By
@aamosm
A web-based & terminal-themed operating system for the fictional Voyager-9 deep-space probe. Integrated with my other project "This Alien Does Not Exist" to create immersive environment.
VoyagerOS is a browser-based operating system built for the fictional Voyager-9 deep-space probe.
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It features a desktop environment, terminal, virtual filesystem and built-in applications, all designed to feel like software that could exist aboard a spacecraft.
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The long-term goal is to connect it with "This Alien Does Not Exist" (my other project), allowing VoyagerOS to act as an in-universe registry where procedurally generated alien species can be searched and documented.
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The project is still evolving, with future work focused on expanding the operating system, adding more onboard software and making the environment feel even more believable. I wanna add a feature in WebOS 2 for people to registry their own OS they same way Hackclub registers Orpheus in their dinosaur repository. These will be shown alongside the Procedurally generated aliens.
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You can use ls -r to search up basically anything and It uses the Internet archive to deliver a proper formatted embed within.
This update was mostly about making VoyagerOS feel less like a collection of windows and more like a real desktop.
I expanded the virtual filesystem with proper file operations and added more shell commands like find, grep, stat, df and man. The manual was also rewritten to make the terminal easier to use.
The desktop gained right-click context menus, a system monitor and better file management.
Dragging windows and icons also needed a rewrite. The old mouse-based system became unreliable, so I switched it over to Pointer Events, which made dragging much smoother and fixed several issues.
Desktop icon positions are now saved using LocalStorage, so the workspace stays the way you left it.
There were a lot of smaller changes too:
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The desktop is now in a much better place.
Next I’ll be expanding the ship software itself, adding more applications and filling the filesystem with logs, manuals and mission data.
VoyagerOS is no longer just a terminal.
The interface now boots into a desktop environment with draggable windows, a taskbar and a cleaner workspace. Multiple applications can stay open at the same time, making the OS feel much closer to a real operating system.
Several built-in applications have been added to the system.
These include a file explorer, settings panel, media viewer and a simple browser for navigating mounted data. They all share the same window manager and integrate with the rest of the desktop instead of acting as separate pages.
The file explorer now uses a virtual filesystem instead of static content.
Directories can be browsed through the desktop interface, giving VoyagerOS a proper file hierarchy to build future features on.
A lot of the interface was cleaned up during this update.
The desktop now has a proper wallpaper, improved window styling, better spacing and a more consistent visual style across the operating system. Small changes like these make the whole environment feel much more cohesive.
Moving from a terminal-only interface to a desktop introduced a lot of state management problems.
Keeping track of active windows, focus order and application state ended up being much more involved than expected, but it also made the rest of the system easier to expand in the future.
The desktop is now in place.
The next step is adding more applications, expanding the filesystem and continuing to make VoyagerOS feel like software that could actually exist aboard Voyager-9 and fixing drag of icons.
VoyagerOS is an experiment to see how far a browser could be pushed to feel like a real operating system.
The goal isn’t to make another futuristic UI. I wanted it to feel like software that actually belonged on a deep-space probe. Everything is built around a terminal interface where the user interacts with the system through commands instead of buttons and menus.
The project is built entirely with HTML, CSS and JavaScript.
The first milestone was getting the boot sequence and terminal working. The boot process now transitions into a persistent shell with command history, input parsing and a window manager capable of handling multiple processes at once.
The interface is still simple, but the focus has been on making it feel consistent rather than flashy.
One of the main ideas behind VoyagerOS is that it can mount real data from outside the system.
The first approach was embedding the Internet Archive directly, but it quickly became obvious that it broke the illusion. Logos, navigation bars and the surrounding website made it feel like a browser instead of an operating system.
I scrapped that approach and rebuilt it around the Internet Archive Metadata API instead.
Instead of displaying web pages, VoyagerOS now requests metadata, lets the user choose what to mount, and renders the data inside its own interface. Everything stays inside the OS instead of sending the user to another website.
At the moment VoyagerOS has:
The next step is expanding the shell itself.
I want to add more system commands, improve the filesystem, introduce more ship subsystems and continue making the environment feel like a real operating system rather than just a terminal running in a browser.
