Game artwork, custom effects, weather and live status lighting for the official Steam Machine's 17-pixel light bar.
Make your Steam Machine's 17-pixel light bar useful and a little more expressive. Choose separate permanent displays for Home and games, then let temporary launch, playtime, and Steam moments take the stage before the selected display returns.
GabeCubeAura is the new name of SignalBar. On first launch it imports existing SignalBar settings and artwork caches. Existing users keep their configuration.
Try the interactive GabeCubeAura preview before installing
Carry the current game's colours onto the light bar. Choose Library Hero, Header, or Capsule artwork and select the best row automatically or manually. The choice is remembered separately for every game.
Local custom artwork is preferred, including SteamGridDB replacements and images assigned to non-Steam shortcuts. In Artwork mode, the quick Decky panel shows the active game image directly above its exact 17-colour sample.
GabeCubeAura can play a one-shot launch sequence when a new Steam AppID starts. Game launches is independent from Artwork display: it has its own Hero/Header/Capsule source and colour cache, extracts either two or three dominant colours locally, offers ten patterns, and uses a visible timer adjustable from 3 to 45 seconds. Short alerts pause that timer and the sequence resumes after the alert.
The first animation shows three separate AppIDs and the two- or three-colour palette extracted from each Library Hero. The second stays on Balatro and shows three of the ten available launch patterns at a deliberately slower pace. These are browser illustrations generated from the Concept Lab, not proof of physical LED colour fidelity.
Build a permanent Home or in-game display from one, two, or three exact opaque colours. Use the colour picker, Hex or RGB values, brightness from 34 to 255, animation speed from 1 to 100, direction, and a live 17-LED preview. The 61 existing effect names are grouped by dynamism: Calm & ambient, Flowing, and Energetic. Alpha is intentionally absent because the LED hardware and GabeCubeAura settings use RGB, not transparency.
Steam's native Patrol, Breathe, Rainbow, and Solid presets remain in Steam. Select GabeCubeAura Off to use them; GabeCubeAura does not present approximate lookalikes as if they were Valve's effects.
The animation below uses one restrained two-colour palette and a slower Crescendo loop. It is captured from the browser simulator, so diffuser appearance may differ slightly from the physical Steam Machine.
Use the bar for CPU, GPU, or both. Mixed mode gives each signal eight LEDs, with the centre LED off. Length shows load and colour shows temperature. Responsive, Balanced, and Smooth profiles control how quickly the meter reacts.
Performance can be selected independently for Home, games, or a specific game. Three ready-made temperature palettes are included, and a native Decky colour picker lets you choose custom Cool, Middle, and Hot colours.
CPU/GPU sensors are sampled every 0.5 seconds in every display mode. Opening Performance settings immediately shows fresh readings without first selecting Performance as the active display. Missing or expired readings are not retained as if they were live.
Choose one permanent display for Home and another for games: GabeCubeAura Off, Customization+, Artwork (games only), Performance, Weather, or Controllers. A per-game override can replace the in-game default. Game launches, Playtime, Light events, and Controller alerts are separate temporary layers, so they work without forcing a particular permanent display. Choosing GabeCubeAura Off reproduces the former Signals-only behaviour: GabeCubeAura yields the bar between temporary signals.
StripMine is developed by the same author as GabeCubeAura. With StripMine v0.1.1-alpha.7 or newer, open Settings → Compatibility to choose which plugin owns the bar for Artwork, Performance, Weather, Controller displays, Game launches, and Light Events while the mine is active. GabeCubeAura and StripMine acknowledge every transfer before writing, then restore the previous owner automatically. No manual Retry bar action is required. Playtime countdowns remain GabeCubeAura priorities; unknown applications still trigger the normal ownership guard.
See the time you have left. An active Steam Families limit automatically takes priority when a game starts, or you can start a personal timer. The bar empties from right to left, turns amber below 15 minutes, and turns red below five. During the final eight seconds, three short white flashes repeat until zero.
See controller charge at a glance. Select Controllers as the permanent Home or In-game display to show one controller, or split the bar into two mirrored gauges with a dark centre and white charge tips. Connection and low-battery alerts appear briefly when Steam reports a change.
Charging can play a short cue or a continuous blue-and-white animation that stops at 100%. Choose the animation styles, colours, brightness and alert contexts. The GIF shows the two-controller gauge and continuous charging.
Battery and charging data depend on the controller. Unknown levels are never invented; see the controller test notes.
Choose a city, then select Weather as the permanent Home or In-game display. Eighteen selectable loops cover clear skies, rain, cloud, partly cloudy day and night, snow, and storms. Snow takes hold is the default snow scene; all animations can be previewed without network access. Cloud has four choices, including Cross & gather and the longer Slow convergence, which is the fresh-install default. Existing Cloud selections are kept.
An optional, experimental weather icon and temperature can also appear beside the SteamOS clock. Choose °C or °F for the top-bar number. This works independently of the LED weather scene and has been confirmed on one Steam Machine; Steam UI updates could change its placement. No temperature colours are mapped to LEDs.
Select a city before enabling live weather. If you enter a country, use its full name (for example France), not a two-letter code. GabeCubeAura fetches current conditions from Open-Meteo about every 15 minutes, without an API key or automatic location detection. Only one permanent display is selected in each context; Controllers remains the fresh-install Home default.
Light events briefly replace the current display, play their animation, then restore the selected permanent display. They can work outside a game. Each category has its own switch, animation selector, and nearby live preview.
Return beacon is the fresh-install choice. The GIF below shows Wide echo, another selectable notification style.
An icy shutter closes, followed by two flashes with expanding echoes.
Constellation round trip is the fresh-install choice. The GIF below shows it.
Two red traces mark recording start and stop. While recording, the centre LED stays pure red over a compatible permanent display. Its two neighbours are black by default to keep the marker distinct through the physical diffuser. The marker never modifies a playtime countdown or another event animation.
GabeCubeAura follows a strict order:
- Disabled returns complete control to Steam.
- Short light/controller alerts may temporarily use a stable bar snapshot; a new native LED write cancels them and is never overwritten by a stale frame.
- Valve/system ownership prevents persistent GabeCubeAura output.
- The final five minutes of a countdown cancel and outrank Game launches.
- Short alerts pause a Game launch's visible timer; the launch resumes after the alert.
- Game launches temporarily replace regular countdowns; those countdowns return afterwards.
- The selected permanent Home or In-game display returns after temporary layers finish.
- Install Decky Loader.
- Download
GabeCubeAura-v1.0.0.zipfrom the GabeCubeAura v1.0.0 release. Do not extract it. - Open Decky > Settings > General and enable Developer mode only if the Developer section is not already visible.
- Open Decky > Settings > Developer. Under Third-Party Plugins, choose Install Plugin from ZIP File, select Browse, then select the downloaded archive.
- Restart Decky Loader if the installed plugin does not appear immediately.
Extract the archive into ~/homebrew/plugins/ so the result is a
~/homebrew/plugins/GabeCubeAura/ directory, then restart plugin_loader.
GabeCubeAura requests Decky's root flag only because the Steam Machine exposes its
light bar through root-owned valve-leds sysfs files.
- Open GabeCubeAura in Decky's quick-access menu.
- Choose a Home display and an In-game display under Display routing.
- Open Detailed settings for Artwork, Performance, Weather, Game launches, Playtime, Light events, Controllers, Compatibility, and Advanced options.
- Use Preview to compare animations before changing your live settings.
Live Light events are enabled on a fresh installation. Controller alerts have their own switch and work independently of Light events. Saved settings from older versions are kept.
- Library Hero, Header, or vertical Capsule
- Automatic, centre, lower, or manual sample row
- Red line over the image showing the selected manual row
- Saved source and position for each game
- Local SteamGridDB and non-Steam custom artwork support
Steam's Library Logo is not sampled because it is a transparent foreground layer rather than a complete image.
- CPU, GPU, or mixed CPU + GPU
- Both meters left to right, or mirrored toward the centre
- Responsive, Balanced, or Smooth filtering
- Selectable as the Home, In-game, or per-game display
- Three built-in temperature palettes
- Custom Cool, Middle, and Hot colours through Decky's colour picker
- Live CPU/GPU load and temperature in the quick panel
Cool temperature and Hot temperature are thresholds. The selected colour
palette is blended continuously between them.
- Automatic Steam Families remaining-time signal
- Personal timer from five to 240 minutes
- Five starting colours
- Timer-duration scale or fixed one, two, three, or four-hour full bar
- Final eight-second alert
Steam Families only appears while a game is running. Closing or switching games clears the old parental countdown immediately.
- Permanent battery gauge selected through Home/In-game display routing
- Brief alert contexts: Off, On Home, In game, or Home + in game
- Connection and low-battery alerts can each be disabled; charging has its own Off / Brief / Continuous on Home / Continuous everywhere choice
- Adjustable low-battery threshold from 5% to 30%
- Three selectable styles for each signal, including the two-controller view
- Local preview buttons work without a connected controller or live alerts
The gauge is the permanent display where selected; it does not combine colours from another display. A Steam Families countdown still wins. Unknown or coarse battery data is not displayed as an exact percentage.
- Location selected manually by city or postal code; no automatic geolocation
- Selectable through Home/In-game routing, with eighteen 17-LED animations
- Independent optional SteamOS top-bar icon and °C/°F temperature
- Weather brightness and faint-pixel cutoff for the physical diffuser
- Weather previews work without a city or network connection
The physical diffuser can make a lit LED bleed into a neighbouring dark space. Extra dark LEDs compensates by lighting fewer physical pixels than the logical preview. It affects Countdown and Performance, never Artwork. The default is two.
The official Steam Machine's physical LED order is reversed by default while the Decky preview remains left to right.
Open Advanced / debug > Show debug details and choose Export configuration
JSON. GabeCubeAura writes a readable snapshot of global settings, saved per-game
profiles, and the current game's resolved choices to
/home/deck/Documents/GabeCubeAura-configuration.json on a standard SteamOS setup.
The panel always shows the exact path used. Exporting again replaces only that
file, and controller device IDs are never included.
In the same Debug section, Import configuration JSON opens a file picker and asks for confirmation before replacing saved global settings and per-game profiles. Unsupported or invalid files leave the existing configuration untouched. Reset to defaults asks for confirmation, clears per-game profiles, and restores the shipped defaults. Neither action deletes the exported JSON or the artwork cache; both stop a running personal timer.
- No telemetry or cloud account login. Weather city search requests and live Open-Meteo requests occur only when you use the optional Weather feature.
- No SteamOS read-only filesystem modification
- Local read-only discovery of Steam and custom-grid artwork
- Serialized and rate-limited hardware writes
- Redundant-frame suppression to reduce unnecessary LED writes
- A userspace guard that yields when Steam or another process changes the bar
GabeCubeAura only restores a previous frame when the hardware still matches its own last verified write.
- Designed for the official Steam Machine 17-pixel
valve-ledslight bar - Requires Decky Loader on SteamOS
- CPU and GPU sensors depend on paths exposed by the hardware and SteamOS build
- Steam notifications and recording use private SteamClient callbacks that may change between Steam builds
- Achievement animations follow Steam's achievement notification
- Screenshot animations follow a newly written screenshot file
- Controller battery reporting relies on the private SteamInputManager service and varies by controller. There is no verified compatibility list for every controller and connection type yet.
- No Internet artwork fallback, audio visualizer, FPS, network, storage, Moonlight, or Sunshine provider yet
corepack pnpm install --frozen-lockfile
corepack pnpm test
corepack pnpm build
corepack pnpm packageThe installable archive is written to out/GabeCubeAura-v1.0.0.zip.
See the GabeCubeAura 1.0.0 release design for the rebrand, Customization+ hierarchy and per-game launch palettes.
See ARCHITECTURE.md for provider, arbitration, guard, and hardware-rendering details. Release history is available in CHANGELOG.md.
Use Decky's plugin settings to uninstall GabeCubeAura. Settings remain in Decky's normal plugin settings directory and can be removed separately if desired.
GabeCubeAura is released under the BSD 3-Clause License.