Overlay on
Linux
The Cult Overlay draws your map, growth and status on top of the game. It is optional — you can play and use proximity voice without it. This page covers installing it on Linux, and one important limit that does not apply on Windows.
Read this first
The overlay needs an X11 session. To sit on top of the game it has to find the game's window, read where it is, and place itself above it. Wayland does not permit any of those between applications — that is a deliberate security boundary, not something we can work around.
The Isle runs through Proton, which uses XWayland, so on a Wayland desktop the overlay can still follow the game — it just cannot cover native Wayland windows. If it misbehaves, log out and pick the Xorg session at the login screen.
With no X server at all, the overlay says so and opens as an ordinary window instead of pretending.
Check which you are on:
echo $XDG_SESSION_TYPE
Install
curl -L -o the-cult-overlay.sh https://islecult.com/downloads/overlay/installer/linux sh the-cult-overlay.sh
Do not pipe it into a shell — it carries the overlay inside itself and reads its own file to unpack it, so it has to be saved to disk first. Do not use sudo; it installs into your own home directory and refuses to run as root.
It is a large download (about 45 MB): the overlay is a single self-contained binary with no dependencies to install.
It appears in your applications menu as The Cult Overlay, or run it directly:
~/.local/bin/the-cult-overlay
If ~/.local/bin is on your PATH, plain the-cult-overlay works too. On Ubuntu that usually needs one log out and back in after a fresh install.
On first run it opens a page in your browser. Sign in and approve it, and the overlay can then show your own player's data. It only ever sees your account.
Nothing opened? Install xdg-utils — the overlay prints the link in its output as a fallback.
F1 hides and shows the HUD. Shift + F1 switches interact mode on and off, which lets you click the overlay instead of the game; a border and a banner make it obvious which mode you are in.
The overlay follows the game's window and stops drawing shortly after you switch away from the game.
Updates
There is no automatic update on Linux. The Windows build ships a separate updater; the Linux build does not have one yet, and silently rewriting a program in your home directory is not something we do behind your back.
Instead the overlay checks on startup and prints a message when a newer version exists. To update, re-run the installer:
curl -L -o the-cult-overlay.sh https://islecult.com/downloads/overlay/installer/linux sh the-cult-overlay.sh
Other problems
- It opens but never covers the game. You are almost certainly on a Wayland session. Try the Xorg session, and run the game in borderless windowed rather than exclusive fullscreen.
- You want to see what it can detect. Run
the-cult-overlay --x11-probe. It prints your session type, every window it can see, and the rectangle it would use. That output is the most useful thing to paste when asking for help. - It will not start. Check it is not already running: only one copy runs at a time.
- You want it gone.
sh the-cult-overlay.sh --uninstallremoves the binary, its launcher and its icon.