Vanilla Lens

Vanilla Lens brings the world into focus during combat and healing. Your normal HUD fades away, leaving compact player health and resource bars, with a centered party or raid grid beneath them. When the action settles, your HUD and camera return.

Features

• Smooth HUD fades when you enter combat or cast an eligible helpful or harmful spell, including healing outside combat. Buffs and shields count as helpful spells too.
• A configurable quiet period before the HUD returns: 15 seconds by default, with a 0–60 second slider. Combat and active casts or channels keep cinematic mode active; another eligible cast restarts the wait.
• Compact player health and primary-resource bars with adjustable size and height.
• Group buttons centered below the player bars: five across, including you in a party. Raid rows extend downward, with room for up to 40 members.
• A bright gold border follows your selected teammate in the group grid, making your current healing target easy to spot.
• Native unit-button behavior for targeting and right-click menus, plus Retail native click bindings and mouseover macros.
• Temporary suppression of native damage and healing numbers, enemy nameplates, and minimap markers where the client permits it. Your previous settings return with the HUD. The target's selection ring in the world stays untouched.
• Automatic combat zoom, default First person (0), with a settings slider and restoration of your previous camera distance.
• An optional red screen-edge pulse on entry and an icy blue-white pulse on return. The effect is on by default and can be disabled in settings.
• A draggable round minimap button and account-wide settings within each WoW client. No separate addon libraries are required.

Quick start

Install Vanilla Lens, enable it in the AddOns list, and log in. Combat or an eligible spell activates cinematic mode automatically.

• Left-click the minimap button: enable or disable Vanilla Lens.
• Right-click the minimap button: open settings.
• Drag the minimap button: move it around the minimap's edge.
• Press Esc while cinematic mode is active: restore the HUD immediately and pause Vanilla Lens until you enable it again.
• /vl: open settings. /vl help: list commands.
• /vl restore: restore the HUD and disable automatic fading.

Fade speed, HUD return delay, camera distance, bar size and position, and the optional border effect are all available in settings. Camera motion uses WoW's native zoom behavior and can finish at a different time from the HUD fade.

New profiles start enabled with health/resource bars on, 1.5-second fades, a 15-second return delay, 100% HUD size, height 170, first-person zoom, and combat edge flashes on. Debug logging starts off. Updating preserves your saved choices; Reset appearance adopts the visual/timing defaults while keeping your enable state and debug preference.

Compatibility and current limitations

Vanilla Lens targets current Retail, Classic Era/Hardcore/Season of Discovery, Burning Crusade Classic Anniversary, and Mists of Pandaria Classic clients. The archive contains the corresponding client manifests; install it separately in each edition you play.

Local automated checks exercise client API differences and recovery behavior. Full in-game verification across those clients, raid sizes, and healing setups is still in progress. Compatibility with every historical build, future patch, or other UI addon is not claimed.

The group grid shows names, health, and primary resources. It does not include aura, range, or role indicators. Test your healing bindings and mouseover macros in a safe group before relying on it. Third-party click-casting integrations are not covered.

WoW restricts protected group buttons during combat. After Esc restores the HUD, those buttons remain visible and usable until combat ends. Size and position changes also wait until combat ends. If setup must be deferred after a combat reload or late enable, existing Blizzard group frames provide the fallback.

HUD fading preserves existing keybindings and button behavior. Frames that ignore the normal HUD's opacity, third-party overlays, or custom combat-text addons can remain visible. Menus and dialogs attached to the normal HUD can fade with it; Esc or /vl restore brings it back. The minimap button's circular positioning is intended for a round minimap.

Feedback

Please include your Vanilla Lens version, WoW edition and build, other UI addons, the steps that caused the issue, and any Lua error text when reporting a bug. Mention whether the addon was enabled or paused with Esc. Avoid sharing private chat or account information in screenshots and logs.

License and ownership

All Rights Reserved. Vanilla Lens is owned and maintained by ZXOL. Use official releases and customize the available settings. Modifying the code or original artwork, creating derivative versions, and redistributing or reuploading the addon are not permitted. Only ZXOL authorizes changes and publishes official updates. Share the official project link instead of the files. The included LICENSE contains the full terms and permits authorized CurseForge delivery.

Created by ZXOL & ALEX.