LED Maps & Layouts

1. Arranging devices on the canvas

Drag device frames on the Lighting canvas to mirror your real setup: fans on the left of your desk go on the left of the canvas. Click selects a frame, Cmd/Ctrl+click adds to the selection, and dragging on empty canvas draws a marquee to grab several at once. The canvas draws the devices the selection covers, and the badge beside Effects says how many that is.

Right-click a frame, or use the menu on its card in the device rail, for quick actions: Identify, Assign Devices, Maximize to full canvas (or Minimize), Rotate clockwise / Rotate counter-clockwise, Turn lights on / off, and Turn on / off Nexus Control. With multiple frames selected, the same actions apply to the whole group and name how many devices they will touch.

The Presets picker at the right of the mode tabs manages layout presets: save the current arrangement and power states as a named preset, switch between presets, rename or delete them, and use Undo / Redo or Reset layout to recover from a bad drag.

2. Telling Nexus what is plugged into a port

A motherboard ARGB header, a HYTE Smart Hub port, a MiniHub port, a Nollie channel or a Kraken fan channel cannot report what is plugged into it: the wire carries power and data one way, and nothing comes back. So you declare it.

1. Open the editor with Assign Devices, from a device card's menu in the device rail or from a frame's right-click menu on the canvas.
2. In the Devices list on the left, open the row's dropdown and pick your product. The list is a built-in catalogue of around 250 fans, strips, AIOs, water blocks, cases and cable combs, with a search box to narrow it.
3. The row takes the product's LED count, and the map on the right lays its LEDs out in the product's real shape: a fan becomes a ring, a strip a line.

HYTE's own products are in the catalogue with their counts: FR12 (33 LEDs), FR12 Trio (68), LN80 (45), Y50 Solo Fan (8) and Y50 Trio Fan (24).

The catalogue ships inside the application. It needs no account, no sign-in and nothing fetched, so the picker works on a machine that has never been online.

3. Chaining several products on one port

Several products can be daisy-chained to one port, and the Devices list is that chain, in wire order:

• Add device at the foot of the list adds a row; pick what sits at that position in the chain.
• Drag rows up and down by their grip until the order matches the physical wiring.
• Each row shows its LED count, and a Total under the list adds them up.
• Each product becomes its own card on the Lighting page, in wire order, so a chain of three fans is three independently controllable zones.

For hardware the catalogue does not name, pick Generic Fan or Generic Strip. These are the only rows whose LED count you type; the geometry follows the count, so a Generic Fan with 24 LEDs is a 24-point ring. Every catalogued product fixes its own count.

4. Placing LEDs on the map

The right side of the editor is the map: a faint square grid, with each LED drawn as a numbered dot and two brighter lines marking the centre. Assigning a product already places its LEDs; this is where you correct the picture for your unit, such as a fan mounted upside down or a strip that runs the other way. Click a row's name in the Devices list to select that product on the map.

1. Drag an LED to move it. Click selects one, Cmd/Ctrl+click adds to the selection, and dragging on empty grid draws a marquee to lasso several.
2. The floating selection toolbar can Align as strip, Align as grid, Arrange as circle, Rotate 90 degrees, Flip horizontally / Flip vertically, Group LEDs into one point, or Revert selected to last saved.
3. Snap is off by default, so an LED goes exactly where you drop it; switch it on and a dragged LED lands on the nearest grid point instead. A multi-LED selection snaps by the centre of its selection box, so the spacing inside the selection is preserved.
4. Remove from map (Del) takes an LED off the canvas. A button under the map counts what was removed and puts it all back.
5. Check the result with the Preview modes: Animation, H Swipe and V Swipe run test patterns across the physical device.

LED positions are held until you press Save; Reset restores the factory layout, and closing with unsaved changes asks first. Undo and redo (Cmd/Ctrl+Z) cover every editing step.

5. Zones and hubs

Devices with several built-in zones, such as a keyboard with keys and underglow, list those zones instead of a chain; there is nothing to pick, since the firmware already knows what it is. Where the device supports it, the buttons beside the list Merge zones (Cmd/Ctrl+click adjacent zones first), Split into a new zone from a contiguous run of selected LEDs, or Reset zones to the device defaults. Each zone is its own card in the device list, so you can power or exclude it independently.

For supported fan hubs the editor adds hub-level layout switches above the map, such as Mirror all ports and Combine inner + outer rings, plus a Set fans per port shortcut to the hub's device page. Changing the hub layout resets that hub's per-device LED positions, and Nexus asks before doing it.

6. Community layouts

Hand-mapping a 100-LED case is work someone may already have done. When other users have published layouts for your exact device, its card on the Lighting page shows a badge with the count. Click the badge to open the editor with the device's Community layouts on top: each shows a preview and how many users run it, and some carry a Verified mark. Apply one, and Remove it again if it does not match your unit.

The same panel can Publish your layout (it is published anonymously under the device's name, and needs anonymous usage data sharing enabled in settings), and Export / Import layouts as .nexusmap files to move them between machines.