Just recently I discovered Mangohud and Goverlay whilst researching a performance monitor to use whilst gaming. I installed both just fine and have all of the settings saved to my liking, however the overlay fails to display for any games no matter what option is or is not changed or edited. In some instances I changed a few options in Lutris, however this resulted in the game not even launching. I am aware of changes in a recent edition of Ubuntu (I use Zorin which is based on Ubuntu) it meant that the latest version of Goverlay will not work and have installed an appropriate older version, yet this has yielded no results. Can anyone recommend a guide from the last 3-6 months that is confirmed to work without issue?

I'm on CachyOS.

It says vkBasalt is missing, yet, i can see the effects and stuff in the vkBasalt tab. I have since installed vkbasalt from AUR, and goverlay now says "All dependencies OK." But that still leaves the question how to use the thing in game.

Optiscaler is installed as well, but i can't open anything in game.

It says at the bottom to use "fgmod %command%" variable, but how do i use that variable in Heroic? Is that a "wrapper" or an "environment variable"? I don't have anything in Steam righ now that can use optiscaler, nor do i have anything in Faugus Launcher that can use it, but i assume "fgmod %command%" enables Goverlay in game there?

I tried putting it in the environment variable (since Heroic says this is where the %command% stuff goes), but i can't just put "fgmod" there, it insists on an = sign and a value after it. I tried putting 1 (so it reads fgmod=1 %command%), but when i press insert in game, it doesn't open the Optiscaler interface. didn't try for vkBasalt since i didn't put any effects in the right column, but i assume it's just not working, otherwise i'd at least see the Optiscaler interface i guess.

EDIT: Heroic is the CachyOS repo version, not Flatpak.

But also, it says it's missing vkbasalt... So i assumed it wouldn't work anyway since i didn't have it installed...

I know how to manually install optiscaler in a game folder, and run the script, that works, but if this is an easier way to use it, i'd like to do that instead (so i don't have to install it separately for each game). Or am i wrong in how this all works and i still need to manually install it regardless?

I looked at both the Goverlay and fgmod github, and there's no mention on what to actually do with it, other than how to install or build the program. That's all well and good, but, what about using it?

Any help appreciated! Thanks!

UPDATE - SOLUTION:

Goverlay isn't one thing it seems, each part of what it offers must be enabled separately.

Concerning fgmod, Heroic wasn't recognizing the ~/fgmod/fgmod as a file or folder, that's why the game was crashing. Putting the entire path in the left part of the wrapper input box fixed this issue, meaning, /home/user/fgmod/fgmod. So, just the wrapper, no arguments.

Not sure why that was the case, but there we go...

In the first comment, felix_ribiero posted how to get vkBasalt working in Faugus Launcher with ENABLE_VKBASALT=1. In steam you'd just put %command% after this, and in Heroic, those go into environment variables. Left input box is ENABLE_VKBASALT, and right box is the value 1. No need to put = sign in there.

Optiscaler should work in Faugus normally with ~/fgmod/fgmod like in the picture provided.

As for Mangohud, in Steam, it's mangohud %command%, but both Faugus and Heroic have a checkbox to make it work. I guess Goverlay just acts as a configuration utility for mangohud then, how you want to make it look, etc.

Haven't tried vkBasalt yet, the effects seem to get stuck in goverlay for some reason so i don't want to mess with it yet. The vkcube thing always shows with the ASCII effect and i can't remove it, idk why. But Optiscaler works in game now in heroic when i provided the entire path. I guess it just got confused about the ~/ part. Not sure why, this just points to the user's home directory, but apparently Heroic doesn't recognize this.

INSTALLATION

-To use a GUI we must install Goverlay:

Terminal:
flatpak install flathub io.github.benjamimgois.goverlay

Or you may install it natively (like apt or rpm), doesn't really matter.

You could use Flathub or your GUI appstore too.

-Goverlay is just a graphical interface you may need to install MangoHud itself:

For flatpaks:
flatpak install flathub org.freedesktop.Platform.VulkanLayer.MangoHud

and choose the latest runtime which currently is 25.08, you can see it at the end.

For Natives:

Ubuntu based:

sudo apt install mangohud

Fedora based:

sudo dnf install mangohud

Or whatever your distro work with.

I advice to install both versions of mangohud.

CONFIGURATION

-Open Goverlay and configure it to your liking and click save, then go to Home folder then press ctrl + h and open .config look for MangoHud folder if it's there ,great, if there is none, this is probably because we are using a flatpak, now go to /home/YOURusername/.var/app/io.github.benjamimgois.goverlay/config then copy MangoHud folder and paste back in .config folder. Both M and H must be capital in MangoHud folder.

Goverlay even as flatpak will recognise it by default and edit accordingly as you edit it, at least from my experience. Either versions will manage both native Mangohud and Flatpak Mangohud as they run the same file we have in .config.

ACTIVATION

-FOR STEAM

For native: right click any game and click properties, at the bottom in the launch options type:

mangohud %command%.

As far as I'm concerned there isn't a convenient way to apply it globally for all native steam games. There is a hidden global enable in goverlay but this may cause issues as it apply it to all your PC. To be frank someone will reply about this.

Edit: It has to do with editing your shortcut, haven't tried it myself so can't provide a guide.

For flatpak: Install Flatseal (or use Kde's Application Permissions), open and go through steam, look for Enviroment and add a variable:

MANGOHUD=1.

This will apply them to most games, if it doesn't work, go to game properties and type:

mangohud %command%

-FOR HEROIC & LUTRIS

Heroic: Settings>Game Defaults>Enable Mangohud (applied to newly installed games only).

Lutris: top right 3 bars>Preferences>Global options> FPS counter (MangoHud).

-FOR STANDALONE NATIVE & APPIMAGE GAMES:

The easiest way I found is to add them to a NATIVELY installed launcher like lutris and simply activate it from there like explained above.

-FOR STANDALONE FLATPAK GAMES:

For Vulkan games: through flatseal go to the desired game, look for Filesystem and add:

xdg-config/MangoHud:ro

afterwards, go to Environment and add a (or 2) variables:

MANGOHUD=1

if it activates without desired configuration, then add:

MANGOHUD_CONFIGFILE=/home/YOURusername/.config/MangoHud/MangoHud.conf

For OpenGL: through flatseal go to the desired game, look for Filesystem and add:

xdg-config/MangoHud:ro

afterwards, go to Environment and add 2 (or 3) variables:

MESA_LOADER_DRIVER_OVERRIDE=zink (this translates OpenGL to Vulkan)

MANGOHUD=1

if it activates without desired configuration, then add:

MANGOHUD_CONFIGFILE=/home/YOURusername/.config/MangoHud/MangoHud.conf

This is because MangoHud is a hit or miss with OpenGL and its hard doing it through flatpaks, so forcing it through zink will grants better results from my experience.

FINAL NOTES:

When using flatpaks you may need to have both mangohud and the launchers on the same runtime, so mangohud is 25.08 to comply with steam 25.08.

They should update together after installation, so shouldn't matter.

For reference:

Dirstro: Fedora KDE 43

GPU Vendor: AMD

Hope this helps anyone.

Do try and comment for better ways if you know more.