color

FontFamily takes any installed family by name, plus anything EDLD ships in fonts/ and anything you drop in <data>/fonts/ — those are registered at startup, so they work without being installed system-wide.

ColourTheme offers every EDLD palette plus Elite Dangerous, which matches the cockpit HUD's orange; your own custom dashboard themes; Follow dashboard, which draws with whatever theme the dashboard uses, custom ones included; and Custom, which uses the three color fields verbatim. Picking a theme changes what is drawn but not what is stored, so switching back to Custom restores what you had set.

The text shadow is derived from the text: it keeps the ink's hue and drops its lightness, so it reads as depth rather than as a black fringe. ShadowOffset is capped at 2px, past which it stops being depth and becomes a blurry second copy.

Visibility tweaks

The overlay draws on whatever the game shows, which in one session is a black starfield, a white station interior and a ring full of ice. A theme's colors are chosen for the dashboard's solid background, and the dimmer ones — labels above all — can all but vanish over the game. Five switches in [Overlay], under Visibility Tweaks in Options, each independent and all off by default. Any combination works, with every theme.

Setting	Label	What it does
Outline	Outline text	A ring round every letter, outside it, in the backing color. A shadow only separates text from a dark scene; an outline separates it from a bright one too.
BackingPanel	Backing panel	A rounded, translucent panel behind each overlay panel, in the backing color. The most reliable of the five over busy scenes.
SolidText	Keep text solid	Opacity fades the shadow, outline and panel, and the text is drawn at full strength. Off, Opacity fades the text itself.
ContrastFloor	Contrast floor	Lightens or darkens any color too faint to read, keeping its hue, until labels and titles reach 5.5:1 and values 8:1. Measured against the outline or panel when either is on, otherwise against a dark scene, and allowing for Opacity. Applies to Custom colors and custom themes as much as to the built-in ones.
EmphasiseValues	Emphasize values	A labeled row is drawn as its label in the label color and its value in the value color, bold. Off, the whole row is drawn in the label color, as before.

The backing color is derived from the value color the way the shadow is: near-black for a theme with light text, near-white for the light theme. So the light theme gets pale panels behind dark text, and with the contrast floor and no backing its dark text is lightened to read over space.

For the most readable result over anything the game draws, turn on all five. For the lightest touch, Outline and Keep text solid.

The Income panel in the Elite Dangerous theme at 75% opacity, with each tweak on its own and all five together

Auto-hide

The whole overlay can step aside while you are busy, and come back when you are not. Three switches in [Overlay], under Auto-hide in Options, all off by default:

Setting	Label	Hidden while
HideInCombat	Hide in combat	the game says the ship is in danger or being interdicted, and for a while after the fight
HideDocked	Hide while docked	docked at a station, outpost or carrier
HideOnFoot	Hide on foot	out of the ship and the SRV

Settings

All of these but MaxTargets are on the Overlay tab in Options, in both interfaces, and all take effect without a restart, whether changed there or in config.toml.

Options → Overlay, desktop window

The same in the terminal dashboard

[Overlay] — the windows and how they draw

Key	Default	What it does
Enabled	false	Show the overlay at all
Anchor	top-centre	Where the top bar sits: top- or bottom- with left, centre or right
Monitor	0	Which screen, counting from 0
Width	720	Width of the top bar in pixels. Its height grows to fit
MarginX, MarginY	0, 40	Gap between the screen edge and the top bar
PadX, PadY	16, 8	Gap between the window edge and the text inside it
DockWidth	260	Width of the docked side windows
DockTop	140	Gap between the top of the screen and the docked windows
Scale	1.0	Scales every size and position, for high-DPI screens
Opacity	0.85	How strongly everything is drawn, 0–1. With SolidText, it applies to the backing only
FontFamily	blank	Any installed family, or one from fonts/ or <data>/fonts/. Blank uses the system default
ColourTheme	elite-orange	Any EDLD theme, a custom theme, dashboard to follow the dashboard, or custom for the three colors below
ShadowOffset	1	Drop shadow offset in pixels, 0–2. 0 turns it off
ShadowStrength	0.85	Drop shadow strength, 0–1, multiplied by Opacity
Outline, BackingPanel, SolidText, ContrastFloor, EmphasiseValues	false	The visibility tweaks
HideInCombat, HideDocked, HideOnFoot	false	Auto-hide
MaxTargets	4	How many of the nearest deposits the survey_compass panel lists, 1–9. Not in Options

[OverlayPanels] — what goes where

Key	Default	What it does
HideMode	reserve	reserve or collapse — see Hidden panels
TitleSize, BodySize	12, 13	Text sizes in points
TitleColour, LabelColour, ValueColour	#7aa2d2, #9aa4b2, #cfd6e4	The colors used when ColourTheme is custom
PanelZone_<panel>	—	left, centre, right, dock-left or dock-right
PanelOrder_<panel>	—	Position in its zone, 1–9
PanelMode_<panel>	off	on, off or auto
PanelScope_<panel>	session	session, career or both, on panels that have both kinds of figure

<panel> is a panel name from the table at the top, for example PanelZone_income = "dock-left".

Where it will not run

The overlay does not start, and says which rule applied, when:

• Terminal mode — a scrolling log has no window for an overlay to sit beside.
• A secondary instance (PrimaryInstance = false) — the overlay belongs on the machine running the game.
• A headless session — no display at all.

Diagnostics

Command	Answers
--overlay-probe	Can this machine carry an overlay? Reports platform, translucency, click-through, always-on-top, compositing, and the fonts it registered
--overlay-selftest	Does the renderer draw? A fixed frame for twenty seconds, with no config and no panels involved
--overlay-doctor	Why is nothing showing? Walks config, placements, available panels and position, and names the first link that breaks

Under --trace the component logs its build and placement count at load, and every frame with its element count per window.

Compositing

Per-pixel transparency needs a compositor. i3 does not composite; install picom and start it from your i3 config. Without one the overlay paints an opaque background so the text is still readable — less pretty, and actually there. EDLD detects which case applies rather than assuming.