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How to make your own SimHub dashboard

Last updated · SimHub 9.11.22

A SimHub dashboard is a screen you build yourself out of gauges, text and images, wired to live telemetry from your game. You can show it on a second monitor, on your phone, on a small USB display, or as an overlay on top of the game. This walks through building one from an empty canvas — no template, no downloaded file — because once you have done it once, every dashboard you download afterwards stops being a black box.

You need SimHub installed and a game configured. Nothing else — Dash Studio ships with SimHub and there is nothing to buy to build a dashboard.

  1. Open Dash Studio

    Dash Studio is in the left-hand menu, between Devices and Arduino. That menu is the whole of SimHub's navigation: Home, Cars settings, Devices, Statistics, Dash Studio, Arduino, the three ShakeIt sections, Controls and events, Available properties and Additional plugins. If you are lost anywhere in SimHub, you are somewhere in that list.

    SimHub's left navigation menu with Dash Studio highlighted in blue, listed between Statistics and Arduino, alongside Home, Cars settings, Devices, ShakeIt Wind, ShakeIt Bass Shakers, ShakeIt Motors, Controls and events, Available properties and Additional plugins

  2. Find the dashboards list

    The Dashboards tab lists everything installed, grouped by author or brand, with a Last used row at the top. The four tabs across the top are Dashboards, Overlays, Settings and Controls. The controls you want are on the right of the toolbar: New dashboard, Import dashboard, Close all, and Remote access.

    The Dash Studio Dashboards tab showing installed dashboards grouped by brand, with AIM GS-DASH and ControlCenter under Last used, and New dashboard, Import dashboard, Close all and Remote access buttons in the toolbar

  3. Create a new dashboard and name it

    Click New dashboard. SimHub asks for a name, and that name becomes both the tab in the editor and the file it saves to — so give it something you will recognise in a list of thirty a year from now.

    The New dashboard dialog in SimHub with the name field filled in, and Ok and Cancel buttons

  4. Meet the editor

    You get an empty black canvas and three panels. On the left is the Toolbox — every widget you can place. On the right, Screen hierarchy lists what you have added and Properties configures whatever is selected. Along the bottom, Overview shows your screens: a dashboard can have several, and the six bindable actions let you page between them from a button on your wheel.

    The Dash Studio editor with an empty black canvas, the Toolbox panel on the left listing every available widget, Screen hierarchy and Properties panels on the right, and the Overview screen strip along the bottom

  5. Place your first widgets

    Drag from the Toolbox onto the canvas. Each item gets a label and a selection box, and the status bar reads out its exact position and size — here a linear gauge at X1: 184x201, X2: 584x221, Size: 400x20. The keyboard shortcuts are worth learning immediately, because they are the difference between nudging something into place and fighting it: arrow keys move, Alt + arrow resizes, Ctrl + A selects all.

    Build it ugly first. Get the elements on screen and bound to the right telemetry before you spend any time on colour. A beautiful dashboard showing the wrong number is worse than a plain one showing the right one.
    The Dash Studio canvas with two text items, a round button and a linear gauge placed on it, each showing its item label, with the status bar reading LinearGaugeItem X1 184x201 X2 584x221 Size 400x20

  6. Run it

    Back on the Dashboards tab, the menu on any dashboard gives you every way SimHub can display it. Quick run covers Windowed, On specific monitor and On phone or tablet. Below that, Show on saved screen location and auto-start remembers a position and opens there every time, Show on web device slot targets a phone, app or browser, and Show on USB Displays drives a physical dash unit.

    The dashboard context menu in SimHub showing Quick run options Windowed, On specific monitor and On phone or tablet, plus sections for saved screen locations, web device slots and USB displays

Every widget in the Toolbox

Transcribed from the Toolbox in SimHub 9.11.22. There is no official widget catalogue anywhere — the wiki has one Dash Studio tutorial and no reference — so this is written down here because it did not exist.

Text and shapes

Text
A text field. Bind it to a property and it shows live telemetry.
Outlined Text
Text with a stroke, for legibility over a busy background.
Rectangle
A filled or stroked box. The backbone of most layouts.
Ellipse
A circle or oval.
Linear gradient
A gradient fill, usually as a background.

Gauges and indicators

Linear gauge
A bar that fills. Revs, fuel, temperatures.
Dial gauge
A classic round gauge with a needle.
Arc gauge
A partial-circle gauge — the modern GT dash look.
Shift light
A purpose-built rev/shift indicator rather than a gauge you configure into one.
LEDs
A row of individually controllable LEDs on screen.
Chart
Plots a value over time.
Radar
Proximity display showing cars around you.

Images and media

Image
A static image.
Toggle Image
Swaps between images based on a condition — a warning light that appears only when it should.
Image from file
Loads from a path on disk.
Image from Url
Loads from the web.
Media cover
Album art from what you are playing.
Video
Plays a video file.
Screen capture
Mirrors a region of your screen into the dashboard.

Maps

Static Map
A fixed track map.
Dynamic Map
A track map that draws itself from telemetry as you drive.
ETS2/ATS Map
The truck-sim world map, which is a different problem to a circuit.

Structure and interaction

Group
Bundles items so they move, scale and toggle together.
Layer
Stacking control — what draws on top of what.
Button
A touch target. Useful on a phone or tablet dash.
Web page
Embeds a web page inside the dashboard.
Widget
A reusable component you have built.
Quick components
Prebuilt assemblies to drop in rather than build.

Common questions

Do I need the paid licence to build a dashboard?

No. Dash Studio is fully functional in the free version and there is no watermark or export limit on dashboards you build. The licence raises hardware update rates from 10FPS to 60FPS, which matters for LEDs and shakers rather than for a dashboard on a monitor.

What file does a dashboard save as?

A .simhubdash file. Double-clicking one with SimHub running installs it, and any custom fonts and images inside it unpack automatically — which is why dashboards you download from the community are a single file rather than a folder of assets.

Can one dashboard have more than one screen?

Yes. Screens are managed from the Overview strip along the bottom of the editor, and SimHub exposes six bindable actions — NextScreen, PreviousScreen and ActionA through ActionD — so you can page between them from a button on your wheel or button box.

Why is my dashboard laggy?

Most often it is not the dashboard. The usual causes are the GPU already sitting above 90% load, adaptive sync (G-Sync or FreeSync) interfering with how SimHub renders, or mismatched refresh rates across multiple monitors. An FPS limiter in the game is the first thing to try.

Can I edit a dashboard somebody else made?

Yes, and it is the fastest way to learn. Open an installed dashboard in Dash Studio and you get the same editor with all of its widgets in the Screen hierarchy — worth doing with one you like before building from scratch.

SimHub is developed independently by Wotever and is not affiliated with oesimracing. Screenshots are of SimHub 9.11.22, taken 4 August 2026 — if the interface has moved on, the version stamp above tells you how far. More on what SimHub is and what it costs.