A local, Mac-native widget dashboard for the Corsair Xeneon Edge™ touchscreen (the 2560×720 USB-C secondary panel).
Website: vardek.app · Download: latest release · vs iCUE: comparison
Corsair ships the Xeneon Edge™ widget layer only for Windows, through iCUE. On macOS the 2560×720 panel arrives as a blank second display. Vardek rebuilds that widget layer natively for the Mac: a full-screen, touch-driven grid of six bundled widgets plus any Vardek-format add-on you drop in, running entirely on your machine. Free, macOS 13+, signed and notarized by Apple.
Whatever can run on your machine does. Clocks, the day/night terminator, life-progress bars, and more are pure local math with no network at all; others (like the ISS tracker) fetch only a tiny bit of data and compute the rest on-device. When a widget does need live data — weather, launches, earthquakes — it makes only the exact API calls its manifest lists, and nothing else leaves your Mac. API keys live in the macOS Keychain, never in a plaintext config file.
- macOS 13 (Ventura) or later
- Apple Silicon Mac (CPU/GPU temperature sensors are Apple Silicon-only)
- A Corsair Xeneon Edge™ over USB-C (optional — Vardek also runs on any display so you can try it)
- Download
Vardek-<version>.dmgfrom the latest release. - Open it and drag Vardek to Applications.
- Launch Vardek. The app is signed and notarized by Apple.
Verify the download against SHA256SUMS if you like:
shasum -a 256 -c SHA256SUMS
- Setup — install and first launch.
- Mac display setup — recommended window sizes if you don't have a Xeneon Edge.
- Touch setup — enable the touchscreen (community driver).
- Troubleshooting — common fixes.
- Widget authoring guide — build your own widget.
- In-app Help (Vardek menu → Help, or ⌘?) — per-widget help pages, kept in sync with each widget's current behavior.
Six widgets ship bundled, curated and fixed at install. Drop your own into
~/Library/Application Support/Vardek/widgets/ and rescan — no app update needed.
Add-on widgets: install more after the fact — no app update — from vardekapp/vardek-widgets. That repo is open source; grab a widget, drop it in the folder above, rescan. Authoring guide and PRs welcome there too.
Community add-ons: kevinelliott/vardek-widgets by Kevin Elliott — a separate, community-maintained collection of 100+ add-on widgets (clocks, weather, space, finance, aviation, generative art). Always review any public widget before installing; install same as any add-on widget above.
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| Weather — current conditions, hourly, and a five-day outlook | Calendar — hero date with a three-month grid, instant first paint |
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| System Sensors — CPU, memory, and network instruments that go amber past real thresholds and dim when data stops |
Also bundled: Clock (time, kept honest by local math with no network at all), Sensor Gauge (one sensor, one dial — pick the reading that matters), and Macro Pad (touch buttons on the panel, wired to what you run most) — see them live in-app (⌘? → per-widget Help) or via the ⌘A Admin panel.
Manage everything from the Admin panel — open it as an app window (Vardek menu →
Open Admin, ⌘A) or in any browser at http://127.0.0.1:8137/admin. Placement,
settings, sensors, brightness, profiles — no config files to hand-edit.
Arranging the panel is direct manipulation: drag widgets onto a live page map (or between pages, or onto a "New page" target), resize with per-widget size chips, and filter the library as you type. The whole editor also works from the keyboard, removals ask first and offer a 10-second Undo, and every change confirms with a "Saved ✓" pulse.
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| Status — daemon, panel, and live sensors at a glance | Widgets — arrange pages, browse the library, set options |
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| System — display, day/night brightness, touch-driver status |
Does the Corsair Xeneon Edge work on a Mac?
The panel does. Over USB-C or HDMI, macOS sees the Xeneon Edge™ as an ordinary 2560×720 second display. The widget layer does not: Corsair delivers that through iCUE on Windows. On macOS the panel is a blank strip of desktop until you run something on it. Vardek is what runs on it — see the full iCUE vs Vardek comparison.
Does Vardek send my data anywhere?
No. The daemon binds to 127.0.0.1 and is not reachable off the machine. No cloud, no account, no telemetry. The only network traffic is the API calls a data widget explicitly makes, and those go through an audited proxy limited to hosts the widget declares in its manifest. Full detail on the privacy page.
Can Vardek use iCUE widgets?
Not directly. Building an iCUE widget today means installing Corsair's
WidgetBuilder CLI, scaffolding and validating the widget with it, then
packaging it into a .icuewidget file that gets imported through iCUE's own
+ button — a manifest schema (author, preview_icon,
supported_devices, …) and config model (<meta name="x-icue-property">
tags, onICUEInitialized) built for iCUE only. Vardek widgets are a plain
folder — manifest.json plus index.html, no CLI, no packaging step, no
iCUE install required. Community add-ons built for Vardek install by dropping
the folder into the widgets folder, rescan, done — see the
widget authoring guide.
How much does Vardek cost?
Nothing. Vardek is free, closed source, and distributed as a signed and notarized DMG through GitHub Releases. No paid tier, no subscription, no account.
Do I need a Xeneon Edge to run Vardek?
No. Vardek runs full-screen on any macOS display, so you can try it before the Edge™ arrives. The layout is built for the panel's 2560×720 shape and reads best there, but nothing requires that hardware.
Local-only by design. All components run on your Mac over 127.0.0.1; nothing
listens on your network. The only traffic that leaves your Mac is the specific
API call a widget you enable makes (e.g. Weather fetching a forecast), limited
to the exact hosts that widget declares. Full details at
vardek.app/privacy.
Vardek is proprietary and not open source — the source that builds these
releases isn't published. What that license doesn't do: no telemetry, no
account, no DRM or anti-tamper clause, free forever. Binary builds are free to
use under the End User License Agreement bundled with the app. See
LICENSE and THIRD-PARTY-NOTICES.md.
"Corsair" and "Xeneon" are trademarks of their respective owner; Vardek references them only for hardware compatibility and is not affiliated with or endorsed by Corsair.