Aurore — A Switch-like interface for your app, on every screen

A screen is a few lines of XML

Describe the screen in XML, laid out with flexbox; bind its views in C++. The focus moves with the D-pad on its own, touch and mouse work too, and every colour follows the theme.

Build it in 15 minutes →

The screen resources/xml/activity/hello.xml

<!-- resources/xml/activity/hello.xml -->
<aurore:AppletFrame>
    <aurore:Box
        title="Hello"
        axis="column"
        alignItems="center"
        justifyContent="center"
        gap="20">

        <aurore:Label
            text="@i18n/hello/welcome"
            fontSize="24" />

        <aurore:Button
            id="hello_button"
            style="primary"
            width="300"
            text="Say hello" />

    </aurore:Box>
</aurore:AppletFrame>

Its activity hello_activity.hpp

// hello_activity.hpp
#include <aurore.hpp>

class HelloActivity : public aurore::Activity
{
  public:
    CONTENT_FROM_XML_RES("activity/hello.xml");

    void onContentAvailable() override
    {
        button->registerClickAction([](aurore::View*) {
            aurore::Application::notify("Hello!");
            return true;
        });
    }

  private:
    AURORE_BIND(aurore::Button, button, "hello_button");
};

What it shows

Hello

Welcome to Aurore!

Back

Live demo

The real demo, in your browser

Aurore's demo compiled with Emscripten: the same code as on a Switch, drawn with WebGL 2. The keyboard, the mouse, a touch screen or the pad on screen; every theme and language.

Try it in your browser

Features

Everything a console menu needs

Made for controllers
Focus moves on its own with the D-pad; touch and mouse work too, and the footer shows the buttons that do something.
Flexbox layout
Every view is laid out by Yoga, described in XML, code only where it matters. gap, flexWrap, a radius per corner.
Vector graphics
Hardware-accelerated by nanovg: OpenGL, Direct3D 12, deko3d on the Switch, GXM on the Vita, citro3d on the New 3DS, scaled for a TV.
Ready-made components
Tabs, recycling lists and grids, settings cells, dialogs, action sheets, toasts, sliders, Markdown, all restyled by a theme.
Themes
Every colour is a theme key. Theme files and folders bring palettes, pictures, logos, icons and decorations, switched while the app runs, with contrast checked.
15 languages
One JSON catalogue per language, switched while the app runs; colour emoji and right-to-left text as options.
Tools
A test harness with simulated time and screenshot comparison, an inspector (F12), hot reload of XML and themes, a profiler, an app template.
The toolbox
Logger, animations, timers, background tasks, storage: what an app needs around its screens.

Cadran

A look of its own, without a line of code

Cadran, the look of PlayGuard and PlayShelf, is Aurore's look: an icon rail, cards, modals, action sheets, vector icons, a light and a dark theme, language and theme switched while the app runs.

Cadran's kit →

Screenshots

The demo, in a few looks

A theme with its own logo and icons

Simulated platforms

On every screen

The demo shows itself on each console from the desktop: its screen's size, the console's layout and renderer, the console drawn around it. --simulate 3ds, or a tile on the demo's welcome.

Simulate a console →

Switch1280 × 720
PS Vita960 × 544
PS41920 × 1080
New 3DS320 × 240 + 400 × 240
Phone1600 × 720

What Aurore adds

borealis, carried on

Aurore follows upstream (xfangfang/borealis) and adds fixes and features picked from other forks, and what its apps need: each one opt-in unless it is a fix.

Every change and its API →

Aurore and borealis, side by side →

Themes: theme files and folders, palettes from one accent, presets, pictures, logos, icons, decorations and particles, all switched live.
Styles: per-state styles (focus, pressed, disabled, hover), transitions, data binding and accessibility labels.
Views: a recycling grid and row, context menus, icon buttons, Markdown.
Layout: Yoga 3, gap, flexWrap with focus across the lines, a radius per corner, gradients, safe areas (notches, system bars, a TV's overscan).
Text: a font scale for every label, shrink-to-fit, clean line breaks.
Focus and hints: no focus lost in hidden or destroyed views; steady footer hints.
Platforms: SDL3 beside SDL2 (desktop, browser, Android, iOS), controllers reconnected under SDL, the browser (Emscripten), deko3d's command memory on the Switch.
Speed: no relayout for an unchanged text or size, XML attributes registered on demand, unused textures freed.

Under the hood

A current stack, checked on every change

Read from the repository each time this site is built: the versions from the build files and the notices, the figures from the tests and the CI.

42
CI jobs on every pull request, consoles included
157
test cases in the headless harness
34
reference screenshots compared pixel by pixel
57/57
GitHub Actions pinned to a commit

Versions

LanguageC++23 (min. C++20)
CMake3.16–3.31
SDL33.4.18
SDL2.32.10
GLFW3.5.1
glad2.0.8
Yoga3.2.1
{fmt}12.2.0
TinyXML-211.0.0
JSON for Modern C++3.12.0
stb_image2.30
stb_truetype1.26
Tweeny4.2.0
Twemoji17.0.3
Android Gradle Plugin9.5.0
Gradle9.8.2
Android NDKr30
Android API36
Emscripten6.0.13

Checked every time

The demo runs under AddressSanitizer and UndefinedBehaviorSanitizer.
Markdown and theme files fuzzed with libFuzzer, from the corpus the earlier runs grew.
A build fails on a deprecated API: no deprecated code, no alias kept for later.
Every source file formatted by clang-format 18.
Each bundled library's version checked against its source and listed with its licence.
Every Monday, the bundled components compared with their upstream's latest release; an issue lists those behind.

Where these figures come from →

Use it

In your project

Build your project as C++20, with RTTI and exceptions.

Add Aurore as a submodule, and copy its resources folder to your project's root.

git submodule add -b main https://github.com/JigSawFr/aurore.git library/aurore
git submodule update --init --recursive

In your CMakeLists.txt, include commonOption.cmake and toolchain.cmake before project(), add the library after it, and link Aurore::aurore.
Pick the platform with -DAURORE_PLATFORM=…: DESKTOP, SWITCH, PSV, PS4, ANDROID, IOS, TVOS, 3DS.

Starting from scratch? template/ is a minimal app that builds for the desktop and the Switch.

Coming from borealis? Change the submodule, then rename brls::, <borealis.hpp> and BRLS_ to Aurore's names: a search and replace. →

Build the demo

On Linux, macOS or Windows; the other platforms' commands are those of the CI. →

git clone --recursive https://github.com/JigSawFr/aurore.git
cd aurore
cmake --preset desktop-glfw
cmake --build --preset desktop-glfw
./build/desktop-glfw/aurore_demo

Made with borealis

Apps that run on it

PlayGuardParental controls for the Nintendo Switch, on the console
PlayShelfA game library, catalogue and downloads for the Switch
Moonlight-SwitchMoonlight game streaming for the Switch
wiliwilibilibili client for PC, PS4, PS Vita, Xbox and the Switch
switchfinJellyfin client for PC, PS4 and the Switch
SimpleModDownloaderGameBanana mods, downloaded on the Switch

Documentation

Licence

borealis' code is under the Apache 2.0 licence; Cadran, Aurore's look, is GPLv3, and so is an app built with it. Free software, maintained by JigSawFr.

A Switch-like interface for your app, on every screen

Where it runs

A screen is a few lines of XML

The real demo, in your browser

Everything a console menu needs

Made for controllers

Flexbox layout

Vector graphics

Ready-made components

Themes

15 languages

Tools

The toolbox

A look of its own, without a line of code

The demo, in a few looks

On every screen

borealis, carried on

A current stack, checked on every change

Versions

Checked every time

In your project

Build the demo

Apps that run on it

Documentation

Start

Guides

Reference

Tools

API

Licence