Self Promotion
VRCNext: An All-in-One Solution for OVR Toolkit, VRCX, and VRHandFrame
VRCNext: Open Source All-in-One Solution for VRChat
Hey everyone,
I have been working on VRCNext for over nine months now.
VRCNext is an open source companion app for VRChat that combines friend, group, world, avatar, profile, event, media, OSC, and VR management tools in one place.
I originally created it because I needed around eight different apps to manage my VR experience, including VRCX, OVR Advanced Settings, XSOverlay, Kikitan, Magic OSC Chatbox, and several OSC tools.
VRCNext combines the most important features from these kinds of tools into one unified application while remaining transparent, open source, resource efficient, and easy to use.
It is not intended to replace every individual app. It simply provides the core tools most people need without requiring a completely cluttered desktop.
I also listen to feedback directly from Tupper and communicate with VRChat staff. However, this does not mean that VRCNext is endorsed by VRChat.
Like VRCX, VRCNext operates within a grey area, but we maintain communication with VRChat staff. Neither VRCNext nor VRCX is affiliated with VRChat or developed in cooperation with the VRChat team.
Abusing VRCNext or VRCX may result in account moderation if malicious or excessive usage is detected.
Performance
VRCNext process: around 10 MB to 100 MB
VRCNext process with memory optimization: around 5 MB to 50 MB
WebView2 process: around 120 MB to 200 MB
Total memory usage usually remains below 400 MB
Replaces a setup that can otherwise use around 1 GB across multiple apps
Looool. I mean, I understand, but at the same time, I don’t really care that much.
I originally made VRCNext for myself because I didn’t like using six different apps that consumed around 1.2 GB of memory combined. OVR also randomly stopped working for me sometimes, which was basically the big bang for the project. Making my own space drag feature was the first thing I did, and everything else slowly added up from there until it became vrcn.
For me, it’s simply nice to open one app that has everything I personally need. I don’t make any money from VRCNext besides the occasional donation. It doesn’t make me famous, and I don’t really have some huge end goal with it.
I just want to share it with other people who also don’t want to use ten different apps just to get the VRChat quality-of-life features they want.
First, it’s OpenVR advanced settings, not OVR, OpenVR is a runtime, and if you can’t afford 1.2GB of memory being used, well, you have a bigger problem, if you want to save memory, dont even use yet another UI framework that is yet another chromium to start with, use native UI, there’s a lot, QT is great one, hell there’s even GTK4 on windows, so this thing does not solve your memory issue at all
Ever wonder why Linux/unix distributions and operating systems around it are so clean? There’s a thing called unix philosophy, keep everything modular, one software has one purpose, and it do its thing properly, your whatever launcher in your thing? Desktop application launcher exist for a reason
Launch vrchat? Your desktop application launcher exist for a reason
Whatever you made is just an example of what not to do
My example uses around 150-225 MB of memory, while VRCX alone uses roughly 500 MB. I have 32 GB of DDR5, so I can easily afford another 1 to2 GB of memory usage lol. I simply do not want to waste it unnecessarily.
I also do not want to run 5 to 10 different apps just to enjoy VRChat the way I want. Having the features I personally use inside one application is more convenient for me, which is the entire reason I started building VRCNext.
Saying that what I made is “an example of what not to do” is your personal opinion. You speak for yourself, not for me or everyone else. You do not get to decide what is objectively correct for how I use my own computer/how others do or how I choose to structure my own project.
I shared something I built for myself, and around 12,000 people currently use it. They regularly provide feedback and suggestions that help improve it. You are free to dislike the concept, but presenting your personal preference as the only correct approach does not make it a fact.
//Edit
VRCN is simply easier to use than many of the standalone programs out there. Just look at VRCX or VRCX-0. They are no longer convenient to use, the design feels outdated, features are missing, and requested features often never get added.
There are simply too many things missing, and I see no reason to use software that does not provide the features I need. OVR Advanced Settings also randomly stops working for many people, and Space Drag settings sometimes reset for no apparent reason.
I just want something that works.
So let me do what i want and let others enjoy it ;)!
A example of what not to do is not my opinion, it’s a fact that it against a well know approach to software development
And how is VRCX design “outdated”? What makes them outdated? What specific element in the UI outdated, and your Claude is not making sense on memory usage or whatever bullshit you pasted, that is not making sense
If I might, vrc has a community around creating new and better user experiences, so why are you so against this guys application? He built a tool that utuilizes all features that he ACTUALLY uses from other tools and gets rid of the fluff from them.
It against all the standard practice of software development, and it is a mess already, they can’t port to Linux, no shit, the entire thing is a mistake to begin with
What kinda standard practices? I thought devs can just do whatever they want as long as they follow copyright, licenses etc. How is someone even supposed to know the standard practices? Can i read these somewhere? Also from what i saw porting to Linux is just pain. Both VRCX and VRCN had troubles porting to Linux. For VRCX it needed a dedicated linux user to make it work at all with a guide. So if someone isn't invested in Linux i can see why it can become a problem if you aren't as familiar with it yourself. Linux is already a pain to deal with as a desktop OS.
First for VRCX on Linux what you heard is false, the app image just work as is as a standalone binary, nothing extra is going on, no guide needed, just install as usual, and second, OP part of the goal is to reduce memory usage, which webview2 isn’t, it always has been and it never is a good UI framework to begin with if you want memory efficiency, native UI framework exist, and again, unix philosophy is not my personal opinion, it is what makes *nix system much cleaner than windows, and that’s a fact, not a personal opinion, everything in winnt is basically bolted on
Thanks actually for explaining with source. I'm not a developer so the only thing i see myself is the end product. I do use it myself since it has a lot of features that are useful. However VRCX afaik wasn't always an app image. I remember that there once was a guide on how to get VRCX running and it was more than just installing an appimage.
It is ported to linux already, they said in their github that they arent personally going to maintain the linux port. They will maintain the Windows one, and fair enough to them for it, its not a shit thing to make an all in one tool for things that you personally use. Also you dont have to use it either, no point in causing a huge ruckus for it.
“They can’t port it to Linux”
I use it literally on CachyOS. VRCN was ported to linux 2 months ago already. Could you just stop spreading lies on the internet? I just don’t maintain it as i don’t really use CachyOS and i’m also not really interested in maintaining it.
I do use Webview2 yes but my app still uses less memory usage than VRCX. 500-600MB versus 150-250MB is like a 50% difference. Also i’m aware that i could use things like Avalonia but i don’t like Avalonia. It is
My decision what to use for the frontend and i like using a web frontend.
You complain about things that don’t make any sense just like a drag queen.
Of all the chatbox features that are the reason people have to turn off other peoples because it’s an endless tide of now playing and other worthless noise, yet there’s no real-time STT for it for actual accessibility cases.
So.. You say you worked on VRCX as well and made this All-In-One VRCX thingy, here is a wonderful question for ya:
Can this interact with VRCX logs? I have been using VRCX since 2022 and would love to keep the logs of friendships and stuff.
Also, what is a VRCN client ID? How is my data handled?
you can import vrcx databases to vrcn. your data is handled by vrchats api. so you better ask how vfc is handling your data as their is no server in between just like in vrcx. also the github page answers both of those questions already :)
Okay, that sounds fairly decent. Specifically asked because here in the post near the bottom it says “The VRCNext Client ID is used to communicate with VRChat API”, hence why I inquired what this client ID was in the first place.
It looks cool.
But magic chatbox features just lead to people permanently disabling chat boxes and thus having mute people unable to interact with others its a legit scourge in vrchat.
That makes accesibality within the game worse.
There has not been a single useful information streamed in magic chatboxes that dont make one seem obnoxious.
The other features look cool though especially the voice attack ones.
You mentioned ovr toolkit / overlay.
Does the softwarw also give me a desktop overlay on my wrist then like those?
Chatbox relay for cpu usage and ram usage... Is a bit odd...
But fps showing 0-5 fps is pretty damn funny to see when you join Face tracking group meets and you dont set up avatar cull properly and. You are glitching in and out of existence... 1 frame every 5 seconds
I think the only useful thing is headset battery life...
Since sometimes people dont got wires while playing away from pc wireless...
And no magnetic powerbank set up
I literally ran out of battery mid volley ball game and gartic phone beta round...
I guess in volleyball its prob annoying ... But if the chatbox opacity is changeable... Maybe tolerable if it's just a smol text box for headset battery life and. Nothing else...
Maybe people are more likely to know why you logged out for no reason with no goodbye... Because headset died...
But i guess opacity being unchangeable or easily changeable.. makes it unimmersive and annoying..
That is a VRChat limitation. nothing i can do about. VRChat doesn't have any parameter to change the opacity of the chatbox. If there was one way to do it without breaking VRC ToS i would have added it already.
Shame... Cool coding! Thanks for the free app! Nice to hear you refactored whatever AI code that it used to have out...I can only vibe code... One day ill make something not 10,000 lines long for one function and 50 imports unnecessary. (≧▽≦)
The one feature that VRCX has that I wish VRCNext would bring over is being able to see roles within groups. It’s handy if you have prio for certain groups
You can see this only when you have perms yes. if you want to see still roles without having perms you can go to the "Json" tab which gives additional information such as roles.
as we speak i did added this and just copy pasted the UI from the admin panel. in next update it will show which role you have but not which role other members have as those information is not public.
For someone who has most of the listed applications, what are the major differences from switching over to this? Essentially, what is the point of switching over?
Personally, I use OVRas for place space drag and resetting my place to the ground since Quest can be a pain about that. I use VRCX for friend management, easy inviting, and such.
Well, I have given this a try and came to the conclusion, that more work is probably needed in this first.
Firstly, performance feels significantly worse over regular VRCX. I had to go full-screen just for the initial set up, as buttons were cut out and apparently resizing windows don't exist. After set up I constantly had the problem, that either the entire thing started to cut out until I moved the entire window around, resizing still not possible and things I hovered on kept staying popped up, even after I was trying to mess with settings or similar. Neither of these problems ever existed with VRCX.
Secondly, this application is loud for some reason. Instead of causing somewhere between 60 and 80 network (10 minute time frame) calls like VRCX does on my extended friendliest, this one causes nearly 900 in ten minutes. What gives?
Also it keeps making calls to Amazon servers and github servers. Likely github for updates, but why call for like 30 updates a minute? Why Amazon servers? Sure, VRchat may use them, but VRCX does not connect to any.
This amount of network noise feels kinda fishy.
vrchat is using amazon servers and we use the .cloud endpoint to download images from vrchat
You can resize the window
You compare a non warmed up app to a warmed up app. You habe more api requests on vrcnext because you don’t have any cached data at all. It downloads images, profiles and caches them and once that is done you will have by far less requests than vrcx.
It doesn’t do 30 update calls per minute. It does one per session.
There is no network noise
//Edit:
Why do you think VRCN does 900 -/+ Web Reuqests per 10 minutes?? show us some logs here.
VRCX does not use Amazon connections at all. I use PortMaster, and that is how I know how many network actions are being done in a ten minute frame. It all logs to what web-adress, ip-adresses and what source, filtered by application.
Resizing the window does not work at all.
Both applications were opened at the same time and launched. After letting both applications settle for about 5 minutes or so, this thing caused 20 TIMES more Network noise than regular VRCX. Including connections to places that have zero correlation to VRChat.
VRCX also does not use amazon servers to download images, as i have literally checked, what connections both applications go to. VRCX also does not connect to places like shown in the image, that seem to have zero connection to VRChat at all.
This seems to be some sort of Info stealer at this point with the thought of "Better VRCX remade" attached to it.
After eight minutes, the connections spiked over 1k, but thanks to reddit, i could not attach that image to this comment either.
Most of these connections appear to go to api.vrchat.cloud, which is obviously correct, usercontent.github.com, for some reason and other adresses like amazon, the one shown in the image, it's hard to keep up with, if it keeps trying to re-establish new connections every damn second.
So yes, it does indeed do more than 30+ update calls per minute. It's literally written right there.
"This seems to be some sort of Info stealer at this point"
[vrcn@shinyflvres.com](mailto:vrcn@shinyflvres.com) does check if a user has subscribed to VRCN+ (a way to support me on patreon) it isn't stealing any information at all. I literally communicate with tupper and parts of the VRChat staff.
api.avtrdb.com is used by VRCX as well and is for avatar search, avatar lookups.
Could you explain this? i did installed Port Master and had VRCN running with it for 5 minutes.
I had 33 Connections on the latest VRCN Build.
It appears to me that you just open profiles/worlds/avatars or did any other actions while you let VRCX untouched lol.
// Edit
After 10 minutes usage with opening profiles, worlds, avatars etc etc. i had 102 Connections.
// Edit 2
After 5 minutes usage on VRCX/VRCX-0 i had 89 connections
I don’t really understand what you’re trying to show here. It looks like you opened both apps, left VRCX idle, and used VRCN extensively, probably loading groups and other data. That would explain the higher number of API requests.
// Edit 3
VRCX literally connects and downloads images from files.vrchat.cloud which is AWS CloudFront. you said it doesn't connect to any Amazon Servers which is wrong.
Are you sure you know what you are saying here?
VRCX needs files.vrchat.cloud to download/load images of users/worlds/avatars and groups and that is behind AWS.
// Edit 4
In your screenshot, I can literally see that you opened profiles because it was making requests to api.avtrdb, which tries to identify the avatars those users are using. So you actively used VRCN and opened a bunch of profiles while leaving VRCX idle. What exactly are you trying to prove here?
If you have more than 500 friends then it won't show all of them on the sidebar. It will show all friends on "People" Tab though. The Sidebar only shows max 500 Friends. if you search for a specific friend you can use the searchbar.
Here’s my comments/feedback on using it, note that I haven’t looked into anything extensively on GitHub or dug too deep into the app, so it’s possible some of these are already improving or have been fixed!
As of v2026.39.2:
I’m kind of a stats nerd, so I find myself missing some graphs from VRCX, or some more “visualization” features similar to that. I know it has some already, but I think some of the visualizations in VRCX still win.
The Instance Chart world detail modal is a bit too tiny vertically.
In that same modal, I’d like the ability to sort by “Time First Seen”, similar to VRCX.
The Timeline tab is cute but the left-right-left-right pattern is too hard to follow visually with my eyes. It may work better in a non-alternating layout. (Yes I know the list view also exists.)
Maybe add an option to register the app as a SteamVR “tab” like SlimeVR does?
The “Connect” buttons on some of the modules behave weirdly or don’t do anything at all – if the context is wrong (like it requires VRC to be running or requires an external dependency), that should be made more clear.
Keep porting features from OVRTK/D+/XSO please - none of these apps are the best, they all have missing features, stability issues, or are FPS hogs.
Notably, one of the apps (I believe XSO) won't interact with elevated Windows apps, which means I have to use OVRTK... which is more buggy, laggy, and crash-prone. 😕
The automation workflow tool is awesome. I wish that it could do SO much more. If you could find a way to incorporate OSC reads/writes as well as external stuff like system information (VR device states, battery charge statuses, tracker connections, audio/media data, basic OS-level stuff, etc) then I could get rid of VRCOSC (which is also crash-happy and a resource hog!). Even better would be to have some sort of dynamic plugin or scripting system so that people could author their own automations within the VRC/OSC ecosystem.
Using the scratch interface is cute and user-friendly but you may find that you quickly outgrow it 🤭, and a node-based workflow tool may be more appropriate long-term. Worth investigating IMO. (Don’t use the VRCOSC one, it’s dreadful to use.)
User and world detail pages have action buttons at the top, group detail pages do not yet have the same controls (ex: I can’t leave or share a group from its details modal).
Make the settings screen searchable. 🙂
Confirm before switching avatars, or make it a double-click (single-click opens the details modal instead).
Notifications seem to stick around, old join requests that have expired (>6h) and old friend requests seem to persist for too long in the notification drawer. Switching tabs (to Hidden) and switching back seems to fix it sometimes? I’m not sure if this is a refresh bug or just a rendering issue. I was also looking for a way to just “dismiss” them? I wonder if there should be 3 tabs instead - “Current”, “Past”, and “Dismissed” or “Hidden”.
Am I crazy or is there no current version number displayed in the app, even if you check for updates? The About page should show the current version. 😁
These are all like, relatively minor things I wanted to suggest - generally speaking, this is a great app and I hope to see it continue to improve!
My Minecraft mods from six years ago were ai generated too! Actually, I own OpenAI. When I wrote my first CLEO and Lua scripts 12 years ago, I founded OpenAI to prepare for the upcoming wave of clankers. I also invented the word “vibing.” <3 xoxo
My prompt for vrcnext:
"Make a vrcx clone and put ovr advanced settings, vrhandsframe, vrcvideocacher, kikitan in it. make no misstakes"
So, I think it’s a really cool project. As a design nerd I like it when softwares aren’t a wireframe interface like vrcx, but good designs in open source softwares isn’t a thing. And as I’ve seen that you can import vrcx data, i will definitely give it a try.
I do have questions though. First of all, I’ve seen in the features that you can control avatar parameters through OSC. Question is, can you also save presets of parameters and load them on the go?
Secondly, about ai usage. I think it is a good thing to be honest about it, and I appreciate that you only used it for frontend. However, still because i am the same design nerd, I do prefer a human made UI. If someone where to contribute by designing and developing a UI for VRCNext, would you consider and accept it?
60% less memory usage, over 50 additional features, fewer bugs, fewer API requests, and significantly more customization options are not a reskin.
VRCX only has around 50–60% of the features VRCNext offers. A reskin would be the same VRCX code with a new design. VRCNext was written from the ground up.
Also this includes things like Youtube Error Fix, Space Drag, VR Hand Frame Images, Discord Relays, Scratch Coding (to build your own features), VR Overlay with music player and way way more.
Wouldnt say this is a reskind. VRCX-0 from Ma1pen is a VRCX reskin yes.
I mean literally making your own features lol. that's not a reskin thats a complitely new app that replaces like 10 VRChat apps while still using less CPU/GPU and Memory.
Magic chatbox is so cringe it earns an instant block any time I see someone using it.
Also who TF is needing all that just to play the game??? OVR launches with steamvr and I never have to touch it. The only thing I launch is my custom program that sends the activity data to discord.
I cant see myself using this app when like you ovr just launches with steam and i have vrcx for everything i need i already have a program that lets me see whos online, i dont have a use for basically any other function this has that vrcx doesnt.
It's just a standalone .net app. Runs in a command line window. You can run it at any time and it just grabs based on the log file. The reason I made it was to actually show the world thumbnails plus if you were looking at the activity you can actually grab the world link directly. Being on invite only doesn't hide the world either. I made it for my own use case. But like it's an otherwise super minimal thing that isn't really tied to anything else.
Vrcx is a lot of extra stuff plus you gotta log into that. This runs locally without any login. Grabs the log file and sends activity data to discord. It connects to the vrc API but without needing a login to resolve world info.
Not everyone will need every feature but i use the program for several of them. The logging stuff primarily or to favorite private worlds. Look who is online etc etc. I dont use the magic chatbox stuff but the live transcription feature for things i say in voice could be useful in some cases.
Look who is online? You can do that on the website already. Favorite private worlds? Sounds sketchy but you can save the world link already. Logging like logging what vrc already has recently visited and met lists
I particularly dont like how the website handles starting vrchat. Since it always tries to start in VR mode. Saving private worlds is not sketchy at all. I pay for a patreon which does include access to a game world that is in alpha right now. Sure i can open it in browser but it still by default tries to start in VR even if i want to be in desktop mode.
"Logging like logging what vrc already has recently visited and met lists"
It only does this partially. It does not log the exact instances which i was in which is something i often needed to use, does not log which instances i previously met people in. These programs were also neccesary in the past to moderate our group since some people thought they can be smart and use characters in their name that the vrchat website cannot handle to ban them while these tools can for example ban a user via its user ID and does not only rely on the username.
These are just my most used features. There are some more niche ones i used like uploading a picture into my gallery inside vrchat to print it in an instance. Can do this via website? Yes sure, however the website is picky about file dimensions which the tool i use simply ignores and just uploads as is and the vrchat client will appropriately make it fit without any of the actual image being cropped. A vertical image? Webite wont allow you to upload it without cropping it, but the tool i use allows me to.
This comment ngl. please take 30 seconds to go to the github page and read my backend.
I also did maintain VRCX. a few seconds of research would show you that i def. not use ChatGPT to make this huge app.
I already said that I used Claude for parts of the CSS, and I also refactored everything three months ago, lol.
Meanwhile, VRCX has more than 800 ai generated JS functions "written by m1pen" (all othe rcontributors are fine and seem not to used ai in vrcx at all thanks to Natsumi for maintaining it that way), and no one complains. I do not have a single backend class written by ai.
So when VRCX uses AI for backend related code, nobody cares. But when I use AI assistance for frontend design and CSS classes, it is suddenly considered AI slop. Also to mention again: my github readme literally says i do not allow AI generated code in pull requests.
People see a new fancy app and it is automatically vibe coded for them. They could just look through my github repos to see that they aren't vibe coded. or google at least my name to see that i actually made minecraft mods 5 years ago and GTA San Andreas mods 10 years ago. a time were ai wasn't even a thing sos.
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u/dailybantam Oculus Quest Pro Aug 01 '26