Frequently asked questions

No. Xenon was designed around that screen, but the Edge is one of the screens it runs on, not the product. A spare monitor, an old tablet propped up on the desk, a touchscreen, a window on your main display, or the phone in your pocket all work the same way. If you have no spare screen at all, use your phone: about thirty seconds on your own Wi-Fi, and what you get is the real dashboard, not a remote.

Yes. No paid version, no trial, no account, no ads, and no feature held back for a tier that does not exist. The licence is custom and non-commercial: free for personal use, and you can read, run and modify the source. What needs written permission is selling it, shipping it inside a commercial product, redistributing it as your own work, or using the Xenon name for something else.

There is a coffee button if you want to say thanks, and that is genuinely all it is.

Windows 10 and 11 (64-bit), macOS 11 or later (one universal download for both Apple Silicon and Intel), and Linux (64-bit).

macOS and Linux are in beta. The dashboard, the widgets, the Store and the integrations are identical on all three; what still differs is the layer that reads the machine itself. The platform table says exactly what works where, feature by feature.

No. Xenon runs on any PC and needs no CORSAIR hardware or software. iCUE matters for two optional things only: keeping the dashboard inside an iCUE iFrame widget if you prefer it there, and driving CORSAIR RGB devices. Everything else is independent of it.

This is a false positive, and it is the single most common thing people write to me about. The detection name usually ends in !cl, which means the verdict came from Defender's cloud machine-learning model rather than from a signature matching known malware. Every new release resets the reputation counter, so the detection can appear and disappear from one version to the next.

To get your install back:

1. Open Windows Security → Virus & threat protection → Protection history, find the Xenon entry, and choose Actions → Restore.
2. Add an exclusion so it does not happen again: Manage settings → Exclusions → Add an exclusion → Folder, and add %LOCALAPPDATA%\Xenon.

Same cause, different gatekeeper: that is your browser's own reputation check, Google Safe Browsing in Chrome and SmartScreen in Edge. Open your downloads list with Ctrl+J and choose Keep, or Keep anyway, on the cancelled file. If SmartScreen then warns you when the setup runs, click More info, then Run anyway.

Check it yourself, and please do. Every release ships a SHA256SUMS file signed with the project's key. In PowerShell:

Get-FileHash .\Xenon-Setup-x64.exe -Algorithm SHA256

Compare the result with the Xenon-Setup-x64.exe line in that release's SHA256SUMS. If they match, the file you have is byte for byte the one GitHub Actions built from the public source at that tag, and every line of that source is readable on GitHub. You can also upload it to VirusTotal: a couple of engines flagging it while the rest come back clean is what a reputation problem looks like, not what malware looks like.

Only ever bypass a warning for a file you downloaded from the official Releases page and whose hash you checked. Talking someone into ignoring a warning is exactly what real malware does, and the hash is what tells the two situations apart.

On Windows 11 this is usually Smart App Control, which is a different system from your antivirus. Check Windows Security → App & browser control → Smart App Control.

It blocks any app it does not already trust, and it decides that before your antivirus is ever consulted. So the exclusion above does not affect it, and there is no way to allow one app while leaving it on. It only ever switches itself on during a clean installation of Windows 11, which is why it shows up on a freshly rebuilt PC and never on an upgraded one. That leaves two settings: Evaluation, where Windows watches how you use the PC and decides for itself whether to keep it on, and Off.

Read this before you change it: turning Smart App Control off is a one-way door. Windows will not let you switch it back on afterwards without resetting or reinstalling the PC. That is Microsoft's design and not something Xenon can work around. If you would rather keep it on, the honest answer today is that Xenon cannot run on that machine.

A code-signing certificate is a paid, identity-verified product with a yearly renewal, and Xenon is a free project made by one person. It is the real fix for every warning on this page and it is on the list.

Until then, one thing helps more than anything else. If Defender flags your download, report it as a false positive at microsoft.com/wdsi/filesubmission, choosing Home customer and then Incorrectly detected as malware. It takes two minutes, reports from real users carry weight, and the detection usually gets pulled for everyone within a few days.

Expected for now: the app is not notarized, which needs a paid Apple Developer membership this project does not have.

On macOS 15 and later, open System Settings → Privacy & Security, scroll to the bottom and click Open Anyway next to Xenon. Apple removed the old right-click shortcut there. On macOS 11 to 14, right-click the app, choose Open, then Open again. Either way it is once per version.

The Trash and most of ~/Library/Caches sit behind Full Disk Access, a permission macOS grants per app. Without it those folders look empty rather than refused, so nothing reports an error and the disk map quietly under-reports.

Open System Settings → Privacy & Security → Full Disk Access, press +, choose Xenon in Applications, make sure its switch is on, then quit Xenon and open it again.

Until 4.11.3 this had to be redone after every update, and now it does not. macOS ties the permission to the code signature, and Xenon used to be ad-hoc signed, so every release looked like a different app and the grant silently stopped applying. Xenon now carries its own certificate, which stays the same across releases, so the permission survives updates. The 4.11.3 update itself resets it one last time, because that is the release where the identity changes. If it is listed but clearly not working, remove Xenon with − and add it again — and Xenon now notices this state by itself and tells you on the dashboard.

Node.js is the only requirement, and Xenon says so if it is missing: brew install node. The rest are optional and each one lights up a single thing:

• vladkens/tap/macmon for temperature and GPU load
• switchaudio-osx for switching the output device
• ffmpeg for voice input and spoken replies

Xenon names the ones you do not have instead of failing later.

Download the AppImage (make it executable and run it) or the .deb. The first launch offers to set the dashboard up in a terminal window you can read and stop, verifying the download against the project's key before extracting anything.

The package deliberately does not do that for you: everything the install creates belongs to one user account, and a package installs as root for the whole machine. If you would rather skip the app entirely, download the source zip from Releases and run ./INSTALL.sh.

You need nodejs npm unzip. Optional, each for one feature: wireplumber (volume, mic, per-app mixer), wmctrl and x11-utils (the app switcher), playerctl (instant now-playing), ffmpeg (voice). Run npm run doctor and it tells you what is missing and what each one would light up.

The dashboard is the same product: same widgets, same Store, same themes, same integrations, same phone access. What differs is the layer that reads the machine, so some sensors and system actions are not there yet or work differently.

Nothing pretends to work, which is the part that matters. A tile with no data source on your platform says so in one line instead of loading forever, and a Deck key the platform cannot perform is hidden rather than offered and then failed.

On Windows it installs the app, installs the dashboard engine under %LOCALAPPDATA%\Xenon, installs Node.js if you do not already have it, and registers a task so the dashboard starts when you log in. It also fetches the optional pieces: FFmpeg, LibreHardwareMonitor and PawnIO for temperatures, PresentMon for real in-game FPS.

Nothing runs hidden. The setup itself only installs the app and opens it; the dashboard half is offered by the app afterwards and runs in a console window you can watch and interrupt. An earlier version did that silently in the background, and that is precisely the shape that gets an unsigned installer quarantined, so it was removed.

Yes, it starts when you log in, so the dashboard is already live when you sit down. It runs inside your own session rather than as a system service, and that is deliberate: outside your session there is no audio device list, no window list, no microphone and no way to open an app, so half the features would silently stop working.

To remove Xenon, run UNINSTALL.bat on Windows, UNINSTALL.command on macOS, or ./UNINSTALL.sh on Linux.

Xenon updates itself. When a release is out the dashboard shows a prompt; one tap downloads it, checks its signature before extracting anything, installs the engine and then the app, and puts the previous version back automatically if anything fails. Your settings, layouts and notes are always kept, and files left over from older versions are cleaned up.

Run UNINSTALL.bat on Windows, UNINSTALL.command on macOS, or ./UNINSTALL.sh on Linux. All three ask once, then remove Xenon completely: the app, the startup entry, the local server, your data and the install folder. Add --keep-data (-KeepData on Windows) to keep your settings, layouts and notes. Deleting the data folder removes everything Xenon ever stored, including the random id used so a store rating counts once.

Once, during install, and for two things: setting up CPU and disk temperature reading (LibreHardwareMonitor and PawnIO, which need a driver-level component), and registering the startup task. Decline it and everything else still works, you simply get no temperatures. Xenon does not run elevated afterwards.

Almost always another copy of the dashboard already running, which is what you want anyway: open http://127.0.0.1:3030/ and it is there. If something else on your PC owns that port, change it in server/server.js.

Yes, and it is your dashboard rather than a remote: same layout, same widgets, same theme, and Deck keys really run on the PC. No account, no cloud, nothing to install, and on your own Wi-Fi nothing leaves your home network. It takes about thirty seconds. The phone guide covers both routes, at home and from anywhere.

No. The app is a window around the dashboard, and the dashboard is a local web page: open http://127.0.0.1:3030/ in any browser, on any monitor. The app is worth having on a touchscreen because it adds game-safe touch and a tray icon. Inside iCUE, an iFrame widget pointing at the same address works too.

To do that, add a Web page (HTML) widget in iCUE and paste this into it: <iframe src='http://127.0.0.1:3030/' width='100%' height='100%' frameborder='0'></iframe>

Only if you want a cloud provider, and a Gemini key is free to create. Everything else in Xenon works without one.

There is also a fully local option: Ollama for the chat and Whisper for speech, set up on demand from Settings, with nothing leaving your PC. If you do choose a cloud provider, your prompts go to that provider under their terms, and Xenon never sends anything to a model you did not pick.

Run the installer again and accept the administrator prompt, so it can install LibreHardwareMonitor and PawnIO and register the elevated startup task. Some laptops and boards expose no sensor at all, and in that case the tile says so rather than showing an invented number.

Yes, and most of it needs no code. Themes, layouts, ambient scenes and Deck profiles are built in the app itself and shared as a code anyone can import. Widgets are small HTML, CSS and JavaScript packages that run in a sandbox, with a documented bridge for sensors and actions.

The creator guide is the place to start, and the catalog is what other people have already made.

Yes: CORSAIR devices through iCUE, plus WLED, OpenRGB, Philips Hue and Nanoleaf directly over your network. It can react to temperatures or to what is playing, or just hold a colour you picked. It is optional and stays off until you set it up.

Your settings, notes, tasks, events, decks, search phrases and file index stay on your PC. There is no analytics SDK, no crash reporter and no behavioural tracking in the app.

It is not fully offline either, and claiming otherwise would be the dishonest version: it checks for updates, and it contacts a service for weather or a music API when you turn those features on. The privacy page lists every call the app can make, what triggers it and exactly what it sends, with nothing left out.

No. There is no Xenon account, no login, and no server of mine sitting between you and your own dashboard. Integrations you set up yourself, like Spotify or Twitch, use their own credentials and stay dormant until you configure them.

Personal use is free, including on the PC you happen to work on. Selling it, bundling it into a commercial product, redistributing it as your own work, or using the Xenon name for something else needs written permission first.

If you have a case in mind, ask: email me or bring it up on the Discord. The answer is often yes, with conditions.

The Discord is the fastest, and it is where most problems actually get diagnosed. For something reproducible, a GitHub issue with your system, what you did and what happened is the most useful thing you can send. Both are read by the same one person.

A coffee, if you want to. Supporters get a role on the Discord and a place in the Hall of Supporters.

The free things help just as much: a star on GitHub, a bug report with real detail, a widget or theme shared in the catalog, or telling someone with a spare screen that this exists.