MichaelScottsman
f07084c8ae
A panel of ours showing a Steam window's texture (the base crops, in front of the glass) made Steam's UI renderer keep every page a route unmounted: ~290 DOM nodes and 70 listeners per route cycle, linear, never released (5 min soaks, theme on vs off; CSS, reporter, runtime modules, bridge and bindings each ruled out by A/B). Now a surface without pops gets its cover at -0.4 mm, behind Steam's own panel (as SteamVR's panels' glass already is), and Steam's panel shows the content over it; base crops (the page with holes under lifted parts) are built only while something is popped. Soak: 25 nodes / 11 listeners per cycle, as with no scene graph at all. Option coverBehind (default on).
Glass Shell: Liquid Glass for the Steam Frame's VR interface
Glass Shell re-skins the Steam Frame's whole VR interface in Apple's glass design language: visionOS window glass for the dashboard window, Liquid Glass for everything that floats. That covers:
- the library, game pages and settings
- friends, the dashboard bar and every bar popup
- frame menus, tooltips, the volume HUD, toasts and the keyboard
It is a look only. Every button, menu, route and controller-focus path is Steam's own, untouched.
Turn it on and off (in the headset)
- On the dashboard bar, press +.
- Under Launch Program, pick Liquid Glass.
A glass toast confirms "Liquid Glass · On". Do the same again to turn it off.
Nothing persists
The theme is never written to disk. lgs injects the stylesheet into the running Steam client through its local devtools socket (127.0.0.1:8080; Steam on the Frame runs with -cef-enable-debugging). Any of these brings back the stock UI:
- reboot the headset
- restart Steam
- launch Liquid Glass again from +
Nothing starts at boot. There are no systemd units, autostart entries or Steam file patches.
Only two things stay installed, so the toggle is there after a reboot:
| Path | What it is |
|---|---|
~/.local/share/applications/glass-shell.desktop |
The "Liquid Glass" entry in + › Launch Program |
~/.local/share/glass-shell/ |
The toggle script and the theme files it reads |
python glass.py uninstall removes both.
From the PC
python glass.py install # copy to the headset and add the launcher
python glass.py on | off | toggle | status
python glass.py dial 0.7 # transparency dial: 0 = clearest, 1 = most opaque
python glass.py uninstall
On the headset itself, ~/.local/share/glass-shell/device/lgs on|off|toggle|status|dial V does the same.
How it works
| Piece | Role |
|---|---|
device/lgs_core.js |
Runs inside Steam's SharedJSContext. Adds one <style> (and hidden SVG defs) to every gamepadui window through g_PopupManager, follows new popups, and removes everything on off |
device/lgs_index.js |
Steam's class names are hashed. The theme is written against readable names (%{BarSurface}, %{*GamepadDialogContent>Field}) that are resolved at injection time from Steam's own webpack CSS modules, so the theme survives client updates |
theme/*.css |
The look, split by area. 00-tokens.nowrap.css holds the materials (window glass, panel glass, Liquid Glass, thick glass), states, radii and motion. See docs/DESIGN.md |
lab/ + glass.py |
Development tools: navigate, open menus, screenshot any surface (it renders even when nobody wears the headset) and audit stock against themed for hidden, shrunk or unclickable controls and lost contrast. See docs/LAB.md |
Docs
| File | What's in it |
|---|---|
docs/DESIGN.md |
Materials, states, components, guardrails |
docs/LAB.md |
Tools, token syntax, rules for working on the live UI |
docs/inventory/*.md |
Every surface, route and sub-menu, mapped |
docs/COVERAGE.md |
What was restyled and verified, screen by screen |