Z13GUI+ — power, thermals & RGB control drawer for the ASUS ROG Flow Z13 and AMD Strix Halo on Linux
What Plus Adds • Tablet stack • Interface • Compatibility • Install • Quick Start • Documentation • License
GTK4 control drawer for the 2025 ASUS ROG Flow Z13 (GZ302, Ryzen AI Max / Strix Halo): power profiles and AC/battery automation, TDP and fan-curve tuning, CPU undervolt, RGB keyboard and lightbar lighting, battery charge limit, panel refresh rate and overdrive, and live telemetry — slid in from the screen edge with the Armoury Crate button. Works on KDE Plasma and other layer-shell Wayland desktops, and inside Steam Gaming Mode (gamescope), with touch and gamepad navigation. GNOME support is an untested beta (details).
Built for the Flow Z13 and adapts to the hardware it finds: on an AMD Strix Halo machine without a battery, RGB, or ASUS firmware controls, those cards and tabs disappear instead of showing controls that cannot work. See Compatibility.
Z13GUI+ is an independently named fork of
dahui/z13gui with its own command, service,
configuration, runtime, desktop, and application-ID namespaces, so it installs
alongside upstream; enable only one GUI at a time. It talks only to
z13ctl-plus — install that daemon
first. The installed command is z13gui-plus; no z13gui alias is provided.
Tip
Need the CLI or scripting? Install z13ctl-plus. It owns the hardware, exposes everything this drawer shows plus presets and scripting, and is required by Z13GUI+. This repo is the touch interface on top of it.
- Power automation — save named configurations and assign separate presets for plugged-in and battery operation
- Independent CPU policy — control minimum CPU frequency, AMD EPP, and boost without coupling them to GPU clocks
- Expanded telemetry — monitor CPU, GPU, NPU, memory, battery, power, clocks, temperatures, and both fans from a dedicated Overview
- Battery insight — see health, energy capacity, system draw, charge state, and direction-aware runtime estimates
- Direct display control — switch the internal panel between 60 Hz and 180 Hz
- Safer tuning feedback — identify unsaved overrides, high-TDP fan safety, the live fan-curve operating point, and reset all tuning overrides together
- Faster fan control — select Auto, Balanced, or Turbo without editing a curve
Z13GUI+ is the settings and status surface in a three-repo tablet stack for the
Z13. Install the other two repos alongside it:
- z13-tablet-kit — detects dock/folio/tablet posture, toggles the touchscreen, and provides touch scrolling and two-finger context menus
- z13ctl-plus — owns internal-panel scale/rotation/refresh changes and persists tablet settings (desktop touch policy, two-finger hold, folio touchpad opt-in, scroll speed, keep display scale)
- Z13GUI+ (this repo) — GTK4 overlay drawer exposing live posture/health and the tablet toggles
Flow: kit detects posture → the daemon applies display changes → this drawer
shows state and persists settings → the kit applies them live — no restarts
required. The tablet chip in this drawer stays hidden
until the kit's z13-tablet-switch reports a heartbeat.
Optional: z13-backlight-quirk
(AUR z13-backlight-quirk-dkms) lowers the Z13's minimum screen brightness with a
kernel backlight quirk. Without it, Settings → Display → Dim darkens the screen
in software instead.
The hero above is the Overview tab; four more tabs, captured on this machine:
Power |
RGB |
Power Tuning |
Settings |
The drawer shows only what the z13ctl-plus
daemon reports for your machine. Cards for missing hardware are hidden
automatically, and Settings → Layout lets you hide any other card.
| Machine | Status |
|---|---|
| ASUS ROG Flow Z13 (2025, GZ302) | Supported — every control |
| Other AMD Strix Halo laptop or mini PC | Experimental — telemetry and CPU policy should work; fan curves, TDP, boot sound and panel overdrive need ASUS interfaces and are hidden when absent |
| Anything else | Not supported |
Without a battery, the Battery cards disappear; without RGB devices, the RGB tab disappears; without an internal panel, the refresh-rate control disappears. A daemon older than v2.5.0 does not report capabilities, and the drawer then shows everything.
Running it on a non-Z13 machine? Please open a compatibility report so this table can be filled in from real results.
# Arch Linux (AUR)
yay -S z13gui-plus-bin
# Debian / Ubuntu
sudo apt install ./z13gui-plus_*.deb
# Fedora / RHEL
sudo dnf install ./z13gui-plus_*.rpm
# Manual (from release tarball)
wget https://github.com/aic0d3r/z13gui-plus/releases/download/v2.8.0/z13gui-plus_2.8.0_linux_amd64.tar.gz
tar xzf z13gui-plus_2.8.0_linux_amd64.tar.gz
sudo install -Dm755 z13gui-plus /usr/local/bin/z13gui-plus
# With z13ctl-plus set up
systemctl --user enable --now z13gui-plus.serviceSee the Installation guide for runtime dependencies, gamepad input blocking, source builds, and uninstall instructions. Packages leave the GUI service disabled; enable only the GUI that matches the controller daemon you selected.
-
One-time: enable the daemon and the drawer. Packages leave both disabled, so this line is what starts them now and on every login:
systemctl --user enable --now z13ctl-plus.socket z13ctl-plus.service z13gui-plus.service -
Open the drawer with the Armoury Crate button; on KDE Plasma Meta+Z also works (rebind it under System Settings → Shortcuts → Z13GUI+).
The tabs, roughly in the order you'll use them:
- Overview — live temperatures, power draw, fans, memory, and battery
- Power — profile, fan mode, CPU Boost, automation, battery strategy
- Power tuning — TDP, fan curve, undervolt, and CPU frequency limits
- RGB — keyboard and lightbar lighting
- Settings — refresh rate, overdrive, boot sound, Dim, camera, theme, layout
Hardware-control changes are sent to the z13ctl-plus daemon.
Full documentation at https://aic0d3r.github.io/z13gui-plus
If Z13GUI+ makes your Z13 nicer to live with, star it on GitHub. That helps other Z13 owners find it. If you want to chip in, you can sponsor me on GitHub.