otter-bench

Otter Bench is the desktop front end for Otter HUD and the benchmarking suite. Edit overlay layouts against a live preview that uses the same draw stream as the in-game HUD. Browse recorded sessions, run benchmark plans, and launch games with the HUD attached. It is not part of otter-shell. Install the gaming metapackage:

pikman install otter-gaming-utils

That pulls otter-bench, otter-benchd, otter-benchctl, otter-hud, and otter-bench-hardwared. Packaging lives in otter-gaming-utils.

Packages

Package	Role
`otter-bench`	Desktop app, `.desktop` entry, icons
`otter-benchd`	Per-user metrics and session daemon (socket-activated)
`otter-benchctl`	CLI for config, capture, benchmarks, reports
`otter-hud`	Vulkan layer, OpenGL hook, and `otter-hud` launcher
`otter-bench-hardwared`	Optional privileged hardware helper (polkit)

otter-bench depends on the daemon, CLI, and HUD. The hardware helper is recommended; without it, those readings show as unavailable instead of zero.

otter-benchd must be running for full use of the desktop app, otter-benchctl, and otter-hud. The daemon owns metrics, layouts, captures, and sessions. Without it, the GUI and CLI cannot do useful work, and the in-game HUD only shows a diagnostic banner.

Launch

otter-bench

Or open Otter Bench from otter-launcher. otter-benchd is socket-activated through its user systemd unit — starting the app or CLI usually brings it up. Check with otter-benchctl status or systemctl --user status otter-benchd. Game lists show Steam artwork from the local Steam cache. Nothing in this package contacts the network.

What you can do

Edit HUD layouts with a live preview that uses the same scene compiler as the injected overlay. Import MangoHud configs through a review wizard — nothing is dropped silently. Set collection profiles and per-game launch overrides, arm captures, run benchmark plans, and browse sessions. Reports and offline upload bundles stay on disk. There is no network upload client. Display smoothing (style_smoothing) only changes what the OSD draws. Captures and analysis always see raw samples.

Configuration

Configs live under ~/.config/otter-shell/:

otter-bench.conf                 UI, daemon, storage, privacy defaults
otter-hud.conf                   injection, renderer, default layout
otter-hud/layouts/*.conf         widget trees and styling
otter-bench/collection/*.conf    metrics, sampling, retention
otter-bench/profiles/*.conf      per-game bindings and launch overrides
otter-bench/benchmarks/*.conf    warm-up, measured region, repetitions

Unknown and duplicate keys are errors here (unlike most Otter Shell apps). A typo in a benchmark plan should fail loudly.

otter-hud — inject the overlay into a game
otter-benchctl — drive the suite from a terminal
Installation — metapackage contents

Get Started

Desktop Shell

Core Apps

Productivity

Utilities

Gaming

Configuration

Packages

Launch

What you can do

Configuration

​Packages

​Launch

​What you can do

​Configuration

​Related

Packages

Launch

What you can do

Configuration

Related