Swofty UI

Swofty UI is a viewer and editor for F1 25's menu scenes. It runs on your computer and opens in your browser. It reads the game's UI archives without changing them, draws each scene with the game's own textures and colours, and exports edited scenes ready to ship in an addon.

Get it

From a release

Launcher releases after 1.0.6 include Swofty UI. Install the launcher as in Installation, then:

System	Start Swofty UI
Windows	Double-click bin\swofty-ui.exe in the install folder
Linux and Steam Deck	Run bin/swofty-ui from a terminal. The install folder also has a desktop entry and icons under share/

It needs no Python.

From source

Swofty UI is in the launcher's repository, in tools/swofty-ui. It needs Python 3.14 or newer. Python 3.10 to 3.13 also work with the zstandard module (pip install zstandard) or the zstd command installed.

git clone https://github.com/Swofty-Developments/SwoftyLauncher
cd SwoftyLauncher
python3 tools/swofty-ui/serve.py

Start it

Swofty UI finds the game, reads the list of scenes, and opens the editor in your default browser. Its window shows where everything is:

Swofty UI
Reading the UI archives in C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\F1 25\2025_asset_groups\ui_package (found via Steam)
Indexed 5208 scenes in 435 archives (0.8s)
Exports go to C:\Users\you\AppData\Local\Swofty\swofty-ui\exports

Swofty UI is running at http://127.0.0.1:7341/ — close this window or press Ctrl+C to stop

• It listens on port 7341. When another program uses that port, it takes the next free one and opens that address instead.
• Close the window, or press Ctrl+C, to stop it.
• If the browser doesn't open, open the address it printed.

The game folder

Swofty UI looks for F1 25 in this order:

1. The folder given with --game.
2. The F1_25_DIR environment variable.
3. The folder you picked with Locate game in the launcher.
4. Your Steam libraries, including extra library folders and Flatpak Steam.

--game takes the F1 25 folder, a copy of it, or its 2025_asset_groups/ui_package folder. If Swofty UI can't find the game, it says where it looked and how to pass the folder, and waits for Enter before closing. Run it from a terminal in the extracted launcher folder:

bin\swofty-ui.exe --game "D:\SteamLibrary\steamapps\common\F1 25"

bin/swofty-ui --game "$HOME/.local/share/Steam/steamapps/common/F1 25"

Swofty UI never writes to the game folder. It only reads the archives, writes exports to its export folder, and refuses an export folder inside the game folder.

Options

Option	Effect
--game <folder>	The game folder to read
--no-game	Start without the game, to open .idf files from disk
--open <scene>	Open a scene first: a path such as art/screens/career/rnd_overview.idf, or an .idf file
--export-dir <folder>	Where exports go. The default is swofty-ui/exports in the launcher's data folder: %LOCALAPPDATA%\Swofty on Windows, ~/.local/share/swofty on Linux
--port <n>	The first port to try, 7341 by default
--host <address>	The address to listen on, 127.0.0.1 by default
--no-browser	Don't open the browser
--check-refs	Check every scene reference in the game's UI archives, print the result and exit. See Check every reference

Open a scene

Press Ctrl+K or Open scene and type part of a scene's path. Words match anywhere in it, so career rnd finds art/screens/career/rnd_overview.idf. Each result shows how many archives hold the scene. To open a file instead, paste its path, or choose Open .idf from disk.

When several archives hold the scene, the picker next to its path in the title bar switches between their copies.

The window

• Hierarchy, on the left, is the element tree. Each row shows the element's class, xref marks a reference to another scene, and id≠path marks a reference whose xref id and fileRef name different scenes. Filter it by name, click a row to select it, and double-click a row to zoom to it. Under it, Edits lists every edit in order.
• The canvas, in the middle, draws the scene. Click an element to select it. The chips at the top left count the elements of each class; click one to hide that class.
• Inspector, on the right, shows the selected element: its path and elementId with a check against its path, its local transform with its world position and size, its box, the scene it references, its params and animations. With nothing selected, it shows the scene's componentId, nodeidlookup and reference checks.
• The status bar shows the element count, the id checks, the number of edits and the last export.

Display

Option	Key	Effect
Textures + colours	T	Draws each element's mesh with its BC7 texture and material colour, decoded from the archives
Outlines	O	Draws each element's box, coloured by class
Text placeholders		Writes each text element's name in its box
Reveal anim-collapsed		Shows elements the game keeps at a scale near 0 until an animation or live data grows them
XRef contents	X	Draws the scene each eXRef loads in game inside it, clipped by eWindow elements
1920x1080 frame		Draws the screen as 19.2 × 10.8 units, centred on the origin
Grid, Pivots, Labels		Draw the grid, each element's origin and element names

The canvas is a preview. Gradients, rounded corners and circular fills are approximated, glass blur is a dark panel, and text shows element names instead of the game's strings. Animations and live data are not drawn.

References

An eXRef stores the scene it references twice: its fileRef param holds the scene's path, and its xref holds the scene's componentId. The game loads the scene whose componentId is xref and ignores fileRef when it looks the scene up. Swofty UI does the same: it draws, outlines and opens the scene the xref id names. See References.

The inspector's XRef section shows fileRef, the xref id with a check against md5-64 of fileRef, and the scene the game loads. When the id and the path name different scenes:

• the hierarchy row shows id≠path, and the canvas outlines the element in red with an xref id ≠ fileRef tag;
• the inspector says which scene the game loads, and offers Load <fileRef scene> (set the id) and Keep <id scene> (set fileRef), which retarget the reference to one of the two;
• the status bar counts the mismatched references;
• export is refused until every reference agrees.

A referenced scene that itself holds such a reference gets a yellow note in the inspector, listing the references inside it and the scenes they load.

Edit

Edit	How
Move	Drag the element, or press the arrow keys: 0.01 units a press, 0.1 with Shift. Hold Shift while dragging to keep to one axis. A move changes the element's local position.
Transform	Type a position, scale or rotation in the inspector. Z angle rotates the element in the screen plane.
Params	Edit numbers, vectors and toggles in the inspector's params. Text params are read-only.
Clone	Ctrl+D or Clone. The copy is a new sibling with the next free name, such as tile_5 for tile_4. When the element has a numbered sibling before it, the copy continues the spacing between them.
Rename	Type a new name in the inspector. Names must be unique in the scene and can't contain ..
Retarget	Type a scene path in the inspector's XRef section and press Retarget. It sets fileRef, the xref id the game loads by, and XrefMaterialBinding together. Editing fileRef alone isn't possible.
Delete	Del or Delete
Undo, redo	Ctrl+Z, Ctrl+Shift+Z

Clone, rename and delete keep the scene's ids valid: they set each changed element's elementId to the djb2 of its new path, give clones new guids, and rebuild nodeidlookup. See Identity.

Your browser keeps unsaved edits for each scene. When you open a scene you edited before, Swofty UI offers to restore them.

Export

Press Ctrl+S or Export .idf. Swofty UI replays your edits on the original bytes, checks the result, and writes three files to its export folder:

File	Contents
<scene>.idf	The edited scene
<scene>.erp.json	The ERP operations that ship it: one replace-resource per archive that holds the scene, with source set to ui/<scene>.idf
<scene>.edits.json	The source scene and archive, the SHA-1 of the source and the export, and the edit list

An export replaces an earlier export of the same scene. The dialog also has Download .idf and Open export folder.

Export checks

Check	Passes when
Re-parses	The file reads back as a scene
Round-trips	Reading and writing it again gives the same bytes
elementIds	Every elementId is the djb2 of its element's dotted path
nodeidlookup	nodeidlookup is the sorted, de-duplicated djb2 of every element name
componentId	The scene's componentId is unchanged, so the build accepts it for the same .idf
References	Every eXRef's xref id is md5-64 of its fileRef: the game loads the scene fileRef names

When the References check fails, Swofty UI writes nothing. The dialog lists each reference, its fileRef and the scene the game loads instead. Retarget each one, then export again. Swofty UI's own edits keep references consistent; a mismatch comes from a scene another tool wrote.

The dialog also says whether the file differs from the source. An export with no edits is identical to the source, and the same edits always give the same bytes.

Check every reference

--check-refs reads every scene in the game's UI archives, checks each reference, and exits with status 1 if any xref id and fileRef disagree. Run it on a built game to check the scenes your addons ship:

bin/swofty-ui --check-refs --game "$HOME/.local/share/Steam/steamapps/common/F1 25"

Checked 58925 references in 26913 scene copies (5208 distinct, 5208 scenes) in 5.5s
33 consistent references name a scene no UI archive holds
0 reference(s) whose xref id is not md5-64 of fileRef

On stock archives it finds no mismatch. Each mismatch prints its scene, element, archives and the scene the game loads.

Keyboard and mouse

Key	Action
Ctrl+K, /	Open a scene
Ctrl+S	Export
Ctrl+Z	Undo
Ctrl+Shift+Z, Ctrl+Y	Redo
Ctrl+D	Clone the selected element
Del, Backspace	Delete the selected element
Arrow keys	Move the selected element by 0.01 units; with Shift, by 0.1
P	Select the parent
F, Shift+F	Fit the scene, fit the selection
T, O, X	Textures, outlines, referenced scenes
Esc	Close a dialog, or clear the selection
Wheel	Zoom
Middle or right drag, Space+drag	Pan
Alt+click	Select the next of several overlapping elements

In an inspector field, Enter applies the value, Esc reverts it, and ↑/↓ step it by 0.01, or 0.1 with Shift. Z angle steps by 1°, or 10° with Shift.

Example: a fifth R&D tile

The R&D overview screen lays out four department tiles in a fixed 2 × 2 grid. Each tile is an eXRef, tile_1 to tile_4, under an animated parent, transition_null_1 to transition_null_4. This adds tile_5 one row below tile_4.

1. Press Ctrl+K, type rnd_overview, and open art/screens/career/rnd_overview.idf.

2. In the hierarchy, select tile_4, under transition_null_4. Leave transition_null_4 where it is: its animation sets its position.

3. Press Ctrl+D. Swofty UI adds tile_5 next to tile_4, with elementId djb2("screen_null.tut_scaler.transition_null_4.tile_5") and djb2("tile_5") added to nodeidlookup.

4. In the inspector, set Position to X 0, Y -2.52. The grid's rows are 2.52 units apart, so tile_5 now sits one row below tile_4, over the lower info panel. A finished layout moves the elements around it too.

   

5. Press Ctrl+S. All checks pass, and the export folder gets rnd_overview.idf, rnd_overview.edits.json and rnd_overview.erp.json, with stanzas for flow_career_hub.erp and flow_team_hq.erp.

   

6. Ship it as in Editing menus with an addon.

tile_5 draws the referenced tile's art in Swofty UI. In game, a tile's title and values come from the .ui node attached to it, so tile_5 stays empty until a node attaches to its name. See Limits.

HTTP API

Swofty UI's editor talks to its server over HTTP on the same address, and scripts can too. Open a scene to get a doc id, then send edits to it:

base=http://127.0.0.1:7341
doc=$(curl -s "$base/api/open?eaid=art/screens/career/rnd_overview.idf" | jq -r .doc)
curl -s "$base/api/export" -H 'Content-Type: application/json' -d '{
  "doc": "'"$doc"'",
  "ops": [
    { "op": "clone", "key": "0.0.2.5.0", "name": "tile_5", "position": [0, -2.52, 0] }
  ]
}' | jq .checks

To replay an export's edits on a fresh copy of the scene, send its ops:

curl -s "$base/api/export" -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -d "$(jq -c --arg doc "$doc" '{doc: $doc, ops: .ops}' rnd_overview.edits.json)" | jq .checks.ok

Endpoint	Purpose
GET /api/catalog	Every scene with the indexes of the archives that hold it, and the export folder
GET /api/open?eaid=<path>[&erp=<archive>]	Open a scene from the archives. Returns doc and the scene model
GET /api/open-file?path=<file>	Open an .idf file
POST /api/upload?name=<name>	Open the .idf in the request body
POST /api/apply	{ doc, ops }: replay the edits and return the model, with each edit's result
POST /api/export	{ doc, ops, name? }: write and check an export. Returns the file paths, operations, size and checks
POST /api/reveal	Open the export folder in the file manager
GET /api/xref?eaid=<path>[&reveal=1]	The flattened boxes and geoms of a referenced scene, with nested references resolved by xref id, and mismatches for references inside it whose xref and fileRef disagree
POST /api/visuals	{ items: [{ res, mat, erp }] }: the mesh, material params and texture names of each geom
GET /api/texture?name=<.tif.image>	The top mip's BC7 bytes, with its size in X-Tex-Width and X-Tex-Height
GET /api/resources?erp=&prefix=, GET /api/resource?erp=&name=&frag=	List an archive's resources, read one fragment

Edits

ops is a list of edits, applied in order. key addresses an element by child indexes: 0 is the root of the first scene, 0.0 its first child, and 0.0.2.5.0 is tile_4 in rnd_overview.idf. Keys refer to the tree as it is when that edit runs, so an edit after a clone or delete can address the new tree. The inspector shows each element's key.

op	Fields	Edit
set	key, field, value	Set position or scale ([x, y, z]) or rotation ([x, y, z, w])
param	key, name, value	Set a number, vector or toggle param
clone	key, name, optional position	Copy the element as a new sibling named name
rename	key, name	Rename the element
delete	key	Delete the element and its children
retarget	key, fileRef	Point an eXRef at the scene fileRef (a path such as art/components/career/rnd_tree/rnd_dev_potential.idf): sets fileRef, xref and XrefMaterialBinding

Each element in the model has fileRef, xref and, for an eXRef, ref: { path, id, pathId, ok, scene }, where scene is the scene the game loads by id and ok is id == pathId. A param edit can't change fileRef; use retarget.

/api/export answers HTTP 422 with error, checks and exported: false when a reference's xref and fileRef disagree, and writes nothing.

An edit that fails returns HTTP 400 with error and the failing edit's opIndex.

On its default address, the server only answers requests addressed to 127.0.0.1 or localhost on its port, and refuses requests that other sites' pages send.