An open source RGB lighting management front-end application to customise OpenRazer peripherals on GNU/Linux.
Polychromatic is a front-end for managing lighting, RGB effects and some special functionality for Razer keyboards, mice, keypads. This project has a long-term ambition to support peripherals from other brands too.
View Features | View Screenshots | View FAQs and Documentation
Polychromatic on its own is just a frontend, it currently needs OpenRazer installed to provide the actual communication with the hardware. Both projects only run on Linux distributions.
Instructions for each supported distro are provided on the website:
Installing packages from a software repository is recommended as this will keep the software up-to-date, and your package system will keep track of dependencies.
If you need to test a specific change, grab an artifact from the Actions tab and extract to a folder (GitHub requires you to be signed in to download these). Make sure you have installed the dependencies.
Providing all the dependencies
(including build ones) are installed, you can run the application directly from
the Git repository folder without installing. Obtain the source code by either
running git clone or downloading a copy as a zip folder.
Your configuration and cache is isolated into a savedatadev directory when
running via polychromatic-controller-dev. To isolate the tray applet and
command line interfaces, set this environment variable:
export POLYCHROMATIC_DEV_CFG=true
Then run the desired application:
./polychromatic-controller-dev
./polychromatic-tray-applet
./polychromatic-cli
While most of the project isn't compiled like conventional software, there are a couple of pieces that do:
./scripts/build-styles.sh
./scripts/build-locales.sh
./scripts/build-man-pages.sh
Styles are locales are built by polychromatic-controller-dev and only need to be
performed once, unless there's been code changes.
If you have custom installation requirements or packaging for another distro, Polychromatic can be put together using Meson and Ninja.
-
You’ll need an implementation of SASS to compile Polychromatic’s Controller Qt styling.
sasscis widely available, but other SASS implementations could be used. -
intltoolis required for compiling translations. -
gitis needed for retrieving the source code.
To build:
git clone https://github.com/polychromatic/polychromatic.git
cd polychromatic
meson build
ninja -C build install
For OpenRazer users, occasionally, issues are caused by an improper driver installation. Polychromatic includes a troubleshooter to identify common problems. See our FAQs on OpenRazer if your device is not showing up or shows an error when changing settings.
For bugs specific to Polychromatic, please raise an issue here.
The software can speak multiple languages! Here's a guide if you'd like to contribute.
If you love this software and wish to leave a little something to excite the developer, you're welcome to do so via paypal.me. Thank you for your generosity!