A minimal, fast, graphical UEFI boot manager written in C.
Visor draws an icon-based boot menu that combines the speed and efficiency of GRUB with the looks of rEFInd. It boots Linux (EFI-stub kernels / Unified Kernel Images) and chainloads any other EFI executable, including Windows.
It is intentionally small: a single ~340 KB .efi, no external dependencies,
no scripting language — just a config file and your imagination. Drop the
config entirely and it auto-detects Windows, UKIs, kernels, and BLS/OSTree
deployments on its own, deriving a correct root= cmdline by itself.
Beyond the menu it does the modern things too: btrfs/snapper snapshot booting, OSTree deployment browsing with automatic rollback, live USB hotplug, themes, mouse and touch, encrypted boot artifacts with a single-password LUKS handoff, and Secure Boot verification through shim. Two architectures — x86_64 and AArch64 — build from one tree.
- An x86_64 or AArch64 UEFI system
- gnu-efi development files
- GCC and binutils (
objcopy) - make, git
Run this. It installs the build tools for your distro, downloads Visor, builds it, and installs it to your ESP:
sh -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/IO-ZetZor/Visor-BootManager/main/get.sh)"With wget instead:
sh -c "$(wget -qO- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/IO-ZetZor/Visor-BootManager/main/get.sh)"It builds as your normal user and only asks for sudo when it's time to
install. Prefer to read the script first? Download get.sh, look it over, then
run it.
Afterwards, edit <ESP>/EFI/visor/boot.conf to point at your real kernels — or
delete it and let auto-detection do the work. visor update pulls and
reinstalls the latest version at any time.
Visor is available on the AUR. Install it with your favourite AUR helper:
yay -S visorOr with any other AUR helper, for example paru:
paru -S visorThe AUR package builds Visor from source, installs the EFI binary to
/usr/lib/visor/ and the visor CLI to /usr/bin/visor. After installing,
run visor install to deploy to your ESP.
Full install guide, installer flags, and the configuration reference: here
| Visor | GRUB 2 | systemd-boot | rEFInd | Limine | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Footprint on ESP | ~340 KB, single binary | Several MB + modules + config machinery | ~100 KB + BLS entries | ~500 KB + icons/themes | ~1 MB + deploy tool |
| Configuration | One plain-text file — or zero config | Generated grub.cfg; hand-editing discouraged |
Simple, one file per entry (BLS) | One file, many options; auto-detects too | One limine.conf, entries declared by hand |
| Menu | Graphical: animations, blur, wallpaper accent colors, mouse/touch, themes | Text menu (themable with effort) | Text only, deliberately | Graphical icons; static, no animation | Text menu with optional wallpaper |
| Boot methods | EFI-stub/UKI, raw kernels (handover), any EFI chainload | Everything, incl. legacy BIOS and multiboot | EFI binaries only | EFI binaries + legacy kernels via drivers | Limine protocol, Linux, Multiboot 1/2, chainload |
| Auto cmdline for detected kernels | Yes — UKI section / fstab / GPT partition type | n/a (scripted at install time) | No | Partial | No |
| Live USB hotplug in the menu | Yes, animated add/remove | No | No | No | No |
| Btrfs snapshot boot | Built in (snapper / Timeshift / plain) | Via grub-btrfs add-on | No | No | No |
| Encrypted boot files on the ESP | Built in (VISORENC + one-password LUKS handoff) | Can read LUKS-encrypted /boot |
No | No | No |
| Secure Boot | shim/SHIM_LOCK aware; sbctl signing in installer |
Mature shim integration | Mature | Works with shim/MOK | Sign it yourself; no shim integration |
| Legacy BIOS | No — UEFI only | Yes | No | No | Yes |
| Scripting | None, on purpose | Full shell-like language | None | None | None |
| Maturity | Young (2026), one maintainer | 25+ years | Systemd project, widely deployed | 15+ years | Since 2019, hobby-OS focused |
Honest summary: if you want a bulletproof do-everything loader, use GRUB. If you want the absolute minimum, systemd-boot. If you're booting your own OS or still need BIOS, Limine. Visor is for people who want a fast, small, modern-looking menu with the conveniences built in — and who run UEFI hardware from this decade. The full pros-and-cons page doesn't hide the weak spots.
Everything else — configuration reference, themes, encryption and LUKS, Secure
Boot, snapshots and OSTree, filesystem drivers, the visor CLI, architecture
notes, and troubleshooting — is in the Wiki.
A fully commented config reference also ships in
boot.conf.example.
- rEFInd — the massive inspiration for what a boot menu should feel like.
- gnu-efi — the freestanding UEFI toolchain Visor builds on.
- EfiFs (Pete Batard) — the filesystem drivers Visor can install for non-FAT volumes.
- materialyoucolor — the reference Material You color implementation behind the wallpaper accent pipeline.
- Everyone who ran early builds on real hardware and sent in
boot.logfiles and firmware quirk reports — most of the hardening in every release came straight from those.
Written and maintained by IO-ZetZor. BSD 2-Clause licensed — see LICENSE.