Installing mods

Once Lyra is installed, mods are added and managed from the device itself. The Mods tab on the home screen browses a mod repository, installs what you pick, and manages what is already on the device. See Mods tab for the surface. This page covers what installing and managing a mod actually does.

From the repository

The Browse view lists the mods published to the Lyra repository at repo.zune.moe. Each entry carries its name, author, category, and description. Selecting one and installing downloads its package and applies it, with no desktop software involved.

A mod is often more than a background change. Many add a quick-toggle to the playback HUD's quick settings, a status icon, or a settings entry. Night Mode adds a moon toggle that tints the interface red. Screen Share and zune-cast add quick-toggles that start streaming the screen or audio.

The repository ships with the Lyra platform itself and a set of feature mods, including Marketplace Server Redirect, Night Mode, Screen Share, zune-cast, and YouTube. The YouTube mod is marked experimental: music plays, but the video path is unfinished. The repository feed is the current list. What is available there can change between releases.

Enabling and disabling

Installed mods are enabled or disabled from the Manage view without removing them. The enabled state is recorded on the device and re-applied every time the platform loads at boot, so what you turn on stays on across reboots. A mod's capabilities are applied by the Lyra runtime at boot, so a change to what is enabled takes hold when the platform next loads.

Once a mod is active, its own controls run live. Night Mode's moon toggle in quick settings tints and un-tints the screen immediately, without a reboot. That is separate from enabling or disabling the mod itself, which takes effect when the platform reloads.

Installing from a host

For developing a mod, the modkit pushes a raw mod directory to the device over the network rather than through the repository:

python modkit/mod-apply.py validate <mod_dir>
python modkit/mod-apply.py apply    <mod_dir> --ip <device-ip>

--ip defaults to 192.168.0.100. The command validates the manifest, builds the mod's assets, and pushes the directory, and the on-device runtime applies it at boot. This is the authoring path, not how a user installs a published mod. The manifest format and the capability model are the subject of the Modkit reference.