Announcements - llizard ecosystem

🎉

Open Beta Release

2025.01.23

The llizardOS ecosystem is now public. After months of development, the Fukai Sake Edition brings a complete, standalone media controller experience to your Spotify Car Thing.

This release includes the full system image, the Android companion app, and all 18 built-in plugins. It's deeply functional and beautiful - not quite perfect, but ready for the world.

+ LlizardOS - Custom Void Linux firmware with native raylib graphics on DRM

+ Janus - Android BLE companion app that bridges any media source to your Car Thing

+ Mercury - Go BLE daemon that syncs media state to Redis

+ 18 Plugins - Media players, games, utilities, all running natively

📦 LlizardOS Release 📱 Janus APK ⚡ Mercury Source

void-linux raylib ble redis drm armv7

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How It All Works

The system is composed of several components working in harmony:

1 Janus runs on your phone as a BLE GATT server, reading media state and broadcasting it over Bluetooth

2 Mercury runs on the Car Thing, connecting to Janus and storing media state in Redis

3 Llizard renders the GUI using raylib, reading from Redis and handling touch/button input

4 Salamander plugins are loaded dynamically as .so files, extending functionality

Control flows back the same way: button presses become Redis commands, Mercury forwards them to Janus, and Janus controls your phone's media playback.

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18 Plugins Included

Media (5): Now Playing with 4 display modes, Lyrics with karaoke highlighting, Podcasts browser, Album Art Viewer, Media Channels switcher

Games (6): Jeweled (match-3), Survivors (arena survival), Swipe 2048, Blocks (tetris), Alchemy (element merging), Millionaire (trivia)

Utilities (7): Clock with multiple styles, Settings, Redis Status (debug panel), Flashcards, Menu Sorter, Plugin Manager, Album Art Viewer

nowplaying lyrics podcasts survivors jeweled alchemy millionaire

💬

Join the Community

The llizardOS subreddit is now live. Share your setup, report bugs, request features, or just hang out with fellow Car Thing enthusiasts.

It's not quite perfect but it is deeply functional and beautiful.

iOS support is coming. The BLE implementation was designed with Apple's requirements in mind - once the Android version is stable, iOS will follow.

🔴 r/llizardOS ⭐ GitHub

🔮

Coming Soon: spotSDK

A new project is taking shape: spotSDK - a collection of service-specific SDKs for streaming platforms. Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music, and more.

The goal is to provide unified, well-documented APIs for media control across different services, making it easier for developers to build media applications that work with any platform.

~ Spotify API integration with playback control and metadata

~ Apple Music support (in planning)

~ YouTube Music integration

in-development spotify apple-music youtube-music