Yip OS is a free and open-source desktop companion application that drives the Yip-Boi, a wrist-mounted CRT personal data assistant for VRChat. It renders real, live data from your computer onto a monochrome display strapped to your arm--visible to you and everyone around you in-world--and allows you and your friends to interact with an unlimited quantity (not predetermined at upload time) of bona fide programs.
The Yip-Boi is designed to be worn around your left arm. It features a CRT screen (green, amber, white, blue--you can customize it like crazy) which renders data in beautiful monochrome, a touchscreen interface, an expandable 4K graphical ROM, a 256-character font set, and even beeps with a PC speaker. It straps to your arm using a blendshape-equipped, possibly sustainably sourced leather band that won't pinch and tug at your fur.
This isn't an overlay or a private HUD. The display is visible to other players in-world, with real synced data.
Compatible avatar prefab:
Gumroad: foxipso.gumroad.com
Jinxxy: jinxxy.com/foxipso
Purchasing the Yip-Boi avatar prefab supports the development of my assets and comes with the Unity asset that integrates Yip OS.
Yip OS is a C++ application with a Dear ImGui interface that communicates with VRChat over OSC to drive the Yip-Boi's display and custom shader. It handles all the rendering logic, input processing, system monitoring, and program execution. The desktop companion application runs on both Windows and Linux.
Anyone capable of writing code--or brow-beating an AI into doing it for you--can extend Yip OS, run a custom version, make their own programs, and submit pull requests.
At the heart of the Yip-Boi is a contraption called a Williams Tube: a VRChat camera and glyph-based write head inspired by the real historical device, one of the earliest examples of RAM storage and retrieval.
When you're in a VRChat world, Yip OS continually sends OSC control commands to an invisible camera and write head floating near your avatar. The commands rapidly render font glyphs and graphics from a ROM stored as textures in a custom shader. The persistent render texture accumulates these writes like phosphor traces on a real CRT.
The display operates in text mode: a 40-column by 8-row character grid. The index of each character is individually transmitted from your computer into VRChat over OSC. Full-screen backgrounds are stamped in a single write cycle using pre-rendered macro glyphs, then only dynamic content (values, graphs, clocks, text) needs individual character writes--reducing screen transitions from 22 seconds to under 4.
None of the logical operation of the device actually happens in an animation controller. The animation controller simply responds to OSC commands that move the write head around, scale it, and toggle between drawing modes and font glyphs to render.
- CRT display with realistic shader (scanlines, phosphor persistence, bloom, jitter -- all configurable)
- Touchscreen interface with a 5x3 grid of touch zones and five physical buttons
- Six touch points on the display surface, activated by tapping your index finger claw-tip (FingerIndexR, FingerIndexL)
- Dual 256-glyph Character ROMs (Bank 0 + Bank 1) with box-drawing, icons, inverted variants, and extended glyphs for accented Latin, Cyrillic, Greek, and kana (for INTRP foreign-language output)
- Macro glyph atlas for quick full-screen rendering
- NVRAM for persistent settings between power cycles
- Autolock to prevent accidental inputs
- PC speaker beep on input (customizable or mutable)
- OSCQuery for automatic service discovery--no manual port configuration needed
- 100+ page period-accurate operator's manual
Yip OS comes with a home screen filled with programs that are designed to be useful, fun, or enjoyable to use in VRChat and fit within the constraints of VR interaction and OSC render speed.
| Program | Description |
|---|---|
| STATS | CPU, GPU, memory, network, disk usage, temperatures, and uptime |
| NET | Real-time network utilization with oscilloscope-style sweep graph |
| HEART | Heartbeat monitor and BPM trend graph via OSC |
| SPVR | StayPutVR integration--lock/unlock tracked devices from your wrist |
| CONF | System configuration (boot speed, write delay, debounce, autolock, etc.) |
| VRCX | Read-only VRCX database integration--friend activity, world history, notifications |
| CC | Live closed captions (mic or system audio) via local Whisper AI transcription with Vulkan GPU acceleration (AMD/NVIDIA) or CPU fallback -- no audio sent externally. Optional VRChat chatbox relay (SEL to toggle) forwards captions to your chatbox via OSC |
| AVTR | Avatar switching and toggle control via OSC |
| IMG | Bitmap image display--renders arbitrary images character-by-character |
| TEXT | Arbitrary text display, with optional VRChat ChatBox input |
| MEDIA | Now-playing display with playback controls |
| BFI | BrainFlow EEG parameter graphing (via ChilloutCharles' BFiVRC) |
| CHAT | Live Telegram group chat for Yip-Boi owners (read in-game, post using your existing device) |
| TWTCH | Live Twitch chat viewer (anonymous IRC, no account required) |
| STONK | Stock and crypto ticker with configurable watchlist |
| INTRP | Live interpreter -- Whisper transcription (Vulkan or CPU) + CTranslate2/NLLB translation (CUDA 12.x or CPU); uses Bank 1 glyph ROM to render foreign characters on-screen |
| DM | Peer-to-peer direct messages, QR-paired in VRChat via camera capture (see rate limits below) |
| YIPAI | YipAI bridge -- live utterances and inner thoughts from a paired AI companion (SEL toggles between speech and thoughts) |
| ULTRA | Furality Ultra schedule -- browse events by day, mark favorites, get sound + SteamVR haptic notifications 15 min and ~1 min before each starts |
| LOCK | Screen lock -- tap SEL three times to unlock |
 HOME |
 STATS |
 NET |
 HEART |
 SPVR |
 CONF |
 VRCX |
 CC |
 AVTR |
 IMG |
 MEDIA |
 BFI |
 CHAT |
 VRCX Feed |
 VRCX Worlds |
 CC Config |
You need a compatible avatar. You can use the Yip-Boi avatar prefab, available on Gumroad and Jinxxy.
- Import the
.unitypackageinto your Unity project - Drag the Yip-Boi prefab onto your avatar
- Position and scale
Yip-Boi->Containeras desired - Upload your avatar to VRChat
- Enable OSC in VRChat: Action Menu -> Options -> OSC -> Enabled
- Launch the Yip OS desktop companion application on your PC
- VRChat will discover Yip OS via OSCQuery and establish a connection
- The PDA display will begin rendering
Note: The Williams Tube rendering method requires 28 bits of parameter space. This is fairly heavy for an asset, and you may want to make a version of your avatar that sacrifices some of your other heavy assets.
For testing in Unity without uploading, see the Operator's Manual on Play Mode testing with the included OSC scripts.
Translation in INTRP is CUDA-only and requires CUDA Toolkit 12.x (any 12.x subversion -- e.g. 12.8) with NVIDIA GPU drivers. Use the CUDA Full installer to bundle the CUDA runtime DLLs, or CUDA Lite if you already have the toolkit installed (saves ~600 MB). On a system without CUDA 12.x, INTRP automatically falls back to CPU translation. Whisper transcription (CC + INTRP) uses Vulkan and works on both AMD and NVIDIA GPUs, or falls back to CPU. See CUDA_SETUP.md for details.
- C++17 compiler (GCC, Clang, or MSVC)
- CMake 3.15 or higher
- Dependencies are fetched automatically via CMake (GLFW, Dear ImGui, whisper.cpp, etc.)
cd yip_os
cmake -B build
cmake --build build --config ReleaseRequires development packages for OpenGL, libcurl, PulseAudio, and Vulkan:
# Fedora/RHEL
sudo dnf install mesa-libGL-devel libcurl-devel pulseaudio-libs-devel vulkan-headers vulkan-loader-devel glslc
# Ubuntu/Debian
sudo apt install libgl-dev libcurl4-openssl-dev libpulse-dev libvulkan-dev glslccd yip_os
cmake -B build
cmake --build buildThe font atlas and macro glyph atlas are generated with Python scripts:
python3 generate_pda_rom.py # 256-glyph text atlas
python3 generate_macro_atlas.py # Pre-rendered screen backgroundsRequires Python 3, Pillow, and python-osc.
Depending on what features you enable, this device will display and allow interaction with your real, actual, potentially personal information to other users in VRChat. Avatar names, toggles, friend list, etc.
Depending on your interaction settings, other users may also be able to interact with the device -- they could cycle through your friends in VRCX, go through your list of recent avatars and make you change, or toggle things on and off on your avatar.
To combat this, VRCX, AVTR, CHAT, TWTCH, INTRP, and DM are disabled by default and require you to manually enable them in the Yip OS desktop app with your actual mouse and keyboard.
DM uses a small Cloudflare Worker (+ KV) as a relay. To prevent abuse, the backend applies these per-IP caps:
- 10 pairing codes generated per 24 hours (rolling 24h window per IP)
- 10 code-join attempts per 5 minutes (rolling 5-minute window per IP — guards against brute-forcing the 6-digit code)
- 100 messages sent per session per 24 hours
Pairing codes themselves expire 5 minutes after creation. Session data and message history are deleted server-side after 30 days of inactivity.
1.2.0 (May 14, 2026)
- Furality Ultra Program (FUR) — browse the live event schedule by day, mark favorites, and receive sound + SteamVR controller haptic notifications 15 min before an event and again ~1 min before it starts
- YipAI Program — bridge screen for a paired AI companion: shows the latest utterance by default, SEL toggles to inner thoughts; new utterances trigger an instant full-screen macro flash instead of a slow per-cell redraw
- SteamVR controller haptics — generic notification source (
fur/dm/chat/vrcx), enabled by default; soft-fails when SteamVR isn't running - Startup robustness — guard against bogus 0×0 window size saved while the app was minimized; verbose GLFW init/create-window diagnostics with default-hint retry path
- Bug fixes (WASAPI format fallback, audio device disappearance, CC Force-CPU escape hatch, Vulkan crash diagnostics, DM compose incremental redraw)
1.1.3 (April 7, 2026)
- Interpreter Program (INTRP) — live Whisper transcription + NLLB translation (CUDA 12.x or CPU)
- Foreign language support for CC and INTRP — French, Italian, Spanish, German, Japanese; fully local, no audio or text sent externally
- Direct Message (DM) — peer-to-peer private messaging, QR-paired in VRChat via camera capture
- CC chatbox sync — press SEL to relay closed captions to your VRChat chatbox via OSC
- Twitch chat (TWTCH) — read-only live Twitch chat viewer (anonymous IRC, no account required)
- HEART manual parameter selection — custom OSC param name + int/float type in the desktop UI
- STONK — stock and crypto ticker with configurable watchlist
- Bug fixes and polish (QR scanner aspect correction, Whisper queue drain on CLEAR, DM refresh cadence, app icon)
Detailed per-release changelog (1.1.0–1.2.0)
1.2.0 - Furality Ultra (FUR) program with marked-event notifications + two-stage SteamVR haptics; YipAI bridge screen with SEL utterance/thought toggle and macro-flash redraw; generic HapticClient (OpenVR thin-client, soft-fails without SteamVR, ships openvr_api.dll); window-size 0×0 fix + GLFW diagnostics; WASAPI format fallback; CC Force-CPU toggle; CC + DM crash diagnostics; DM compose incremental redraw; QR scan per-channel grayscale fallback; saved audio-device disappearance fix
1.1.4 - WASAPI capture crash fix and format fallback path
1.1.3 - Build-time git hash, DM pairing audio cues (PulseAudio/PlaySound), DM pair screen macros, full QR self-heal refresh, shader normal guard for multi-avatar scenes, mDNS listen thread fix, manual refresh, QR scanner multi-aspect retry, HEART custom OSC param, WhisperWorker ClearCommitted, DM refresh interval fix, app icon
1.1.2 - DM polish: compose screen (CC speech-to-text), session diagnostics/log tab, version+hash on boot screen, self-notification fix, QR refresh stability, macro stamps for all pair modes
1.1.1 - Windows feature parity (MeCab Japanese kanji→hiragana), CPU-only CTranslate2 build, three-installer pipeline, HEART OSC parameter docs, OSCQuery disable toggle, avatar CTRL parameter filter, Whisper bracketed-text stripping
1.1.0 - TWTCH Twitch chat viewer, INTRP live interpreter (Whisper + NLLB translation, CUDA support), STONK stock/crypto ticker, DM private messages (QR pairing via VRChat camera capture, Cloudflare Worker backend), extended character ROM (Bank 1, double-resolution atlases), MeCab integration, thread-safety refactor, ListScreen base class, UIManager split into per-tab files
1.0.0 - Initial release
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Render Texture | 512x512 R8G8B8A8_UNORM |
| Macro Atlas | 4096x4096 R Compressed BC4 UNorm |
| Text Grid | 40 columns x 8 rows |
| Character ROM | 512 glyphs total -- Bank 0 (ASCII/box/icons) + Bank 1 (extended Latin, Cyrillic, Greek, kana) |
| Synced Parameters | 28 bits |
| Write Speed | ~70ms per glyph |
| Screen Transition | ~2-4 seconds (macro stamp + dynamic content) |
This project is licensed under the Apache 2.0 License. See LICENSE for details.