Aurora RGB vs Polychromatic

Aurora RGB is a free Windows application for coordinating RGB lighting devices across brands and adding or improving lighting support for games. Supported device types include keyboards, mice, mousepads, fans, and WiFi lights. Brand integrations listed by the project include Logitech Lightsync, Razer Chroma, and Corsair iCUE. Native game integrations include CS2, Dota 2, and League of Legends. Lighting can react to game state such as health, ammo, cooldowns, and other events. Users can build layered effects and gradients, create interactive keyboard effects, and script custom effects or devices. Profiles can be imported and exported, and an automatic updater is included. Installation offers a GitHub installer or a manual archive route. The project describes low background resource use for gaming. Builds marked Prerelease may contain breaking changes; manually installing one keeps prerelease updates until switching to a full release build. Support is directed to Discord and GitHub issues. All listed features are free and open-source.

Polychromatic is a free, open-source GNU/Linux frontend for OpenRazer. It controls lighting and other settings on supported Razer peripherals, with the home page listing more than 210 devices including keyboards, mice, mouse mats, and headsets. You can adjust built-in effects, brightness, DPI, and polling interval, or create static and animated mappings from pixels and frames for games, applications, or ambience. The app shows firmware versions and serial numbers and can test individually addressable LEDs. A tray applet provides settings access when the desktop supports system-tray indicators, and a troubleshooter addresses problems such as OpenRazer failures or missing devices. It runs locally without cloud services or a login and is licensed under GPLv3. Polychromatic supports OpenRazer only; other brands are unavailable, and key remapping is not supported.