OpenLogi — a native, local-first desktop app that configures Logitech mice, keyboards and Litra lights directly over HID++, with no account and no background service.
Alternative to: Logi Options+, which is $0. There is no paid Logitech tier for this. The nearest paid equivalents are third-party: BetterMouse $7.99 one-time, BetterTouchTool $15 (2-year updates) or $25 lifetime, SteerMouse $19.99, USB Overdrive $20, GlowWorm Lighting $7.99 for the Litra lights.
Cost to run: free.
Licence: dual Apache-2.0 OR MIT. Free for commercial use.
Runs on: macOS, Linux, Windows.
Requires: nothing to install alongside it. On macOS it needs Accessibility and Input Monitoring permissions.
Traction: 17,938 stars · 523 forks · 1,173 commits · 68 committers in the last year.
Liveness: very live — 542 commits in 30 days and v0.8.3 shipped 2026-08-30, one day before this was written.
Maturity: v0.8.3. The README's own first line: "OpenLogi is under active development and not yet stable — features and config may still change."
Links: repo · openlogi.org · Hacker News, 1,635 points · Trendshift 42303
Figures as of 2026-08-31.
What it does
It talks to Logitech peripherals over HID++, the protocol Logitech's own software uses, and exposes the settings that protocol carries: button remapping, DPI presets, SmartShift wheel behaviour, per-direction gestures on any capable button, battery state, and power and colour temperature on Litra lights. Configuration is a single TOML file. There is a CLI as well as a GUI.
Per-application profiles switch on app focus. That works on macOS and Windows, and on Linux only under X11 or XWayland.
It is written in Rust and ships as a native binary. No Electron, no login, no background telemetry service.
What it replaces, and what that costs
Nothing, in dollars. This is the honest answer and the entry will not manufacture a better one.
Logi Options+ is free. Logitech's own FAQ calls it "a free customization app for your Logitech devices." Logitech publishes exactly two consumer applications, Options+ and G HUB, and both are free downloads. Every predecessor — Options, SetPoint, Logitech Control Center, the Unifying Software — is discontinued and points users at Options+. There is no paid tier to price against. Logitech Sync does have one, at $199 per room per year, but Sync is video-conferencing room management and citing it here would be dishonest.
So what does the reader pay today? Zero dollars and four conditions:
A Logi ID for the headline feature. Logitech's documentation: "You will have to be logged in to your Options+ account to use Smart Actions," and "logging out will disable Smart Actions." Cloud settings backup also requires an account.
Consent-gated analytics, plus telemetry that is not consent-gated. Options+ has a "Share diagnostic and usage data" toggle covering button and key customisations and device settings. Separately, and unconditionally, Logitech's privacy policy states its servers "automatically record certain information, including the IP address, the software version, and the connected devices."
Accessibility, Input Monitoring, and for some features Screen Recording grants on macOS.
Memory. Cult of Mac, 2026-08-16: "On average, I have seen it using between 400MB and 500MB of memory on my Mac." Logitech has acknowledged the general shape of this itself — a 2023 Options+ release note fixed "high CPU usage during shutdown of Options+ backend on some systems."
If a reader has already refused Options+ and pays for a replacement, the real numbers are small and one-time. BetterMouse is $7.99, perpetual, five activations, and is the closest like-for-like on macOS; its own limitation is that it does not replicate Logitech Flow or Smart Actions. BetterTouchTool is $15 for two years of updates or $25 lifetime. SteerMouse is $19.99, perpetual, but does not support the Magic Mouse or Magic Trackpad. USB Overdrive is $20 and is nagware rather than crippleware — the unregistered version has no feature or time limits. Add GlowWorm at $7.99 for the Litra lights and a full paid macOS stack lands somewhere around $16 to $28, once.
On Windows there is effectively no paid market at all. X-Mouse Button Control is free, and its licence text says so aggressively: "If you have paid for this software, please request a refund from the person or organization that you paid!"
This is an avoided cost of about twenty dollars, once, for a Mac user who was going to buy BetterMouse. For everyone else it is not a saving of any kind, because they were not paying anything. What changes is the account, the telemetry and the memory, not the bill.
Is it still alive?
Very. 542 commits in the last 30 days and 1,000 in the last 90, across 68 committers in the past year. The last commit landed on 2026-08-31, the morning this was written. v0.8.3 was tagged 2026-08-30, v0.8.2 the same day, v0.8.1 on 2026-08-26 — a release cadence measured in days.
The issue tracker is being used by outsiders, daily, with real triage labels. Issues filed on 2026-08-29 and 2026-08-30 alone cover a G102 mouse, fractional wheel deltas dropped on macOS, scroll stutter on non-HiRes mice like the Lift, Homebrew installs failing to get Input Monitoring permission, and Windows Dynamic Lighting claiming the G-logo LED. That is what a live tracker looks like.
One caveat on the traction figure: the star count moved from 17,930 to 17,938 during the twenty minutes this record was being compiled. Treat the number as a snapshot of a curve, not a level.
A note on sources: GitHub's signed-out view of this repo shows an "Issue creation is restricted" banner. It is a logged-out artefact and it is false — outside accounts are demonstrably filing issues every day. This column has now caught that banner lying twice.
What people say
OpenLogi reached the Hacker News front page on 2026-08-19 with 1,635 points and 413 comments, submitted by a third party, not the maintainer. That is a very large thread, and the top of it is not praise.
The dominant argument is about the project's landing-page copy. demibabs opened it: "Cool project, but I hate how every new site has this obviously LLM generated copy :( I feel like most people who use it for their copy don't realize how obvious it is." That subthread runs for dozens of replies.
The most damaging comment for a prospective user is breznev's, because it is about the software rather than the prose: "Oh it's not just the site—the app is obviously LLM generated too and feels like it. I gave up and went back to Mos within 20 minutes."
There is substantive defence too. thiht: "I'm interested in this tool because Logi Options+ sucks, and it clears out every question I have for a replacement. I know what features it offers, what devices it's compatible with, what it looks like." And jdboyd, who separates the two claims: "While it does look extremely likely that AI is used for the copy writing, and probably for some of the code maintenance, I'm not convinced that this is being vibe coded."
Linux users mostly shrugged. JeremyNT: "I came here looking for a reference to Solaar, which is what I currently use. AFAICT there's no reason to switch to OpenLogi for Linux users."
And the thread surfaced a fact worth more than any of the opinions — armadyl pointed out that Logitech does publish an offline build of Options+ for air-gapped systems, and gohanlon maintains a Homebrew tap that tracks it. aobdev then supplied the limit that makes it matter: onboard memory storage "only works with 'G' brand gaming devices. Their entire MX line does not allow you to store customizations in onboard memory."
Hacker News comment scores are not exposed by the API this column uses, so no vote count is claimed for any individual comment above; the 1,635-point figure is the story score, which is published. Reddit is blocked from the research sandbox, so no Reddit vote counts are claimed either.
The catch
It fights with the software it replaces. The project documents this itself: quit Logi Options+ before launching, because "the two fight over HID++ access, and only one app can own a receiver at a time. On Linux, the same applies to Solaar." You cannot run both.
It is pre-1.0 and says so. Version 0.8.3, with the README warning that features and config may still change.
Linux is a first-class platform with an asterisk. Per-application profile overlays work on X11 and XWayland only. Wayland users get less.
On Linux there is already Solaar, which several Hacker News commenters use and see no reason to leave.
The LLM-copy criticism is unresolved, and it is not nothing. The most common inference in that thread — that generated prose implies generated code — is contested and unproven either way. But this is software that takes Input Monitoring permission on your machine, which is the permission that sees your keystrokes. Commenters raised that directly. The counterweight is that the code is Apache-2.0 and MIT, in Rust, on a repository with 68 committers in the last year and an issue tracker that answers people.
Credits
Maintained by AprilNEA (@AprilNEA), with 814 of the last year's commits. Substantial contributions from Xuan Zhang (109), David Budnick (53), Marton Cserbak (25) and Tagawa (8), plus 63 other committers.
The Hacker News thread was submitted by amatheus. Comments quoted from demibabs, breznev, thiht, jdboyd, JeremyNT, armadyl, aobdev and gohanlon.
Prices verified against Logitech's own FAQ, software index and privacy policy; better-mouse.com; folivora.ai/buy; plentycom.jp; usboverdrive.com; highrez.co.uk; and the GlowWorm Lighting App Store listing. Memory figure from Cult of Mac, 2026-08-16. Repository figures from a blobless clone and ungh.cc, both read 2026-08-31.