Playfront

A console-style shell for Windows handhelds, built for the ASUS ROG Xbox Ally.

Playfront replaces explorer.exe as the Windows shell. Instead of a desktop you get a full-screen, gamepad-driven interface designed for a small screen and a controller — close to what an Xbox gives you, on hardware that has to stay on Windows.

Windows stays underneath and is one button away. That is the point: kernel-level anti-cheat, GPU drivers and the games themselves need real Windows, so Playfront replaces the shell rather than the operating system. Not loading the Windows desktop also frees roughly 2 GB for the game.

Early version. Building from source is currently the only way to run it. Do not set Playfront as your shell on a machine you depend on.

What is in here

src/Playfront.App	The shell itself. Avalonia UI: home, library, store, settings, video background, gamepad navigation.
src/Playfront.Helper	A Windows service running as SYSTEM. The interface has no administrator rights; anything privileged goes through this service over a named pipe, with a fixed allow-list of verbs.
build/	Publishing and installation scripts.

Building from source

Requires the .NET 10 SDK on Windows x64.

git clone https://github.com/AdriBuho/playfront
cd playfront
dotnet build Playfront.slnx
dotnet run --project src/Playfront.App

To produce self-contained folders that run on a machine without .NET installed:

powershell -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -File build\Publish-Playfront.ps1 -Clean

The helper service is optional for development; install it with build\Install-Helper.ps1 from an administrator terminal (-Uninstall removes it cleanly).

Game backgrounds and video are not in this repository — they are 416 MB and ship with releases instead. The application starts and works without them; artwork simply appears blank.

Hardware

Developed and measured on the ROG Xbox Ally / Ally X. It should start and work on any Windows x64 machine — ASUS-specific features (TDP control, fan curves, sensors) detect their absence, disable themselves and say why rather than failing.

Licence

Source-available, not open source. The code is here so that anyone who runs Playfront can see exactly what it does — it replaces your Windows shell and installs a service with system privileges, and you should not have to take that on trust.

You may read the source and run the released app for personal, non-commercial use. You may not copy it, modify it, redistribute it, or publish your own version. Full terms in LICENSE.md — and if you want to do something it does not allow, open an issue and ask.

Playfront ships artwork and fonts that belong to Microsoft and to individual game publishers — all of it is listed in THIRD-PARTY.md, along with how to ask for something to be removed.