documentation/products/home.md

Vyla Home (Desktop)

The native desktop control center and player runtime for Windows, macOS, and Linux built on Tauri v2 and an embedded Node.js sidecar.

Overview

Vyla Home is the flagship desktop application of the Vyla ecosystem. Engineered for performance and privacy, Vyla Home packages the entire Vyla streaming runtime into a lightweight native shell using Tauri v2 and an embedded Node.js sidecar process.

Instead of running heavy web browsers with excessive RAM overhead, Vyla Home leverages system-native WebViews (WebView2 on Windows, WebKit on macOS/Linux), ensuring instant boot times, hardware-accelerated video decoding, and tiny background resource footprints.

---

Downloads

Official binary releases are published directly to the Vyla Home GitLab Releases:

Platform	Package Format	Architecture	Download Link
Windows	Setup Installer (.exe) / Portable	x86_64 (64-bit)	Download for Windows (.exe)
macOS	Disk Image (.dmg)	Universal (Apple Silicon & Intel)	Download for macOS (.dmg)
Linux	Source Build / Flatpak (in progress)	x86_64, aarch64	Build from Source

:::callout-info When launching Vyla Home for the first time, the application will automatically perform a self-check, initialize local caches, and establish secure RPC connections. :::

---

Architectural Implementation

Vyla Home operates via a dual-process architecture:

Process Layer	Tech Stack	Responsibilities & Capabilities
Tauri Main Process	Rust	Manages native OS window lifecycle, system tray icons, native menus, and hosts the secure WebView renderer.
Inter-Process Channel	Stdio IPC	Bi-directional JSON-RPC stream communicating over standard input and standard output (stdin / stdout).
Node.js Sidecar Process	Node.js (main.js)	Orchestrates ServiceManager for local/remote fallback, verifies update cryptographic signatures via UpdateClient, manages Discord Rich Presence, and handles local cached data.

File Locations & Directory Structure

Vyla Home stores its configuration, cryptographic keys, cached catalogs, and logs in standard operating system directories:

OS	Default Storage Path
Windows	%APPDATA%\vyla-home\vyla-home-files\
macOS	~/Library/Application Support/vyla-home/vyla-home-files/
Linux	~/.local/share/vyla-home/vyla-home-files/

Diagnostics & Logs

If you encounter runtime issues, inspect the sidecar debug log:

• Windows: %APPDATA%\vyla-home\vyla-home-files\logs\node-debug.log
• macOS/Linux: <AppDataDir>/logs/node-debug.log

---

Windows Troubleshooting: WebView2 Runtime

On Windows systems, Vyla Home utilizes Microsoft's Evergreen WebView2 runtime. If your installation encounters a WebView2 runtime initialization error:

1. Ensure the Microsoft Edge WebView2 Evergreen Runtime is installed from Microsoft's official site.
2. For portable or standalone deployments, verify that WebView2Loader.dll exists in the bin/ directory adjacent to the binary:

vyla-home\bin\WebView2Loader.dll

---

Linux Build Guide

To build and run Vyla Home natively on Linux distributions (such as Fedora, Ubuntu, Debian, or Arch):

1. Install System Dependencies

:::code-group

sudo dnf install -y \
  webkit2gtk4.1-devel curl wget openssl-devel \
  libappindicator-gtk3-devel librsvg2-devel \
  gcc gcc-c++ make automake autoconf nodejs npm

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install -y \
  libwebkit2gtk-4.1-dev build-essential curl wget \
  libssl-dev libayatana-appindicator3-dev librsvg2-dev \
  nodejs npm

sudo pacman -Syu --needed \
  webkit2gtk-4.1 base-devel curl wget openssl \
  libappindicator-gtk3 librsvg nodejs npm

:::

2. Install Rust Toolchain

curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -sSf https://sh.rustup.rs | sh
source "$HOME/.cargo/env"

3. Clone and Build

# Clone the repository
git clone https://gitlab.com/vyla-entertainment/home.git vyla-home
cd vyla-home

# Install Node dependencies
npm install

# Package runtime payload
npm run build:payload

# Launch in developer mode
npm run dev

# Or compile production binary
npm run build

---

Developer Workflows

The Vyla Home repository includes specialized scripts for continuous development and release management:

# Start the full application in development mode with hot reload
npm run dev

# Package the local application payload into update-payload.zip
npm run build:payload

# Test the UI shell with a simulated test harness
npm run dev -- -- --env VYLA_TEST_UI=1

# Compile and package a full production installer release
npm run release:full

Resolving File Locks (OS Error 32)

If a hung process locks the binary during development on Windows:

Stop-Process -Name "vyla-home", "node", "cargo" -Force -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue