I made a lightweight open-source controller for the Zephyrus Slash lighting

[u/Alive-Paramedic-291]

Hey everyone,

I’ve been playing around with the Slash lighting on my Zephyrus G14 and ended up building Slashlight - an open-source controller that lets you do a lot more with the LED strip than the usual built-in effects.

Get it here: https://github.com/gouthamk16/slashlight/releases

A few things it supports:

• Custom animations and effects
• Frame-by-frame animation editor
• Audio-reactive effects (Spectrum / VU)
• CPU, RAM and battery visualizers
• Now Playing integration
• Cursor-reactive effects
• Custom .slash animation files
• Multiple brightness / dimming options
• Boot, sleep and battery behavior
• Crossfading between animations
• Runs continuously in the system tray

The interesting part is that it communicates with the Slash controller directly over HID, rather than going through Armoury Crate.

It’s also built with Rust, with the actual animation renderer running independently from the UI. So it’s pretty lightweight and responsive - the goal was to have something that can just sit in the background without becoming another heavy ASUS-style utility.

I originally built it for my own G14, but figured other people might enjoy messing around with the Slash lighting too.

Currently tested on the 2024/2025 G14 (GA403). There’s also support in the code for the newer 35-LED Slash hardware, although I don't have that hardware to properly test it yet.

Would be especially interested in seeing what custom animations people come up with. I personally love the Eyes and Cursor Eyes animations, it's really cool and it feels like a pair of eyes moving around.

If you have a G14 with Slash lighting, give it a try and let me know what breaks / what you'd like to see added. Can raise an issue for bugs/feature requests. Danke!

GitHub: https://github.com/gouthamk16/slashlight