The Homebrew Launcher (hbmenu for short) is the default menu for ninjhax, a 3DS homebrew-enabling exploit released on November 20th 2014. It is a fairly simple (and beautiful) menu that lists homebrew applications and lets you run them.

To use hbmenu as your ninjhax menu, simply rename the 3dsx executable to boot.3dsx and place it at the root of your SD card.

Press START in hbmenu to reboot your console into home menu. Use the D-PAD, CIRCLE-PAD or the touchscreen to select an application, and press A or touch it again to start it.

hbmenu scans the sdmc:/3ds/ directory for applications; it will only find applications placed there and nowhere else on your SD card. Ideally, you should have a folder for each application, containing an executable and an icon (SMDH) file. The executable should either be named "boot.3dsx" or "[folder name].3dsx". The icon file can be named "icon.bin", "icon.smdh", "icon.icn", "[folder name].smdh" or "[folder name].icn". hbmenu will also recognize stray 3dsx executables located in the sdmc:/3ds/ directory.

Here is an example (correct) directory structure that hbmenu will have no trouble recognizing :

• sdmc:/
  • 3ds/
    • 3dscraft/
      • 3dscraft.3dsx
      • icon.bin
    • blargsnes/
      • boot.3dsx
      • blargsnes.smdh
    • gameyob/
      • gameyob.3dsx
      • gameyob.icn
    • cubedemo/
      • boot.3dsx
      • icon.icn
    • 3dnes.3dsx
    • ftpony.3dsx

If hbmenu does not find an icon file to associate to a given 3dsx, it will display a default icon and the path to the executable instead of the actual metadata for that executable.

Note that while you can hotswap the SD card while hbmenu is running and it should work fine, in practice this feature has proven to be unstable, so use at your own risk. It is recommended that you instead use a file transfer homebrew application such as ftpony to transfer files without rebooting.

Currently, everything in hbmenu is rendered in software. The reason for that is of course that homebrew GPU support is still unstable and very much a work in progress. Eventually, one of our goals should be to make hbmenu use the GPU for rendering.

hbmenu uses some funky service commands to launch 3dsx files. If you're interested in launching 3dsx files from your own application, you should look here.

hbmenu is looking for contributors ! We're making this repository public so that you, the community, can make hbmenu into the menu of your dreams. Or show you how to make your own, better menu ! Of course we'd rather you improved hbmenu rather than went off and started fragmenting the userbase, but any contributions to the homebrew scene are welcome. Feel free to use code from hbmenu for your own projects, so long as you give credit to its original authors.

• smea : code
• GEMISIS : code
• fincs : code
• mtheall : code
• Fluto : graphics
• Arkhandar : graphics