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Every time you open a new terminal session, Aurora renders a full-width banner at the top of the screen followed by a live stats line and a separator. Two distinct header modes are available: Mega-Block, which displays a fixed Unicode box-drawing art banner spelling out AURORA SHELL, and Custom, which renders any text you choose using either figlet (macOS) or the built-in ConvertTo-ASCIIArt function (Windows). Both modes are controlled by two variables in your settings file: AURORA_HDR_MODE and AURORA_HDR_VAL.

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Mega-Block Mode

Mega-Block is the default header mode. It displays a hardcoded Unicode block-art banner made entirely of box-drawing characters. On macOS the banner is piped through lolcat for rainbow colouring; on Windows it is printed with -ForegroundColor Cyan. Set this mode with: 
AURORA_HDR_MODE="BLOCK"
The banner that is rendered: 
 █████╗ ██╗   ██╗██████╗  ██████╗ ██████╗  █████╗  
██╔══██╗██║   ██║██╔══██╗██╔═══██╗██╔══██╗██╔══██╗ 
███████║██║   ██║██████╔╝██║   ██║██████╔╝███████║ 
██╔══██║██║   ██║██╔══██╗██║   ██║██╔══██╗██╔══██║ 
██║  ██║╚██████╔╝██║  ██║╚██████╔╝██║  ██║██║  ██║ 
╚═╝  ╚═╝ ╚═════╝ ╚═╝  ╚═╝ ╚═════╝ ╚═╝  ╚═╝╚═╝  ╚═╝ 
                                                   
      ███████╗██╗  ██╗███████╗██╗     ██╗          
      ██╔════╝██║  ██║██╔════╝██║     ██║          
      ███████╗███████║█████╗  ██║     ██║          
      ╚════██║██╔══██║██╔══╝  ██║     ██║          
      ███████║██║  ██║███████╗███████╗███████╗     
      ╚══════╝╚═╝  ╚═╝╚══════╝╚══════╝╚══════╝
On macOS the banner is horizontally centered to the current terminal width. The installer’s Show-Aurora function calculates the widest line in the banner, computes (tput cols - max_width) / 2 as padding, and prefixes each line with that many spaces before piping the whole output through lolcat.

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Custom Mode (macOS)

Custom mode renders any text as a slanted figlet banner. Aurora calls: 
figlet -f slant "$AURORA_HDR_VAL"
and pipes the output through lolcat for rainbow colouring — the same centering logic as Mega-Block is applied. figlet is installed automatically by the installer via Homebrew. To enable Custom mode set both variables in your settings file: 
AURORA_HDR_MODE="CUSTOM"
AURORA_HDR_VAL="YourText"
For example, AURORA_HDR_VAL="dev-station" produces a large slanted ASCII-art rendering of dev-station in rainbow colours every time the terminal opens.

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Custom Mode (Windows)

On Windows, figlet is not available, so Aurora uses the built-in ConvertTo-ASCIIArt PowerShell function that is generated into your theme file by the installer. This function renders the characters A–Z, space, and hyphen using a hand-crafted 6-row character map. Each character is six rows tall and is concatenated horizontally to form the banner, which is then printed with -ForegroundColor Cyan. To enable Custom mode on Windows set the same variables in aurora-shell_settings.ps1: 
$AURORA_HDR_MODE = "CUSTOM"
$AURORA_HDR_VAL = "YourText"

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Stats Line

Directly below the banner, Aurora prints a one-line telemetry summary. On macOS: 
⚡ AURORA v{VER} | 🧠 CPU: {cpu}% | 💾 FREE: {disk} | 🔋 {battery} | 📅 {date}
Each field is populated at runtime:
TokenSource (macOS)
{VER}$AURORA_VER from the settings file
{cpu}%top -l 1 | grep "CPU usage"
{disk}df -h / free column
{battery}pmset -g batt percentage
{date}date +'%D'
The stats line is centered using tput cols — the same padding formula used for the banner. On Windows, battery is omitted and the CPU reading comes from Get-Counter '\Processor(_Total)\% Processor Time'. After the stats line Aurora prints a full-width separator made of - characters at the terminal width, also rainbow-coloured via lolcat (macOS) or cyan (Windows), before handing control to the shell.

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Changing Display Mode

Edit the settings file directly with any text editor, or use shell.aurora --config to open it: 
# In ~/.aurora-shell_files/aurora-shell_settings
AURORA_HDR_MODE="BLOCK"      # or "CUSTOM"
AURORA_HDR_VAL="Aurora-Shell"  # used when AURORA_HDR_MODE=CUSTOM
The change takes effect the next time you open a terminal or manually refresh the display.

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Manually Refreshing the Display

You can re-render the banner and stats line at any time without opening a new terminal window: 
shell.aurora --display
This calls Show-Aurora directly, re-reading AURORA_HDR_MODE and AURORA_HDR_VAL from the settings file so any edits you have just made are reflected immediately.

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