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Dashboard Tutorial

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What is the Dashboard?

The dashboard is a persistent UI surface that MentraOS renders on the smart-glasses when the user looks up. It can show system information (time, battery, status) and content contributed by apps. Your app can treat the dashboard as an additional, lightweight display surface that remains visible even when other apps are in the foreground. MentraOS exposes a high-level Dashboard API through AppSession. You do not need to manage WebSocket messages or layouts manually—the SDK takes care of that. All you have to do is call a few convenience methods on session.dashboard.content.

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Prerequisites

  1. MentraOS SDK installed in your project.
  2. A working app server with a standard onSession implementation (see the Quickstart guide).

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Write to the Dashboard

session.dashboard.content.writeToMain('👋 Hello from my app!');
This will show the message in the main dashboard. If your app had previous dashboard content, it will be replaced.

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Full Example

packages/apps/hello-dashboard/src/index.ts
import { AppServer, AppSession } from '@mentra/sdk';

class HelloDashboardServer extends AppServer {
  protected async onSession(session: AppSession, sessionId: string, userId: string) {
    // Write a welcome message to the dashboard
    session.dashboard.content.writeToMain('👋 Hello from my app!');
  }
}
That’s all you need, no subscriptions, no manual layout construction. The SDK handles the heavy lifting.

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Best Practices

  1. Be concise – Users glance at the dashboard; keep messages short.
  2. Aim for ≤60 characters – Longer messages may be truncated.
  3. Respect user settings – Provide toggles or frequency controls so users can decide how often content appears.

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Next Steps

  • Read the Dashboard API reference for detailed method signatures, types, and enums.
  • Join our Discord community if you have questions or feedback.