ROG Gaming Center macOS App
Tech Specs
A native macOS app for the keyboard lighting, system vitals, display profiles and hotkeys of ASUS ROG laptops, talking to the keyboard controller directly through IOKit with nothing running as root.
App
- Version
- 2.0.0, October 2026
- Requires
- macOS 14 Sonoma or later
- Languages
- Swift 5.9
- SwiftUI
- Runtimes
- None. No Python, Node.js, Electron or libusb
- Privileges
- User space only. Input Monitoring is the one permission, and no kexts are needed for lighting
- Screens
- Dashboard
- Lighting
- Display
- Status
- Menu bar
- Settings
Keyboard Lighting
- Zones
- 4-zone Aura RGB, one colour or per zone
- Effects
- Static
- Breathing
- Color Cycle
- Rainbow
- Strobe
- Protocol
- 17-byte HID feature reports: handshake, brightness, mode, set, apply
- Write queue
- Latest wins, 10 ms between reports, so colour drags never lag
- Interface
- Only the Aura controller (vendor 0x0B05), never other ASUS USB devices
- Verified on
- ASUS ROG Strix GL503GE, ITE 8910 controller (0x1869)
Dashboard
- CPU and memory
- Load with history, from the macOS kernel
- CPU temperature
- SMC keys through VirtualSMC, with a status
- Battery
- Charge, health and cycle count from AppleSmartBattery
- Fan speed
- Shown only when an SMC fan key exists, otherwise Not reported
- Sampling
- Only while the Dashboard or Status screen is open
Display Profiles
- Profiles
- Standard
- Vivid
- Eye Care
- Cinema
- FPS
- RTS / RPG
- Method
- Gamma curves computed from each display's ColorSync table
- Scope
- Every connected display, reapplied after sleep and display changes
- Safety
- Standard or quitting restores your calibration; gamma is untouched until a profile is used
Hotkeys
- ROG key
- Show or hide the window, next preset, or backlight on and off
- Fn keys
- Fn+↑ and Fn+↓ for backlight, Fn+F11 for sleep, read from the controller
- Shortcuts
- Optional ⌃⌥⌘ shortcuts that work from any keyboard
- Debounce
- 250 ms for the ROG key, 150 ms for the others
Engineering
- Modules
- AuraCore
- AuraHID
- ROG Gaming Center
- rogauracore
- Tests
- Swift Testing for packets, effects, key decoding, interface selection and display curves
- CI
- GitHub Actions builds and tests every push
- Command line
- rogauracore, with --diagnose and --keys
- Distribution
- Disk image, or build from source