Hey all!

It's been a while since I started working and playing around with homebrew replacing HOME menu in February. After several months of RE, new approaches and a lot of work, I'm glad to present the result of all my work related to HOME menu + homebrew:

uLaunch is a custom, open-source replacement/reimplementation for Nintendo Switch's HOME menu (qlaunch), extending it with amazing, homebrew-orienteed functionality!



uLaunch is a very ambitious project, consisting on two custom library applets, a custom system application and a custom system applet, in order to replace the console's HOME menu with a custom, homebrew-orienteed one.

Are you looking for help with themes? Check this documentation for everything you need!

Having trouble with uLaunch? Check the FAQ section for support!

Features

List of HOME menu features uLaunch has:

• Proper launching and foreground management: launch, suspend and close titles and applets
  
  
• Proper general channel handling (some of it might be not implemented): sleep, shutdown, reboot, HOME menu press detection...
  
  
• Settings:
  
  • Show connected WiFi network's name
    
    
  • Open connection applet in case user wants to change network settings
    
    
  • Change console's language and show active one
    
    
  • Change console's nickname and show current one
    
• User features:
  
  • Allow creating user on the startup menu
    
    
  • Show user's page (in order to edit nickname, icon, friends...)
    

List of not (yet) implemented HOME menu features:

• Controller managing
  
  
• Album
  
  
• Periodical play report sending (so long, telemetry!)
  

This is the amount of features uLaunch contains, compared to the original HOME menu:

• Homebrew support
  
  • Launching as applets (no need of Album!)
    
    
  • Launching as applications (no need of any titles to do so!)
    
    
  • Custom basic homebrew menu
    
    
  • Option to add custom NRO accessors to main menu (homebrew or custom items easily accessible, no more need of forwarders!)
    
• UI
  
  • Themes (different to official HOME menu themes/NXThemes)
    
    • Custom icons, menu assets and graphics (custom images, colors, sizes, positions...), background...
      
      
    • Custom background music and sound effects!
      
  • Folders in order to keep your main menu organized!
    
• Users
  
  • PC-like login on startup (select user and use it for everything, log off, register/change/remove password...)
    
    
  • User password support! (up to 15 characters)
    
• Miscellaneous extras
  
  • Web browsing (via web-applet) directly from the main menu!
    
    
  • Foreground capturing from PC itself (Windows-only) via USB-C cable and QForegroundViewer!
    

Disclaimer

Homebrew-as-application 'flog' takeover

uLaunch allows you to launch homebrew as an application, taking advantage of the system's 'flog' built-in application title, which was stubbed but not removed, thus it's content can be overriden via LayeredFS and launched.

Since launching this title should be impossible, it might involve ban risk. uLaunch has this option disabled by default, so enable and use it use it at your own risk. Always make youre you're safe from bans (by using tools like 90DNS) before using uLaunch to avoid any possible risks.

For more detailed information (too much to be put here), check GitHub's README: https://github.com/XorTroll/uLaunch

IMPORTANT! Note that this is the first release of the project, and while it was made to be as stable and complete as possible, it is far from being fully ready, so expect some unimplemented functionality or sudden bugs or small issues.

Themes

You can check my Discord (https://discord.gg/3KpFyaH) for an active theme submissions channel.

Download it from here: https://github.com/XorTroll/uLaunch/releases

This project has taken me a lot of work, hope you enjoy a custom, brand-new HOME menu!

 

[templeofhylia]

forgive me, but YEEEEEEEEEESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
i've been anticipating this so much!! kudos to all your incredible work

 

[Haevens]

I'll test this right now!

 

[JonJaded]

Congrats on a launch and happy belated! Will check this out later.

Also how's the memory consumption compared to stock?

Edit: Launching as a title via Flog title replacement is genius. Took me a second to remember what that was.

 

[XorTroll]

Congrats on a launch and happy belated! Will check this out later.

Also how's the memory consumption compared to stock?

That's the best: thanks to my approach, uLaunch by itself only consumes 8MB of memory compared to original HOME menu's 56MB
And at the same time I have hw-accelerated graphics and a really cool UI, it's all explained in GitHub

 

[TheGreek Boy]

sxos saying "This funcionality has been disabled" when my switch starts

 

[ganons]

Interesting stuff

 

[JonJaded]

sxos saying "This funcionality has been disabled" when my switch starts

That error has to do with Gateways new feature where they block the eShop title from launching. This project may be using/modifying eShop in a way that would trigger it.

EDIT: The issue may actually be the fact that this uses the hidden Flog as title as a "title replacement." As mentioned in the page after, it is indeed "ban-bait."

 

[Deleted member 457158]

This is amazing! Its like a lightweight qlaunch alternative that both looks better and has more features! And its even open source! I really appreciate your work man!

 

[gnmmarechal]

Nice, I'll try it out!

 

[iriez]

Fantastic!! This is going to become the normal dashboard for most modders. I'm sure this will jumpstart a vibrant theme community, even more so than already exists.

Reminds me of the evolution-x days.

 

[Godofcheese]

Interesting, will try it tonight

 

[Gadsby]

let's see what we have here

 

[Deleted member 457158]

uLaunch by itself only consumes 8MB of memory compared to original HOME menu's 56MB

Since this uses less memory than qlaunch, does this mean we can use more sysmodules together since there is more memory available?

 

[Rizzorules]

I have been waiting for this, thank you so much

 

[TheGreek Boy]

i hope it wil be compatible with sxos in the near future...

 

[Haevens]

The creating a folder a wonder!
Just misses the alphabetical order that would be great!

 

[hippy dave]

Congrats on release! It's clear you've put loads of work into this, and it's looking great. Will be trying it out soon.

Is album support planned for the near future? I do sometimes pull it up to check screenshots for reference when playing a game (like when a game shows you a clue about something you have to find later).

 

[NANASHI89]

Now we just need a new thread for themes. @yyoossk created a sweet Pokemon Yellow theme, complete with BGM.

 

[Baoulettes]

Well, that something really nice.
I am not using it, Yet.
I prefer waiting more revision, maybe because I use SX OS eheh.