ED-Frame
Your Commander. Your ships. Your next move.
Build the ship you want. Find your next mining run. Make every discovery count.
A free, open-source Windows companion for Elite Dangerous, bringing your local Journal, fleet plans and community data into one cockpit — backed by our own ED-Frame server.
Download for Windows · English guide · Deutsche Anleitung
App 1.0.12 · Own community server · EN / DE / ES / FR · Six themes
Operations brings your selected build, material readiness and next destinations together · demo profile.
Start with a goal. Leave with a plan.
Maybe tonight is for finishing that G5 upgrade. Maybe it's a profitable mining trip, another Powerplay rank or a detour to an interesting planet. ED-Frame helps connect what you want to do with what your Commander already has.
It follows your actual ships and module slots, remembers your plans between sessions and draws on shared public observations. Your next useful action is easier to find — whether you're outfitting in the Bubble or heading out to explore.
Screenshots show the current app with a synthetic Commander profile and example observations. Prices, routes and server counters illustrate the interface; they are not live recommendations.
Build the ship you want to fly
From an installed module to a finished build. Choose a ship from your fleet, select its physical slot and plan the next grade, experimental effect or module replacement. You can work on a parked ship while flying something else.
- Engineering shows installed modifications beside your target, with ingredients and suitable engineers.
- Wishlist keeps multiple fleet builds together and follows Journal-confirmed crafting progress.
- Materials reveals what's missing and suggests collection or trading options while protecting materials reserved for your builds.
- Engineers & Technology Brokers help you follow unlock requirements and find the right destination.
Pin the plan and return to Operations for the next collection, trade, unlock or travel step. Build import and export help you keep your ideas moving between tools.
Find your next mining run
Pick the goal, then compare the whole trip. Search for a commodity or browse all commodities, choose your mining method and prioritize profit, yield, distance or Powerplay merits.
The recommended route puts the mining site and sale destination side by side. Alternatives show price, demand and suitability, while “Why this route?” explains the evidence behind the choice.
- Compare ring types, hotspot evidence, measured yield samples and travel distance.
- Filter markets by demand, landing-pad size and observation age.
- Plan Acquire, Reinforce or Undermine for your selected Power, with dated control evidence.
- Check your ship's mining loadout and copy the mining or sale destination directly.
Current facts, last-known suggestions and missing evidence remain distinguishable. Observed yield samples help you compare sites; they don't promise a particular haul or merit payout.
Make the return trip count
Two stations. Useful cargo in both directions. NAV's new Trading Routes finder compares A → B → A loops with separate outbound and return cargo, estimated profit, travel distance and the oldest price observation.
Set your cargo capacity, starting budget, origin, radius and station access. Compare total profit, combined margin per tonne or distance; copy a destination and recheck prices before departing. Coverage is shown: suggestions come from a regional selection of observed markets.
Looking for a particular commodity? Commodity Finder now includes Carrier offers by default and more goods, including Lithium Hydroxide and Bromellite. Choose a manual starting system, filter by stock or demand and expand the radius to Unlimited when needed.
An unlimited search returns up to 100 offers in your chosen order. NAV keeps your search inputs when you switch workspaces within the session.
See what your sessions are earning
Your progress deserves more than a single balance. The Commander workspace brings ranks, reputation, credits and known fleet information together. The credit ticker turns recorded balance changes into a visible history.
Switch between time ranges, inspect the net change and average CR/h, or review your fleet and known ship locations. Credit and asset values retain their sources; gaps in the history remain gaps.
Missions adds deadlines, massacre stacks and recorded Community Goals. Logbook keeps flight events, session activity and your local notes within reach.
Turn biological signals into a landing plan
Find a reason to land — and keep track once you're there. Exobiology combines detected biological signals with planetary conditions and your recorded samples, helping you spot worthwhile survey targets in the current system.
- Review candidate species and their reference values, with predictions labelled as predictions.
- Follow your sampling progress and distance to the next sample when position data is available.
- Keep this session's discoveries, completed species and carried unsold samples in view.
- Track genus progress and observed earnings from completed sales.
The Exploration workspace also follows unsold scans, noteworthy bodies and estimated cartography values. Surface navigation lets you save planetary waypoints and follow a compass in the app or a separate overlay.
A community server behind your cockpit
ED-Frame has its own live catalog service. Our server collects supported public EDDN observations and supplies shared market, station, mining, Powerplay and signal information to the app. Your local Journal adds the facts about your own Commander.
Open Connections → ED-Frame to see what the catalog contains: systems and stations, commodity markets, mining evidence, module and ship offers, signal sightings, freshness and data coverage. Expand the details for local synchronization and background activity.
That shared data also powers Module & Ship Finder, Commodity Finder, nearby station services and State Finds & HGE. Find the module, buying stock, selling demand or station service you need; signal sightings and BGS predictions are labelled separately.
The app combines the server with retained local observations and supported Spansh/EDSM sources. Already retained data remains available offline. Source dates stay attached to prices and Powerplay facts, so you can judge how current a result is.
Make the cockpit yours
Choose six themes and four interface languages: English, German, Spanish and French. Adjust the UI scale, reduce motion, arrange the sidebar and choose the connections that fit how you play.
Coordinated cards, pictograms and action buttons bring the workspaces together. Dark and light options include Orbital Dawn, Navy, Neon Vector, Arctic Alloy, Crimson Dark and Crimson Light. Profiles, overlays and Windows tray behavior can be configured from the same workspace.
Heavy Mining, Journal and Powerplay work runs in bounded background processes, with concurrency adapted to available CPU and memory. Updates and notifications are grouped; large initial searches can still take time.
Get started
- Open the latest release and download
ED-Frame-<version>-Windows.zip.
- Extract the entire ZIP into a writable folder. When upgrading, quit the old app, including its tray process.
- Start
ED-Frame.exe with the _internal folder beside it. Python is bundled.
- Select your Elite Dangerous Journal folder if needed, then review Connections.
Existing profiles, builds and retained data are reused. Full project source and SHA256SUMS.txt are separate release downloads. The current 1.0 release line succeeds earlier EDEC/ED-Frame builds, including 1.5.43; use the Latest release link to find the current version.
App updates
Release 1.0.11 adds a quiet update notice and Settings → About
controls. Packaged release builds check GitHub at most once per UTC day; you can
check manually or disable automatic checks. Optional automatic downloads stay in
the background, show progress and support cancellation. Installation starts only
after you choose Update and restart.
The package SHA-256 and complete file manifest are verified before installation.
A separate copied runtime waits for ED-Frame to exit, backs up every local profile
and cache, then swaps only the program folder and verifies the new app's startup.
A failed swap/start restores the previous app and profile snapshot; failed-version
files are retained too. Profile backups can be opened from About. Backups and the
previous app consume disk space and are retained for recovery.
Profiles, plans, credentials and caches remain under %LOCALAPPDATA%/ED-Frame.
Extracting/reinstalling the app into another program folder reuses that data.
Development builds do not check automatically or replace their source checkout.
EDFRAME_NO_UPDATES=1 disables checks. Update checks use GitHub independently of
the catalog switch and do not send installation IDs or Commander/Journal data.
Versions up to 1.0.10 do not contain this updater. Install 1.0.11 manually
once; subsequent compatible releases can then be installed from the app.
Data and privacy
Your Commander profile, ships, plans, wishlists, Journal files and service credentials are stored locally, outside the program folder.
- ED-Frame and EDDN community connections are enabled for new profiles and have separate controls. Disabling them preserves retained local data.
- The ED-Frame server accepts supported anonymous public observations, not Commander names/FIDs, raw Journals, private builds or credentials.
- Frontier CAPI and INARA require separate setup. INARA can send supported Commander events when enabled; review each service for local-only operation. Supported credentials are protected with Windows DPAPI.
- Active installation counting runs automatically in release builds. Settings → Connections and onboarding explain the data sent. Release builds send only a random UUID4 installation ID and app version, at most once per UTC day, when the ED-Frame catalog is enabled. The random ID is recognizable across days, shared across Commander profiles and shown with a copy button in Settings → About. No hardware IDs, Commander names/FIDs, Journals, events or screen/activity data are sent. The database stores only ID, UTC day and version; entries older than 90 days are deleted daily. It stores no IP addresses. Existing access-log settings remain unchanged. There is no dedicated counting switch. Disabling the ED-Frame catalog or setting
EDFRAME_NO_USAGE_PING=1 prevents pings; development builds never ping. Failed days are not replayed. DAU/WAU/MAU are private operator statistics, separate from the public catalog statistics.
Connection and privacy guide · Deutsche Anleitung
- Anaconda Mk II with its own graphic, complete slot layout and Mk II module compatibility; October ship balancing with existing plans and slot bindings preserved.
- Updated hull and shield references plus approximate published jump ranges, clearly separated from live Journal values.
- Daily update notices, optional background downloads and confirmed installation with profile backups and startup rollback.
- A skippable setup wizard with a tour of every sidebar area, in all four languages.
- Automatic active-installation counts: random ID + version, once per UTC day; private statistics and 90-day retention.
- Faster server statistics and market synchronization, resilient collector transactions and fewer redundant outfitting writes.
- A → B → A trading loops and correct combined-margin ranking.
- Carrier commodity offers, more goods, manual origin and unlimited radius.
- A consistent cockpit, asynchronous startup and preserved NAV filters.
- Existing grouped Mining/Powerplay lookups and bounded background processes remain available. Shared server statistics refresh in the background approximately every five minutes.
Release notes · Changelog · Server documentation · Application audit
Install Python 3.13, clone this repository, then run:
INSTALL_REQUIREMENTS.bat
START_APP.bat
See requirements.txt for dependencies. Source checkouts identify themselves as development builds to external integrations. Automated checks cover application contracts, repository hygiene and the real QML interface.
Fly with us
ED-Frame grows with Commander feedback. Try it on your next session, tell us what helped and share a bug or feature idea. If you enjoy the project, a GitHub star helps other Commanders find it.
Download ED-Frame · Read the guide · Visit the website
Free under GPL-3.0. An independent community project, unaffiliated with Frontier Developments. Elite Dangerous is a trademark of Frontier Developments plc.
Exobiology reference files express public game facts; colony-range distances are attributed to the Elite Dangerous Fandom wiki (CC BY-SA). Older PDF manuals are historical references.
