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LaunchBox Changelog

What's new in LaunchBox 13.13 Beta 1

Mar 22, 2024
  • New Feature: LaunchBox can now automatically download and install the Dolphin emulator during the import or auto-import workflows
  • Improvement: The advanced search functionality has been expanded to include the following new filters: Broken, Complete, Favorite, Hide, Installed, PlayMode, Portable, Rating, Region, Series
  • Improvement: Several file extensions have been added to the ROM import blacklist, improving accuracy and reducing the chance of including unwanted files
  • Fixed: Import stability improved for scenarios involving merging new and existing games
  • Fixed: An uncommon issue that could occur during Epic Games imports

New in LaunchBox 13.12 (Mar 11, 2024)

  • New Feature: LaunchBox can now automatically import ROM files that are placed inside of a platform folder located in LaunchBoxGames. To enable it for existing LaunchBox installations, go to Tools > Options > General > Automated Imports
  • New Feature: LaunchBox will now actively monitor your platform Game folder (found in the Edit Platform window) and import any new ROM files it finds automatically while the program is open and during startup. To enable it for existing LaunchBox installations, go to Tools > Options > General > Automated Imports
  • New Feature: LaunchBox and Big Box's search has now been upgraded. It will now search by title (and alternate title) by default, with advanced options to search for other types of metadata.
  • Improvement: A dynamic list for Games with Achievements has been added to the Games Discovery Center
  • Improvement: The MAME Arcade Full Set Wizard file requirement has been reduced to accommodate HBMAME full sets
  • Improvement: Support for PICO-8 game files has been added into our import processes
  • Improvement: Clear Logos and Icons have been added for the following platforms: PICO-8, Microsoft Series X/S, VTech V.Smile
  • Improvement: RAHasher has been updated to version 1.7
  • Improvement: The Scan for Added ROMs tool will now import new versions of games you already have in your library
  • Improvement: Added logic to improve the ability to import SNES MSU-1 ROMs
  • Improvement: The included version of CefSharp/Chromium has been updated to version 119.4.30.0
  • Fixed: Issue where Image Types weren't downloaded when removed from all Image Groups and the Media Limit option was enabled.
  • Fixed: Java error encountered by some users during Epic Games login.

New in LaunchBox 13.12 Beta 1 (Feb 21, 2024)

  • New Feature: LaunchBox can now automatically import ROM files that are placed inside of a platform folder located in LaunchBoxGames. To enable it for existing LaunchBox installations, go to Tools > Options > General > Automated Imports
  • New Feature: LaunchBox will now actively monitor your platform Game folder (found in the Edit Platform window) and import any new ROM files it finds automatically while the program is open and during startup. To enable it for existing LaunchBox installations, go to Tools > Options > General > Automated Imports
  • New Feature: LaunchBox and Big Box's search has now been upgraded. It will now search by title (and alternate title) by default, with advanced options to search for other types of metadata.
  • Improvement: A dynamic list for Games with Achievements has been added to the Games Discovery Center
  • Improvement: The MAME Arcade Full Set Wizard file requirement has been reduced to accommodate HBMAME full sets
  • Improvement: Support for PICO-8 game files has been added into our import processes
  • Improvement: Clear Logos and Icons have been added for the following platforms: PICO-8, Microsoft Series X/S, VTech V.Smile
  • Improvement: RAHasher has been updated to version 1.7
  • Improvement: The Scan for Added ROMs tool will now import new versions of games you already have in your library

New in LaunchBox 3.11 Beta 1 (Jan 11, 2024)

  • Improvement: The Bulk Edit Wizard will now skip the welcome page when making additional changes
  • Improvement: The GOG login windows will now explain the steps required to successfully import your games
  • Fixed: EA Storefront games would not launch properly in some situation
  • Fixed: Rare Amazon auto-import error
  • Fixed: Additional documents launched from Big Box using a third party document reader
  • Fixed: Context menus within LaunchBox opened via the keyboard's "Apps" key would instantly close
  • Fixed: Achievements in LaunchBox's Game Details pane would double when popping the pane in and out of its own window
  • Fixed: Storefront Automatic Imports would import installed games in some situations where it shouldn't

New in LaunchBox 13.9 (Dec 15, 2023)

  • New Premium Feature: Big Box has a new view called Game Discovery Center, which allows you to discover your games in new ways. Access it through the system menu, or optionally make it your startup view.
  • Improvement: Big Box Themes can now use their own custom background music
  • Improvement: Added a View Additional Documents menu option to Game Details in Big Box
  • Improvement: LaunchBox will now scroll the selected item into view when a side panel is hidden/unhidden
  • Improvement: Chromium integration has been updated
  • Improvement: Updated Epic Games SSO logic so log ins are not required as often
  • Improvement: Adjusted download timeout windows to help reduce download errors when grabbing media
  • Improvement: The Fullset MAME Import Wizard is now more performant on lower end hardware
  • Fixed: RetroAchievements API has been restored and the existing functionality has been re-enabled within LaunchBox and Big Box
  • Fixed: Rare dictionary error when using an Arrange By setting in LaunchBox's Grid View
  • Fixed: Sidebar counts for genres with subgenres weren't being displayed correctly until clicked within LaunchBox (introduced in 13.8)
  • Fixed: Various errors related to the automated import process
  • Fixed: Corrected issues with the EA login screen appearing in the background on startup and when opening Manage Storefronts (introduced in 13.8)
  • Fixed: The on-the-fly filter was not showing correct results for the Wheel/Yoke controller category
  • Fixed: Steam notes weren't always being pulled correctly when scraping metadata
  • Fixed: While moving the LaunchBox window it would sometimes hang when the progress bar was being displayed
  • Fixed: Epic Game Store re-authentication time-out period has been increased for slower internet connections
  • Fixed: When combining games, games imported from Amazon Games or Xbox import wizard didn't generate the correct additional application name

New in LaunchBox 13.9 Beta 1 (Oct 18, 2023)

  • New Premium Feature: Big Box Themes can now use their own custom background music
  • Improvement: Chromium integration has been updated
  • Improvement: Updated Epic Games SSO logic so log ins are not required as often
  • Fixed: Corrected issues with the EA login screen appearing in the background on startup and when opening Manage Storefronts
  • Fixed: The on-the-fly filter was not showing correct results for the Wheel/Yoke controller category
  • Fixed: Steam notes weren't always being pulled correctly when scraping metadata
  • Fixed: While moving the LaunchBox window it would sometimes hang when the progress bar was being displayed

New in LaunchBox 13.7 (Oct 7, 2023)

  • New Feature: A new Manage Storefronts window allows for easy access of your storefront credentials and automated import settings; this can be found under Tools > Manage > Storefronts
  • New Feature: You can now choose to automatically import storefront games that are not currently installed (as opposed to only installed games in the previous version)
  • New Feature: You can now change your automatic import settings on a per-storefront basis
  • Improvement: The automatic storefront import processes can now be manually run by going to Tools > Scan > Scan for Storefront Games, or by right clicking the LaunchBox taskbar icon (if enabled) and selecting Scan for Added Games
  • Improvement: The Genre sidebar filter now nests genre / sub-genre pairs similar to the on-the-fly filter
  • Improvement: The media download default settings during an import have been modified to be more sensible for new users; they can then be adjusted to the user's preferences
  • Improvement: Added the ".chm" file extension to the list of extensions used to identify an additional application as a document
  • Improvement: Updated Ubisoft's game import and install state logic to match some changes made in Ubisoft's processes
  • Improvement: Big Box's Recent Games list has been adjusted to better represent games a user last played
  • Improvement: The Most Played Game listed in Platform/Filter details is now chosen based on both play count and play time, instead of just play count
  • Improvement: A Turkish language translation has been added thanks to eonder87 and StoneGolem
  • Fixed: The RetroAchievements.org integration has been removed due to the extended downtime of their API (it's been non-functional for over three months). We are actively looking into a replacement (or developing a replacement).
  • Fixed: Some LaunchBox themes were using more memory than they should and not releasing it correctly
  • Fixed: The Steam Trailer media type was always defaulting to checked in the Steam Import Wizard instead of being set to the last-used value
  • Fixed: Platform icons weren't displaying for free users correctly if there was an '&' in the name of the platform or playlist
  • Fixed: Some of the controller binding images were incorrect in Big Box
  • Fixed: Several rare errors related to the Download Metadata and Media process
  • Fixed: The tooltip string was missing in the Default theme's 3D model preview
  • Fixed: The LaunchBox Default theme's Font folder was remaining locked after closing LaunchBox
  • Fixed: Launching an additional application listed as a document will no longer increment the Play Co

New in LaunchBox 13.7 Beta 1 (Sep 2, 2023)

  • New Feature: A new Manage Storefronts window allows for easy access of your storefront credentials and automated import settings. This can be found in Tools > Manage > Manage Storefronts
  • Improvement: You can now automatically import your storefront games that are not currently installed
  • Improvement: You can now change your automated import settings per storefront
  • Improvement: You can now manually run the automated import process. This can be done by going to Tools > Scan > Scan for Storefront Games, or by right clicking the LaunchBox taskbar icon (if enabled) and selecting Scan for Added Games
  • Improvement: The Genre sidebar filter now nests genre / sub-genre pairs similar to the on-the-fly filter
  • Improvement: The media download default settings during an import have been changed for new users, which can then be adjusted to the user's liking
  • Improvement: Launching an additional application listed as a document will no longer increment Play Count or Play Time
  • Improvement: Added the '.chm' file extension to the list of extensions used to identify an additional application as a document
  • Improvement: Updated Ubisoft's game import and install state logic to match some changes made in Ubisoft's processes
  • Fixed: Steam Trailer media type would always appear checked in the Steam Import wizard instead of being set to the last value
  • Fixed: Platform Icons weren't displaying for free users correctly if there was an '&' in the name of the platform or playlist
  • Fixed: In Big Box some of the controller binding images were incorrect
  • Fixed: Several rare errors related to the Download Metadata and Media process
  • Fixed: The tooltip string was missing in the Default theme's 3D model preview
  • Fixed: LaunchBox's Default theme's Font folder was remaining locked after closing LaunchBox

New in LaunchBox 13.6 (Jul 24, 2023)

  • New Feature: LaunchBox can now automatically import all installed PC games from supported storefronts on startup, without requiring any user interaction (Steam, GOG, Epic Games, Amazon Games, and Ubisoft Connect); this will be enabled by default on all new installations of LaunchBox. To enable it for existing LaunchBox installations, go to Tools > Options > General > Automated Imports.
  • New Feature: LaunchBox now has a brand new Default theme! The previous Default theme has been renamed Old Default and the previous Old Default theme has been renamed to Old Default (Legacy). Use Tools > Manage LaunchBox Themes to switch themes.
  • New Feature: LaunchBox now has its own notifications system that helps better track information and errors; history is also available in the new notifications center (bell icon) in the top right of the window. The notifications center is available in both of the Default themes, and can be easily added to any custom themes. A new option is available under Tools > Options > General > Notifications to switch between LaunchBox notifications, Windows notifications, and message boxes.
  • New Feature: Big Box's Default theme now has battery indicators to help identify your current battery level if using it on a battery-powered device (also available to be added to custom themes)
  • New Feature: Big Box's Default theme now displays important controller inputs that will dynamically change based on a user's controller mappings (also available to be added to custom themes)
  • Improvement: LaunchBox can now better manage storefront installations and uninstallations and can update the user interface to track them
  • Improvement: The PS3 ROM import improvements that were introduced in 13.3 now work with more ROM types
  • Improvement: LaunchBox now supports custom theme plugins (for theme developers)
  • Improvement: LaunchBox platform icons in the sidebar now have a HasImage binding (for theme developers)
  • Improvement: Steam game matching has been significantly improved to reduce any chance for false matches
  • Fixed: Rare overflow error thrown from LaunchBox's platform details view
  • Fixed: Corrected some visual issues when the LaunchBox Image View was set to be one column wide
  • Fixed: In some cases LaunchBox wouldn't open on the same screen it was closed on
  • Fixed: Steam metadata occasionally wasn't being returned in English
  • Fixed: Some storefront import wizards were not updating the game selection counts correctly
  • Fixed: The Big Box FlowImage control was incorrectly using Big Box settings to grab platform background images
  • Fixed: Deleting an item from the list of media in the LaunchBox game details wasn't removing it from the list control
  • Fixed: Potential issue in Big Box where it could not regain focus in some situations on touchscreen devices (such as the ROG Ally)

New in LaunchBox 13.6 Beta 1 (Jun 6, 2023)

  • Improvement - LaunchBox now supports custom theme plugins (for theme developers)
  • Fixed: Rare overflow error thrown from LaunchBox's Platform Details View
  • Fixed: Corrected visual issues when Image View was set to be one column wide
  • Fixed: In some cases LaunchBox wouldn't open on the same window it was closed on

New in LaunchBox 13.5 (Jun 2, 2023)

  • New Premium Feature: The LaunchBox game details pane can now be popped out into its own window (custom themes do require updating)
  • Improvement: LaunchBox image views have been optimized and will now load and scroll faster
  • Improvement: Images will now appear more gracefully when scrolling with the mouse wheel inside of LaunchBox
  • Improvement: Badges in LaunchBox will now dynamically update themselves without requiring a reload of the view
  • Improvement: The game details view will now reload after exiting a game to accurately reflect new play time, play count, and achievements updates
  • Improvement: The LaunchBox import wizards no longer act as if they're locked up while parsing the games to be imported
  • Improvement: The MAME arcade full set import wizard is now much faster
  • Improvement: MAME prerequisite files have been updated to allow for a better import experience with newer versions of MAME
  • Improvement: MAME import filters have been adjusted and will now include less non-games by default
  • Improvement: The LaunchBox sidebar filter button will now better adapt its values when used in conjunction with the search bar
  • Improvement: Many new custom theming functionalities have been added to LaunchBox (for theme developers)
  • Fixed: Rare memory leak that could occur in some situations due to the VLC video playback engine
  • Fixed: Rare theme bug when launching Big Box from within LaunchBox

New in LaunchBox 13.3 (Apr 25, 2023)

  • It's time to sync up your LaunchBox builds across Windows and Android with your game statistics, including favorites, play count, and more! Plus per-game 3D Model overrides, Wii U & PS3 import improvements, and .NET 6.0. Enjoy!

New in LaunchBox 13.4 Beta (Apr 18, 2023)

  • The new RetroAchievements Field is great! However I'm noticing something weird when it comes to my PS2 games. To save space I compress my games into .gz files. This saves a lot of space depending on the game and the hash is still recognized by RA. However in Launchbox it doesn't recognize these games as having achievement support.

New in LaunchBox 13.2 (Mar 1, 2023)

  • LaunchBox 13.2 is out today, and this iconic release is quite the achievement! Over 240 icons have been added to the sidebar, and we've overhauled achievements for Steam, GOG, and http://RetroAchievements.org to support playlists, filters, and badges.

New in LaunchBox 13.2 Beta (Feb 6, 2023)

  • New Feature: RetroAchievements now supports On-the-fly filters, auto-populate playlists, and badges (scanning and hashing your games is mandatory for this functionality to work)
  • New Feature: RetroAchievements scanning option has been added to the Tools menu, and the RetroAchievements integrations section under the LaunchBox options
  • New Feature: Icons in the side bar are now supported (#3 in the 2022 Community Poll). Over 240 brand new, default icons have been commissioned and are instantly usable on the side bar in the default theme (An option to toggle the icons is available under View > Show / Hide > Side Bar Icons). Premium users can customize these icons to their liking by adding their own images to the folder: LaunchBoxImagesPlatform Icons
  • Improvement: The hash value of your ROM is now used to determine whether a game supports RetroAchievements functionality
  • Improvement: Box - Spine image type is now available in the Audit window
  • Fixed: Box - Flip functionality when 3D Models are turned off in Big Box
  • Fixed: Rare occurrences where Steam games were mixing achievements from multiple games
  • Fixed: Big Box clock not updating its value in some views for some users
  • Fixed: Multiple instances of MAME opening when caused by the emulator's default running script.

New in LaunchBox 13.1 Beta 1 (Nov 29, 2022)

  • New Premium Feature: The 3D Box Model can now be viewed full screen in both LaunchBox and Big Box
  • New Premium Feature: CameraPosition binding has been added to the FlowModel control (for theme devs)
  • Improvements: The 3D Box Model can now be panned by the middle mouse button in LaunchBox and the cursor keys on a keyboard, or dpad/left analog stick on a controller, in Big Box.
  • Improvement: The way LaunchBox and Big Box call LEDBlinky has been improved in order to reduce apparent slowdowns when dealing with large controller boards with lots of buttons/RGB
  • Fixed: The default logo rotation on the 3D Box Model
  • Fixed: The appearance of some image types for EmuMovies during the Import and Download Metadata & Media Wizards
  • Fixed: Images with transparency no longer render a 3D Model in Big Box's ImageView

New in LaunchBox 13.0 Beta 1 (Nov 5, 2022)

  • New Premium Feature: Big Box now supports 3D models for boxes! They are available in most existing themes where boxes are displayed and can be rotated with the right stick on a controller (or bound to something else). We've worked hard to make these 3D boxes work well even with the images that you already have in your collection.
  • New Premium Feature: CoverFlow views in Big Box have been overhauled to be completely 3D, and selected items inside of CoverFlow views can also be rotated
  • New Premium Feature: Big Box theme developers now have full control over how to present 3D boxes in wheels and in CoverFlow, including angles and animations
  • New Premium Feature: Big Box now has a global "maximum speed" setting for wheels
  • Improvement: New image types have been added for Box - Spine (for the spines/sides of boxes) and Box - Full (for DVD-style wraparound scans)
  • Improvement: Big Box's Flip Box feature now rotates the model 90 degrees instead of just showing the back of the box
  • Improvement: Big Box's animation backend has been improved, which should require less processing power and provides more options for 3D box models
  • Improvement: Big Box's performance has been improved when loading game details
  • Fixed: Some bindings in LaunchBox's WorkingViewModel weren't updating correctly in some circumstances (for theme devs)
  • Fixed: Big Box's TopBoxesViewModel and BottomBoxesViewModel bindings weren't always notifying on update in platform views (for theme devs)

New in LaunchBox 12.15 (Sep 30, 2022)

  • LaunchBox 12.15 is out today with storefront game management, platform details in LaunchBox, and much more!

New in LaunchBox 12.14 (Aug 4, 2022)

  • LaunchBox 12.14 is out today with a complete overhaul for Big Box, including a new default theme, improved performance and stability, and a modern overhaul for all popup screens! We've also added the ability to export MS-DOS games to Android!

New in LaunchBox 12.13 Beta (Jun 25, 2022)

  • Improvement: The Bezel window will now appear during imports when using older versions of MAME that use the mame64.exe executable, as well as versions of MAMEUI
  • Improvement: Added the ability to display the content image in LaunchBox's ListView (for theme devs)
  • Improvement: Bezels are downloaded for additional applications as well as the primary version of the game
  • Improvement: RetroArch bezels will now have their opacity set to 1.0 via the game override setting
  • Fixed: RetroArch bezels for some Arcade platforms will now properly download
  • Fixed: Pressing Browse in the Add Additional Application window would sometimes throw an error

New in LaunchBox 12.12 (Jun 22, 2022)

  • LaunchBox 12.12 is out today with support for image packs to curate images for your collection and automatic bezel downloads from The Bezel Project (our top two most-voted requests from the poll)!

New in LaunchBox 12.12 Beta (May 12, 2022)

  • Improvement: The saving process that occurs after LaunchBox or Big Box closes should be significantly faster
  • Improvement: SelectedItemSpacing property was added to FlowControl that allows the spacing around the item currently selected to be different than other items (for theme developers)
  • Improvement: The PictureViewer was visually updated with added context regarding what type of image you are looking at
  • Improvement: Platform matching when searching for EmuMovies content has been improved
  • Fixed: A white line could appear at the top of your monitor when viewing images in full screen
  • Fixed: Rare error when navigating through different wizards
  • Fixed: The LaunchBox Themes Manager was unusable if no internet was detected
  • Fixed: Empty entries could appear at the top of the "Scrape As" drop-down menu
  • Fixed: The Related Games feature could show improper results when using different languages

New in LaunchBox 12.11 (Apr 28, 2022)

  • Fixed: The new LaunchBox Themes Manager was not always working properly for non-premium users
  • Fixed: Very rare error when closing the LaunchBox picture viewer
  • Fixed: Bad URLs from Amazon Games screenshots were causing rare errors

New in LaunchBox 12.10 Beta 1 (Mar 29, 2022)

  • New Feature: A Related Games section will now appear within Game Details, where you can discover games that are recommended, similar, or possible ports of the game that you have selected. (Rated #3 on the last Community Poll) - Currently in LaunchBox. Big Box implementation will be available in a later beta.*
  • New Premium Feature: A Related Games options menu provides full control over the criteria that determines its game results
  • Improvement: The "Scanning for Metadata" step during imports and metadata and media updates should now be significantly faster
  • Fixed: On rare occasions, the Scrape As value would not save during an import, resulting in LaunchBox Database game mis-match
  • Fixed: In Big Box, the KnownPlatformorPlaylist binding could incorrectly use a playlist's rule value in unexpected comparison types (for theme devs)
  • Fixed: Configure will now use your Custom DOSBox Version EXE Path
  • Fixed: The prioritize dropdown menu in the Platform/Playlist Theme Video window will now works with videos from EmuMovies

New in LaunchBox 12.9 Beta (Mar 7, 2022)

  • Improvement - During a ROM import, the RetroArch core dropdown menu will only appear when the platform is missing from the emulator's Associated Platform section.
  • Improvement - The Arrange By menu in LaunchBox can now be used in List View
  • Fixed - Rare null reference error when changing platforms while using Images View (introduced in 12.8)
  • Fixed - Rare error when attempting to display a message box

New in LaunchBox 12.8 Beta (Feb 11, 2022)

  • Improvement: We have changed how media items download. LaunchBox with now downloads several files at once instead of using several threads to download one item at a time. This results in significantly faster downloads
  • Improvement: Title text on the image view can now be toggled via the Show / Hide view menu
  • Improvement: Show/Hide view options are now context specific
  • Improvement: Added several new tools that LaunchBox theme developers can use when creating themes
  • Improvement: You can now set the "Extract ROM before playing" option per-platform in the Edit Emulator window
  • Improvement: Added logic to help determine what platform is being imported during ROM imports
  • Improvement: LaunchBox will automatically add the platform you're importing to the emulator you select during import if it isn't there already
  • Fixed: The Edit and Delete buttons in LaunchBox's control bar were not refreshing when changing side bar filters
  • Fixed: Controller Support section of the Add/Edit Game window would sometimes clear new entries before saving occurred
  • Fixed: Rare error when logging into an Epic Games account via Google sign-in
  • Fixed: Added logic to help process images with corrupted color profile information
  • Fixed: Corrected rare threading issue related to marquees
  • Fixed: Rare occurrences where the scrape as value would not save during an import
  • Fixed: Multi-Version badge was incorrectly identifying the primary application path as an additional version (introduced in 12.7)
  • Fixed: Added logic to help resolve file in use errors when saving a game
  • Fixed: Adding an emulator via the import wizard wouldn't pre-populate associated platforms correctly when first opened

New in LaunchBox 12.7 Beta 1 (Jan 5, 2022)

  • Improvement: Updated several forms to utilize the new dialog theming colors
  • Improvement: LaunchBox and Big Box startup process has been overhauled, should result in faster start-up times
  • Improvement: LaunchBox context menus should now open more quickly
  • Fixed: Amazon Games importer was not detecting all games in a user's library
  • Fixed: Error when selecting a controller in Big Box while no controllers were connected
  • Fixed: Various issues when using FlowVideo outside of a FlowContext (for theme developers)

New in LaunchBox 12.6 Beta 1 (Dec 13, 2021)

  • Fixed: In rare cases, some cached images in Big Box were being incorrectly sized/stretched; if affected, please clear your Big Box image cache (introduced in 12.5)
  • Fixed: The Big Box FlowVideo control (for theme developers) wasn't always stopping video playback properly when used in a platform view
  • Fixed: When using the drag and drop import wizard and selecting "None of the Above", the options to import from the specified folder only and to use the folder name were missing
  • Fixed: Additional applications from Amazon Games and Epic Games were not always showing up as a version in the context menu (introduced in 12.4)
  • Fixed: Retro achievements weren't always being loaded properly in Big Box (introduced in 12.5)

New in LaunchBox 12.5 Beta 1 (Dec 1, 2021)

  • New Feature: LaunchBox will now track the time you play a game. Time starts when you launch the game and stops when the game is closed. While in the Pause Screen this timer is paused as well.
  • Improvement: LedBlinky GameSelect event is now fired when game details are loaded instead of as the game is being entered. This should help with performance issues while scrolling quickly through a view.
  • Improvement: Badges can now be viewed inside of the LaunchBox list view.
  • Improvement: Big Box's Change View binding now brings up a selection menu (similar to the Change Theme binding).
  • Improvement: In Big Box's Option Menu, items with multiple options will now bring up a selection menu. Also, Left will now move to the previous item, and Right to the next.
  • Improvement: Most EmuMovies search processes can now be cancelled to allow you to progress in the tool the search was being used for.
  • Improvement: The Download Platform Videos window has been converted. This allows for the use of the dialog theme colors and will help the window be more responsive.
  • Improvement: The Controller Support section of the LaunchBox realtime filter will now parent items (similar to how the Genre realtime filter works).
  • Fixed: Rare error that would sometimes appear when opening a new themed window
  • Fixed: Error when trying to raise a Windows Notification. If this process fails LaunchBox will now open a prompt (similar to version 12.0 and earlier).

New in LaunchBox 12.4 (Nov 24, 2021)

  • Fixed: Possible error in the Download Platform/Playlist/Category Theme Videos tool when no EmuMovies username or password were set (introduced in 12.2)
  • Fixed: Running the Download Metadata and Media Wizard with no items in your library selected will now once again run the tool against your entire library (introduced in 12.2)
  • Fixed: Play is no longer disabled in the right click context menu for GOG games that aren't installed if you have the GOG client installed (introduced in 12.2)
  • Fixed: Using Platform Banners in FlowImage was causing black borders to be generated on the image (for theme developers)
  • Fixed: The checkboxes for Hide Games Marked Hidden and Hide Games Marked Broken were inverted (introduced in 12.2)
  • Fixed: Rare occurances of a controller support record duplicating when importing a game or using the Download Metadata and Media Wizard (introduced in 12.2)

New in LaunchBox 12.1 (Oct 12, 2021)

  • Fixed: The MAME high scores window had not been updated to work properly with the new dialog theme colors, and thus was not properly readable (introduced in 12.0)
  • Fixed: The updated Add/Edit Emulator window was not offering to change the emulator for affected games (introduced in 12.0)

New in LaunchBox 12.0 (Oct 12, 2021)

  • New Feature: All LaunchBox popup dialogs (wizards, edits, etc.) now have a dark theme, and premium users can customize all popup dialog colors. See the Visuals > Dialog Theme tab of the Options dialog.
  • New Feature: Filtering games in LaunchBox is now much more flexible; you can filter to pretty much anything on the fly with the new filter button in the left-hand sidebar, next to the search box
  • New Feature: Anything you filter on the fly with the above new feature can be easily saved to a dynamic playlist
  • New Feature: Big Box Marquee Views have been overhauled to help with custom theme support
  • New Feature: You can now use the Clean Up Media tool for a single platform (#2 most voted on the July 2021 community poll)
  • New Feature: LaunchBox's game-specific background image can now be disabled
  • Improvement: A Marquee image group has been added
  • Improvement: A Marquee video type has been added
  • Improvement: Added a RandomGame property bind to the Platform and Filter views within Big Box (for theme developers)
  • Improvement: Theme developers can now use videos in Marquee Views via the FlowVideo control
  • Improvement: Performance while selecting games in LaunchBox is now faster due to improvements in populating the game details sidebar
  • Improvement: LaunchBox should more accurately determine a ROM's region based on its filename
  • Improvement: EmuMovies downloads are now downloaded last to allow them to continuously download and avoid session timeout errors
  • Fixed: The login screen would immediately close when checking "Force New Login" in the Xbox Import Wizard if you had previously logged in
  • Fixed: The ROM import wizard wasn't always importing all games when using MAME metadata (the full-set importer was unaffected)
  • Fixed: The keyboard focus border wasn't being drawn correctly in LaunchBox's Grid View with the default theme (recently introduced)
  • Fixed: Big Box CoverFlow views can once again use "Box" as image type in addition to "Boxes" (recently introduced theme compatibility issue that was affecting some older themes)
  • Fixed: Epic Games import errors due to new API requirements from Epic Games (stop constantly changing everything, Epic!)
  • Fixed: Rare errors while downloading Steam media
  • Fixed: Importing arcade games with the ROM Import Wizard was not always obeying the "Force Use MAME Metadata" option (introduced in 11.9)
  • Fixed: On some systems, starting Big Box into a platforms or filters view was not properly playing background videos on first load
  • Fixed: Rare error when editing the RetroArch emulator in LaunchBox if no cores were missing
  • Fixed: On rare occasions, changing the selected game too quickly in LaunchBox would cause the game details loading to hang
  • Fixed: The prompt upon completion of media downloads was sometimes appearing more than once
  • Fixed: Steam games rated 17+ were causing errors with the import
  • Fixed: Add/Edit Game window will now trim any trailing or leading spaces from string fields

New in LaunchBox 11.7 Beta (Nov 5, 2020)

  • Improvement: The multi-threaded downloader has been updated to force a timeout after 60 seconds of inactivity to help prevent "stuck" download situations due to Internet connection hiccups
  • Improvement: The Last Played detail line for platforms and filters in Big Box was changed to a localized short date format
  • Improvement: The Manage Emulators window has been overhauled
  • Improvement: The Bulk Edit window has been overhauled, and now allows you to easily add and remove items from multi-select fields
  • Fixed: Rare "Value cannot be null" VLC error
  • Fixed: Error on Big Box exit with the "Allow Sleep" option on
  • Fixed: Rare LEDBlinky error when calling FrontEndQuit
  • Fixed: Welcome screen now saves your ignore setting regardless of how you close it

New in LaunchBox 11.3 Beta 1 (Jul 24, 2020)

  • New Feature: Alternate names are now downloaded from the LaunchBox Games Database when importing or downloading metadata for your games, and they are editable in Add/Edit
  • New Feature: New fields have been added for Max Players, Release Type, Video URL, and Wikipedia URL, downloaded from the LaunchBox Games Database when available
  • Improvement: LaunchBox and Big Box have been upgraded to .NET Core 3.1, which brings with it many advantages, such as no longer requiring a .NET Framework installation, better performance, increased security, and potential cross-platform support
  • Improvement: The LaunchBox options screen has been overhauled to remove the "legacy" portion and organize everything much more cleanly
  • Improvement: The Installed, Games Database ID, Application Path, Max Players, Release Type, Video URL, and Wikipedia URL fields have been added to the LaunchBox list view
  • Improvement: Date formats should now more closely reflect the Windows settings
  • Improvement: Using custom fields in the sidebar now supports multi-string fields similar to Genre and Series
  • Improvement: Plugin developers can now perform a search in Big Box using PluginHelper.BigBoxMainViewModel.Search(string query)
  • Fixed: Rare image cache reading error
  • Fixed: Screenshots pulled from GOG were sometimes cut off
  • Fixed: Some games imported from GOG were not using DOSBox correctly

New in LaunchBox 11.0 (Jul 8, 2020)

  • New Feature: OBS Studio integration has been added, which allows you to easily record videos and automatically assign them to your games; take a look under Tools > Options > Integrations > OBS Studio in LaunchBox
  • New Feature: Multiple videos can now be associated with your games, and videos can now be categorized under four categories: Video Snap, Theme Video, Trailer, and Recording. These categories can also be prioritized (like images) under Tools > Options > Media > Video Priorities
  • New Feature: You can now take screenshots that will automatically be associated with your games; see Tools > Options > Screen Capture in LaunchBox or under Controller Mappings or Keyboard Automation in Big Box
  • New Feature: The Clean Up Media process has a new option to scan images for rough matches. This can make the clean up media process take an extremely long time, but will save you loads of disk space in your collection, especially if you download media both from the LaunchBox Games Database and from EmuMovies. The process identifies duplicate images in your collection even if they are different sizes, faded, etc. The largest duplicate image is kept, and the rest are listed for deletion
  • New Feature: New options have been added to all download media and import processes to remove roughly-matched duplicate images, similar to the Clean Up Media addition above. This should reduce the need to run the Clean Up Media process, as unnecessary duplicate images will automatically be removed during imports and media downloads
  • New Feature: A new IGameConfiguringPlugin interface has been added that will allow plugin developers to tell when a game's configuration application is being launched, has launched, or has closed, just like IGameLaunchingPlugin
  • Improvement: The game add/edit dialog has been completely overhauled to allow for future flexibility and fixes a number of usability issues with the previous version (such as the multi-select dropdowns)
  • Improvement: GOG game install state changes will now auto-update for games installed via the GOG Galaxy client
  • Fixed: When using All Games as your startup view in Big Box, sometimes the alphanumeric index was not populating correctly
  • Fixed: Corrected an issue with the pause key bindings that may be causing them to fail
  • Fixed: The Play Mode filter in LaunchBox was not working properly when multiple play modes were selected

New in LaunchBox 11.0 Beta 1 (Jun 17, 2020)

  • New Feature: The Clean Up Media process has a new option to scan images for rough matches. This new option can make the clean up media process take an extremely long time, but will save you loads of disk space in your collection, especially if you download media both from the LaunchBox Games Database and from EmuMovies. The process identifies duplicate images in your collection even if they are different sizes, faded, etc. The largest duplicate image is kept, and the rest are listed for deletion.
  • Improvement: GOG game install state changes will now auto-update for games installed via the GOG Galaxy client
  • Fixed: When using All Games as your startup view in Big Box, sometimes the alphanumeric index was not populating correctly
  • Fixed: Corrected an issue with the pause key bindings that may be causing them to fail
  • Fixed: The Play Mode filter in LaunchBox was not working properly when multiple play modes were selected
  • In addition to the above, we have the following in the works for the 11.0 release:
  • Automatic recording of video snaps via hotkeys
  • Automatic screenshot capturing
  • Multiple video support
  • Overhaul of the Add/Edit interface

New in LaunchBox 10.15 (May 20, 2020)

  • New Feature: An import process for Uplay has been added under Tools > Import > Uplay Games, working similarly to the latest Steam, GOG, and Epic import processes
  • New Feature: An import process for Origin has been added under Tools > Import > Origin Games, also working similarly to the latest Steam, GOG, and Epic import processes
  • New Feature: The game audit process has been overhauled with missing fields and the ability to audit all of the games in your collection at once instead of just single platforms
  • Improvement: The Big Box MAME high scores popup should now do a better job of displaying all of the information on screens with smaller resolutions
  • Improvement: Additional logging has been added to the debug logs to assist GreatStone with debugging hi2txt issues
  • Improvement: The default image priority settings have been streamlined; you may want to review your image priority settings under Tools > Options > Legacy > Images in LaunchBox to make sure that you don't have any unecessary/unwanted image types selected
  • Improvement: Buttons have been added to the image priority settings that will allow you to easily revert them to the defaults
  • Improvement: When editing an emulator and setting it as the default for a platform, LaunchBox will now prompt you to update all additional apps to use that emulator as well (in addition to the main games that it was prompting for previously)
  • Improvement: The included version of 7-zip has been updated to version 19.00, which provides some significant performance improvements when extracting files and creating archives, especially on 64-bit machines
  • Improvement: The included version of hi2txt has been updated to version 1.12, which adds support for new games and fixes various issues. Huge thanks to GreatStone for all his work on hi2txt
  • Improvement: New "NavigationInProgress", "NavigationStartedCounter", and "NavigationEndedCounter" property bindings have been added for Big Box theme developers in order to provide better triggers for animations and improve performance
  • Improvement: The LaunchBox Big Box Custom Themes Documentation has been updated (available here: LaunchBoxThemesDocumentation.pdf)
  • Improvement: When using the Download Metadata and Media Wizard, the options to download or prioritize metadata/media for a given storefront will now only appear if you have titles from that storefront in your collection
  • Fixed: Introduced in 10.14, some interface elements were using the system's default language instead of the language defined in the Options
  • Fixed: Introduced in 10.14, running another instance of LaunchBox or Big Box was always showing the already running message box, even when using controller automation to focus LaunchBox or Big Box
  • Fixed: Rare threading error that could pop up when submitting MAME high scores
  • Fixed: Microsoft's DirectInput library fails to load up properly when starting immediately on Windows startup on some systems; we've added a workaround to hopefully prevent crashes in this case
  • Fixed: The Chromium Embedded Framework is apparently refusing to shut down in some cases, which has been causing Big Box to not exit properly on occasion. We're now killing it in that case, which should fix any related Big Box shut down issues
  • Fixed: If a recent or favorite game was selected when Big Box entered attract mode, it would incorrectly launch the game
  • Fixed: Big Box losing focus no longer closes certain popup dialogs that should stay open
  • Fixed: Big Box background music was not respecting the shuffle setting in all situations
  • Fixed: Can now launch an additional application of a root game with a blank application path
  • Fixed: The LaunchBox Game Details Sidebar wasn't properly hiding the Retro Score when disabled in the options menu
  • Fixed: Clear logo and poster images were not always downloading properly from Steam when using the Import or Download Metadata and Media wizards

New in LaunchBox 10.15 Beta 1 (Apr 28, 2020)

  • New Feature: An import process for Uplay has been added under Tools > Import > Uplay Games, again working similarly to the latest Steam, GOG, and Epic import processes.
  • Improvement: The Big Box MAME high scores popup should now do a better job of displaying all of the information on screens with smaller resolutions
  • Fixed: Introduced in 10.14, some interface elements were using the system's default language instead of the language defined in the Options
  • Fixed: Rare threading error that could pop up when submitting MAME high scores
  • Fixed: For some reason, Microsoft's DirectInput library fails to load up properly when starting immediately on Windows startup on some systems; we've added a workaround to hopefully prevent crashes in this case
  • Fixed: The Chromium Embedded Framework is apparently refusing to shut down in some cases, which has been causing Big Box to not exit properly on occasion. We're now killing it in that case, which should fix any related Big Box shut down issues.

New in LaunchBox 10.14 Beta 1 (Apr 21, 2020)

  • Improvement: Handling of multiple instances of LaunchBox and Big Box has been improved with a proper message instead of just ending the second process or focusing the window
  • Improvement: The MAME high scores system now checks MAME .cfg files to help prevent cheating by changing dip switches, and several other stability improvements were made as well
  • Improvement: Adjusted thread priorities in a few spots in order to speed up some common user interface operations
  • Fixed: Several issues with LaunchBox and Big Box not closing properly under certain situations
  • Fixed: Blank image priority entries were showing up when upgrading from previous versions with no priorities checked

New in LaunchBox 10.13 (Apr 15, 2020)

  • Fixed: Several games were not parsing MAME high scores correctly; these games have been fixed and debug logging has been improved to better track problems with high scores
  • Fixed: MAME high scores were not supporting 7-zip ROMs

New in LaunchBox 10.11 Beta (Jan 31, 2020)

  • New Premium Feature: A new "badges" system has been built for LaunchBox that displays badges for various things next to your games. Badges are now available for Broken, Completed, Favorite, Hidden, Multiple Discs, Multiple Versions, Portable, and Unplayed. The images can be changed and the badges can be enabled or disabled via the new Badges drop down at the top of the LaunchBox interface. Plugins can also be used to add new badges.
  • Improvement: No-Intro ROMs with multiple titles (separated by the ~ character) will now use the first title as the game title for better scraping
  • Fixed: Importing games will no longer skip "duplicate" games because of multiple platforms that use the same Scrape As value

New in LaunchBox 10.8 Beta 1 (Dec 5, 2019)

  • New Feature: The default LaunchBox theme has been completely overhauled and modernized, and now includes dynamic box sizing! If desired, the old theme is still available under Tools > Options > Visuals > Theme > Old Default.
  • New Feature: LaunchBox now scrapes Steam to get even more images for your Steam games! It now pulls the game's poster, clear logo, and screenshots if the game has them.
  • Improvement: When a Sort Title is added to games, the Sort Title is sorted into the game lists without any overrides for "A", "An", or "The". This allows you to override the default sorting methods by adding a Sort Title if desired.
  • Improvement: "Games Missing Banners" and "Games Missing Music" have been added to the "Games Missing Media" filter type
  • Improvement: "Games Missing Media" should now be more accurate and more performant when adding media
  • Fixed: The "Games Missing Media" filter type was showing games that shouldn't be in the list on rare occasions
  • Fixed: Cinematix game theme video downloads were not working correctly in some cases (introduced in 10.7)

New in LaunchBox 10.2 Beta (Sep 13, 2019)

  • New Feature: New options for "Create Data Backup" and "Restore Data Backup" are available under the Tools menu in LaunchBox. These options will backup and restore your LaunchBox and Big Box data, sans for game and media files.
  • Improvement: Automatic data backups now use the new data backup engine, which should make things significantly easier in disaster scenarios, as it's now one file per backup instead of a bunch of random XML files

New in LaunchBox 9.11 Beta 1 (Jul 18, 2019)

  • Fixed: The PrioritizedPathSelector control that is used in a number of Big Box themes has been fixed to ignore characters in titles that are invalid in the file system
  • Fixed: The LEDBlinky implementation was throwing errors if you happen to have invalid characters in game file paths
  • Fixed: When scanning for added ROMs, LaunchBox was not properly using the default emulator on the added games (was using the first emulator found for that platform instead)
  • Fixed: Potential errors when loading up empty platforms in Big Box
  • Fixed: Platforms with mismatched capitalization (Nintendo Entertainment System vs. Nintendo entertainment system) were sometimes causing games to not show up in Big Box

New in LaunchBox 9.10 (Jul 10, 2019)

  • New Feature: You can now specify platform-specific default images for boxes, 3D boxes, carts, and 3D carts. Do this under Tools > Manage Platforms in LaunchBox and add images under the respective categories. Then refresh your game images and any games with missing images will use the default images that you've specified.
  • New Feature: Game-specific custom DOSBox versions can now be used for DOSBox games, instead of always using the version of DOSBox that is built-in to LaunchBox. You can find a new field for custom DOSBox version under the DOSBox tab when editing games, and it is also available in bulk edits.
  • Improvement: New Japanese translation thanks to @k_kutsugi from the forums!
  • Improvement: Added Viking's new Colorful 4K platform videos to the platform video downloader; they are highly recommended, give them a shot and then give Viking some thanks on the forums.
  • Improvement: Added default emulator settings for Cemu, PPSSPP, and Redream
  • Improvement: The Enter key will now launch games in LaunchBox
  • Improvement: You can now bulk edit the Broken field on games
  • Improvement: When editing an emulator and making it the default emulator for a particular platform, LaunchBox will now ask you if you want to change all games in that platform to use that emulator.
  • Improvement: Double-clicking on the video in the game details sidebar in LaunchBox will now open the video fullscreen with VLC
  • Improvement: When auto-play videos is disabled in LaunchBox, the videos in the sidebar will now display a black background with a play icon instead of an empty space
  • Improvement: The Big Box startup sound should now do better at not hitching; some themes may still cause it to hitch, however, and some systems may still struggle
  • Improvement: The Add to Playlist menu on right-click in LaunchBox is now restricted to only manually-populated playlists
  • Improvement: RAM usage has been reduced in situations where the user happens to consistently have lots of images displayed in the game details sidebar (in LaunchBox)
  • Fixed: Various places in LaunchBox and Big Box were occasionally using the operating system's language/translation settings instead of the language specified in the LaunchBox options
  • Fixed: Potential threading issue with music
  • Fixed: LaunchBox was not staying on the list view after a restart for free users (the list view became available for free users when .Next was released)
  • Fixed: The LaunchBox list view was no longer sorting by the Sort Title field when clicking the column headers to sort by a particular column (it just used the Title field from that point)

New in LaunchBox 9.10 Beta 1 (Jun 19, 2019)

  • New Feature: You can now specify platform-specific default images for boxes, 3D boxes, carts, and 3D carts. Do this under Tools > Manage Platforms in LaunchBox and add images under the respective categories. Then refresh your game images and any games with missing images will use the default images that you've specified.
  • Improvement: New Japanese translation thanks to @k_kutsugi

New in LaunchBox 9.9 Beta 1 (Jun 4, 2019)

  • Improvement: Launch With in LaunchBox is now in alphabetical order
  • Improvement: Download metadata and media update media verbiage is now more clear
  • Fixed: Several minor one-off/rare VLC errors
  • Fixed: Rare music-related null reference exceptions
  • Fixed: Pause Themes Manager in Big Box was not working correctly to apply new pause themes

New in LaunchBox 9.8 Beta 1 (Apr 2, 2019)

  • his first beta adds the ability to bind up to four different keys to each function in Big Box, primarily so that up to four players can control Big Box at once from keyboard-based arcade controller boards.

New in LaunchBox 9.7 (Mar 29, 2019)

  • Fixed: Controller navigation issues in a few spots in the new Big Box themes manager

New in LaunchBox 9.6 Beta 1 (Mar 1, 2019)

  • Features that have already been implemented:
  • Trailer video and screenshots
  • Installing and uninstalling themes
  • Repairing themes (delete and re-install)
  • Applying themes as the main theme
  • Support links
  • Details on the developer, aspect ratio, current version, and latest version
  • Description, Credits, and Changes
  • Features that are planned:
  • Like/unlike themes
  • Apply a particular view of a theme to a particular platform
  • View screenshots of every single view available in the theme (Views tab)
  • List of installed themes with updates available
  • List of recently updated themes
  • List of newly available themes
  • Support for Startup Themes

New in LaunchBox 9.4 (Feb 13, 2019)

  • New Premium Feature: Big Box themes have been overhauled with new support for platform-specific games views, performance improvements, and bug fixes. The documentation PDF file in the LaunchBoxThemes folder has been updated as well.
  • Improvement: LaunchBox will no longer download images for inapplicable regions during batch imports and media download processes. This will help to save disk space and speed up the download processes. Please be sure your region priority preferences are correct in LaunchBox under Tools > Options > General > Region Priorities, as this will define what types of images are downloaded for games that have no region specified.
  • Improvement: Debug logging has been improved for media downloads and cleaning up media, now reporting the downloaded and deleted files.
  • Improvement: Debug logging has been improved for exceptions; the full stack trace is now included, and exceptions displayed in the popup window are now logged as well.
  • Improvement: Debug logging can now be turned on or off under Tools > Options > Debugging in LaunchBox. Debug logs were previously available, but had to be manually turned on via the Settings.xml file.
  • Improvement: New option to "Hide Auto-Generated Playlists from Playlist View" under the Big Box View settings. This new setting is on by default and will hide all the auto-generated nested playlists from the playlists view.
  • Improvement: New options to "Hide Mouse Cursor on Startup Screens" are available in the Game Startup settings of both LaunchBox and Big Box. These routines were causing issues on some rare systems, so they can now be disabled.
  • Improvement: A shortcut key combination is now available for "Select Random Game" in LaunchBox: Ctrl+Alt+Q
  • Improvement: New key and controller button mappings are available in Big Box for Lock/Unlock. This will allow you to lock or unlock Big Box without having to go all the way out to the System menu.
  • Improvement: Games can now be marked as completed or incomplete in Big Box via the game details menu. This new game details menu item can also be hidden in the Game Menu options.
  • Improvement: Big Box now has options to allow doing a bunch more things while locked: setting star ratings, opening game folders, opening game image folders, opening emulators, favoriting games, hiding games, marking games as broken, and marking games as completed. All options are available in the Security section of the Big Box options.
  • Improvement: The built-in version of VLC has been upgraded to version 3.0.6, which should resolve various issues with the previous versions of VLC; performance has also improved significantly.
  • Improvement: All the functionality of NJDave71's HelperControl for Big Box themes has been integrated into Big Box. Many thanks to David for his code. For theme developers, details are here: https://forums.launchbox-app.com/topic/48735-njdave71s-helpercontrol-functionality-integrated/
  • Improvement: Data saving performance in Big Box has been drastically improved, especially for users with lots of playlists
  • Improvement: The Big Box TextFiltersView now has proper support for videos with the ImageVideoView for custom themes
  • Fixed: In the LaunchBox list view, pressing a letter key to jump to a game in the list did not put keyboard focus on the newly selected item, so using the arrow keys afterwards would jump back to the previous location
  • Fixed: The Minimize on Game Startup and Restore on Game Exit LaunchBox options were messing with the startup screens, so they are now automatically disabled if the startup screens are used

New in LaunchBox 9.4 Beta 1 (Jan 17, 2019)

  • Improvement: LaunchBox will no longer download images for inapplicable regions during batch imports and media download processes. This will help to save disk space and speed up the download processes. Please be sure your region priority preferences are correct in LaunchBox under Tools > Options > General > Region Priorities, as this will define what types of images are downloaded for games that have no region specified.
  • Improvement: Debug logging has been improved for media downloads and cleaning up media, now reporting the downloaded and deleted files.
  • Improvement: Debug logging can now be turned on or off under Tools > Options > Debugging in LaunchBox. Debug logs were previously available, but had to be manually turned on via the Settings.xml file.

New in LaunchBox 9.3 Beta 1 (Jan 7, 2019)

  • Improvement: Daphne emulators should now have "Hide Console Window" checked by default for better compatibility with the startup screens
  • Fixed: Rare and random null reference error when returning to LaunchBox from games
  • Fixed: Error when using the list view in LaunchBox and attempting to hide the sidebar
  • Fixed: Rare but potential null reference error auto-generating child playlists

New in LaunchBox 9.2 Beta 2 (Dec 11, 2018)

  • Hey again all, beta 2 is out now with the new startup screens very much improved. Each emulator now has separate startup screen options.
  • In addition, I've fixed the various issues with Project64, so I expect that the issues with the majority of emulators can be resolved by tweaking these various settings on the emulators. Please let me know what emulators you're still having issues with after playing with the above settings.
  • Here are the known issues that still exist:
  • There's currently no way to abort the game loading process (during file extraction, etc.).
  • Key/button presses (spamming) can still hijack focus on game startup and cause the game not to be displayed or focused properly.
  • Game-specific startup screen settings (for Windows games for example) do not yet exist.
  • Steam games cause weirdness, but do still work. This may be a tough one to solve, so we may just disable the startup screen for Steam games.
  • Edit: Mouse cursors are still visible; not doing anything yet to hide them.
  • And here are some additional features that I still plan on adding:
  • Better window hiding for some emulators (window hiding is already in place and works for most emulators already, including Dolphin)
  • Game shut down themes instead of just a black screen on game shutdown
  • Full plugin support
  • Edit: Automatically populating the above settings with known-working settings for known emulators

New in LaunchBox 9.1 Beta 1 (Nov 20, 2018)

  • Hey all, it looks like we'll be putting out a 9.1 fix release soon, mostly just because of some Big Box theme compatibility issues. The various Unified themes are having some issues with the new nested categories and playlists, and since they're some of the most popular themes we have, I felt that it was a priority to get them fixed up.
  • Improvement: Added a new property called KnownPlatformOrPlaylistTitle for the Big Box games views; this property should help Big Box themes (Unified and potentially other themes) to be more compatible with the new nested categories and playlists. It will return either the parent platform name or the known arcade playlist name when on nested categories and playlists.
  • Fixed: Automatically-populated playlists were showing duplicated games in some rare cases
  • Assuming this beta goes well, we'll push it out as an official release.

New in LaunchBox 9.0 Beta 1 (Oct 17, 2018)

  • Fixed: Generating MAME/Arcade playlists on importing games was still restricted to premium users (previously we removed the premium restriction for playlists)
  • Fixed: Launch With in Big Box is now sorted alphabetically
  • Fixed: The list type drop down in LaunchBox is now sorted alphabetically
  • Fixed: Field drop downs in the LaunchBox playlist editor are now sorted alphabetically
  • Fixed: The PluginHelper.DataManager.GetAllParents() plugin method was not working properly

New in LaunchBox 8.9 (Oct 11, 2018)

  • Improvement:
  • Empty playlists will now show up in the LaunchBox sidebar when viewing platform categories; this should reduce confusion when adding a new playlist and leaving it empty
  • When manually adding a new platform via right-click in the platform categories list, LaunchBox will now warn you that it's not recommended to manually add platforms and to use the import processes instead. It also warns the user that categories and playlists should be used instead of platforms for nesting purposes.
  • Fixed:
  • Add to Playlist functionality was accidentally still restricted to premium
  • Editing a playlist that had no parents was putting it back into the root by default

New in LaunchBox 8.8 (Oct 8, 2018)

  • Improvement: All playlist features are now available for free users instead of only for premium users
  • New Feature: Platform Categories, Platforms, and Playlists now have fully flexible nesting and can be nested multiple-levels deep in the Platform Categories views.
  • Improvement: Minor Big Box performance improvements
  • Fixed: Big Box was taking too long to fully exit (process was staying in task manager) when the Allow Sleep option was checked
  • Fixed: A particularly nasty Microsoft Windows Explorer bug in the Windows 10 October 2018 update was causing errors and crashes when clicking the Add Files button in the Import Games from Files wizard. Hopefully Microsoft fixes this bug soon, but in the mean time we've worked around it by hiding the title label of the wizard when clicking that button.

New in LaunchBox 8.8 Beta 1 (Sep 24, 2018)

  • Improvement: All playlist features are now available for free users instead of only for premium users
  • New Feature: Platform Categories, Platforms, and Playlists now have fully flexible nesting. Anything can be placed inside of anything else and nested multiple-levels deep in the Platform Categories view.

New in LaunchBox 8.7 Beta 1 (Sep 6, 2018)

  • Improvement: Swapped out the default Racing Games clear logo with a new one that is easier to see thanks to @letstalkaboutdune
  • Improvement: Added a new BackgroundOpacity property to the LaunchBox BoxItemViewModel, primarily for @Grila's new LaunchBox custom theme

New in LaunchBox 8.6 (Sep 4, 2018)

  • Note: The original LaunchBox interface has been completely removed and replaced with the LaunchBox.Next interface. This was done in order to allow much quicker development going forward, solve a number of long-standing stability and flexibility problems caused by the previous interface, and solve fragmentation problems. Please let us know on the forums if you have issues with the new interface.
  • New Premium Feature: LaunchBox now supports custom themes just like Big Box! Check out the new LaunchBoxLBThemes folder, and change the theme under Tools > Options > Visuals.
  • New Premium Feature: A new "Disable Mouse Cursor Across All Apps" option is available in Big Box under Options > Mouse; this option will hide the mouse cursor completely while Big Box is open, in all apps.
  • New Premium Feature: Big Box now has options to allow or disable sleep, reboot, shut down, switch image type, switch view, and switch filter type (view type) while locked
  • New Feature: A new "Import MAME Arcade Full Set" wizard has been added to LaunchBox (under Tools > Import); this wizard will allow you to import a full set of the latest version of MAME games, and will work with merged, split, or non-merged sets. As a result, MAME imports no longer have to be tied to files.
  • New Feature: When importing a full set via the new "Import MAME Arcade Full Set" wizard, clones are optionally imported into additional apps. This allows you to have all clones accessible without cluttering your collection.
  • New Premium Feature: Now that MAME/Arcade metadata is much more accurate, the MAME/Arcade playlists have been overhauled to use the auto-filtering playlist system instead of a list of games (which turns out to be much more effective and also more performant). In addition, many new playlists have been added, including playlists for 2-player and 4-player games, as well as various genres like Beat Em Ups, Racing Games, etc. These new playlist options are available in the new "Import MAME Arcade Full Set" wizard as well as the "Create Missing Arcade/MAME Playlists" option from the Tools menu. Please keep in mind though that you will need to update and overwrite your metadata for your MAME games or the new playlists will not work properly.
  • Improvement: The LaunchBox MAME metadata (used to filter and gather metadata for MAME games on import) has been updated to the MAME 0.201 data, and a new backend system has been put in place to easily update the data for new MAME versions in the future. Hooray!
  • Improvement: The Download Metadata and Media and Import ROMs from Files wizards have been updated to prioritize the new, more accurate MAME data
  • Improvement: The LaunchBox.Next and LaunchBox image cache folders have been consolidated into a new LaunchBoxImagesCache-LB folder, and the Big Box image cache has been changed to LaunchBoxImagesCache-BB. These changes should take effect upon starting LaunchBox or Big Box.
  • Improvement: The LaunchBox main menu is now being cached on startup so that it opens quicker on first launch
  • Improvement: Many new platform/category/playlist theme videos have been added to the video downloader thanks to RetroHumanoid, PaDeMoniuM, CTRL-ALT-DEFEAT, dragon57, harryoke, and uv777bk from the forums, as well as prioritization options for each
  • Improvement: Any plugin errors that occur will no longer prompt the user; however, for developers, the errors will still show up in the debug logs
  • Fixed: Some message boxes were not centering properly
  • Fixed: Several background music priority/overlap bugs have been fixed in Big Box
  • Fixed: Controller input in Big Box was experiencing occasional hiccups on some systems
  • Fixed: Setting controller buttons in LaunchBox was occasionally glitching out
  • Fixed: Controllers were lagging sporadically in Big Box on some systems (especially underpowered systems). If you still experience controller lag in Big Box, please make sure that the "Use All Controllers" setting in Big Box is disabled.
  • Fixed: Gif images were not displaying in the LaunchBox Game Details Sidebar
  • Fixed: The list view in LaunchBox was not sorting secondarily by title when other columns were the primary sort
  • Fixed: LaunchBox was occasionally creating Manuals, Music, and Videos folders in emulator directories
  • Fixed: LaunchBox (.Next) was missing plugin support for the Tools menu
  • Fixed: LaunchBox (.Next) was missing LEDBlinky support
  • Fixed: LaunchBox (.Next) was missing plugin events for LaunchBox for startup completed and shutdown beginning

New in LaunchBox 8.5 (Aug 24, 2018)

  • Improvement:
  • The minimum box size and maximum aspect ratio options in LaunchBox.Next have been expanded to allow for Steam Banners with minimal borders
  • Fixed:
  • The Play Count and Last Played fields were not updating when launching games via a double-click in LaunchBox.Next
  • Applying a License.xml file was showing an irrelevant error in LaunchBox.Next

New in LaunchBox 8.6 Beta 1 (Aug 21, 2018)

  • Please note that the original LaunchBox interface has been completely removed and replaced with the LaunchBox.Next interface for this beta (the same will be for the 8.6 official release). This was done in order to allow much quicker development going forward, solve a number of long-standing stability and flexibility problems caused by the previous interface, and solve fragmentation problems.
  • LaunchBox now supports custom themes just like Big Box. Check out the new LaunchBoxLBThemes folder, and change the theme under Tools > Options > Visuals.
  • A new "Disable Mouse Cursor Across All Apps" option in available in Big Box under Options > Mouse; this option will hide the mouse cursor completely while Big Box is open, in all apps.
  • Fixed: Some message boxes were not centering properly
  • Fixed: Several background music priority/overlap bugs have been fixed in Big Box
  • Fixed (hopefully): Controller input in Big Box was experiencing occasional hiccups on some systems
  • Fixed (hopefully): Setting controller buttons in LaunchBox was occasionally glitching out

New in LaunchBox 8.4 (Aug 14, 2018)

  • New Premium Feature: Platform, playlist, and platform category-specific background music is now available in Big Box! Enable it in the Big Box Sound options and place your music in the LaunchBoxMusicBackgroundPlatforms[Platform Name], LaunchBoxMusicBackgroundPlaylists[Playlist Name], and LaunchBoxMusicBackgroundPlatform Categories[Platform Category Name] folders.
  • Improvement: LaunchBox.Next now has a new Options window with a bunch of box configuration options for premium users: Background Opacity, Colorize Backgrounds to Match Images, Text Outline Opacity, Text Outline Thickness, and Align Text
  • Improvement: LaunchBox.Next now has full controller support
  • Improvement: LaunchBox.Next game hover icons have been implemented
  • Improvement: LaunchBox.Next custom spacing options have been implemented
  • Improvement: LaunchBox.Next box image and cache optimizations and performance improvements
  • Improvement: LaunchBox.Next now has a small progress bar at the top to show when images are caching in the background
  • Improvement: LaunchBox.Next now obeys the default background settings properly
  • Improvement: LaunchBox.Next now resets to the default background when changing to a new platform/filter
  • Improvement: LaunchBox.Next now works with clear logo backgrounds
  • Improvement: Show Versions has been implemented in LaunchBox.Next
  • Improvement: The LaunchBox.Next list view now retains its sorting on refresh and between filters
  • Improvement: "Use Random Color Theme On Startup" has been implemented in LaunchBox.Next
  • Improvement: LaunchBox.Next will now jump to the new game when a new game is added
  • Improvement: A maximum width has been added to the LaunchBox.Next side bar in order to prevent issues with it being too large
  • Improvement: Music playback has now been implemented in LaunchBox.Next
  • Improvement: LaunchBox.Next now contains a volume control in the bottom right
  • Improvement: LaunchBox.Next now obeys the "Colorize Game Dividers" option
  • Improvement: LaunchBox.Next now obeys the "Colorize Scrollbars" option
  • Improvement: LaunchBox.Next now obeys the "Colorize Background Fade" option
  • Improvement: New option in LaunchBox.Next for centering the text
  • Improvement: New option in LaunchBox.Next for showing or hiding the subline
  • Improvement: Added automatic music and background music support for .sid, .ac3, .alac, .amr, .dts, .xm, .it, .mod, .ape, .opus, .qcp, .nsf, and .spc file formats. These formats were previously playable by LaunchBox and Big Box but not automatically picked up when searching for music files.
  • Improvement: LaunchBox.Next now has an option to return to the OG interface, and the OG interface now prompts the user to try LaunchBox.Next, with options to always use .Next or stop prompting as well
  • Improvement: The "Minimize on Game Launch" and "Restore on Game Exit" options have been implemented in LaunchBox.Next
  • Fixed: LaunchBox.Next was not resetting to the default image group when switching to All Games or any filter that does not have a specific image group specified
  • Fixed: LaunchBox.Next "Search" field is now translated
  • Fixed: LaunchBox.Next exiting issues while switching to Big Box
  • Fixed: LaunchBox.Next disappearing boxes bug
  • Fixed: LaunchBox.Next possible Options freeze
  • Fixed: LaunchBox.Next stability issues, most prominently when launching games
  • Fixed: LaunchBox.Next side bar combo box and search box not sizing properly for custom fonts
  • Fixed: Playlists are now sorted properly via the playlist's sort settings in LaunchBox.Next
  • Fixed: Occasional multi-select issues with games not being unselected in LaunchBox.Next
  • Fixed: Rare Big Box threading null reference errors
  • Fixed: Rare splash screen threading error
  • Fixed: Rare image format error in Big Box Coverflow
  • Fixed: French translation error on deleting games from a playlist
  • Fixed: Greek translation error in Add/Edit dialog
  • Fixed: LaunchBox.Next videos playing in the background while playing games

New in LaunchBox 8.4 Beta 1 (Jun 14, 2018)

  • The focus for this beta so far has been to attempt to improve performance with the box images and the caching for .Next. The app will automatically cache images in the background for the active view (the currently displayed games). In addition, there's a small progress bar that shows at the top while images are being cached in the background. If you want to precache all images, just go to All Games, set the image group you want, and wait for the progress bar to complete.

New in LaunchBox 8.3 (Jun 7, 2018)

  • New Feature: The Launch With functions will now allow you to choose a core when launching Retroarch
  • New Feature: Managing the Retroarch emulator is now much easier with drop downs for the cores and notifications for missing cores
  • Improvement: Image groups have been implemented in LaunchBox.Next
  • Improvement: The game details sidebar has been implemented in LaunchBox.Next
  • Improvement: You can now hide the sidebar in LaunchBox.Next
  • Improvement: The View and Tools menus have been added to the top right menus in LaunchBox.Next for easier accessibility
  • Improvement: Keyboard/tab navigation now works properly throughout LaunchBox.Next with proper visual cues
  • Improvement: Zooming in and out has been added to LaunchBox.Next (as well as the slider in the button bar)
  • Improvement: Games without images in LaunchBox.Next now display the placeholder image instead of no image at all
  • Improvement: Background image fading has been implemented in LaunchBox.Next
  • Improvement: The list view has been implemented in LaunchBox.Next
  • Improvement: Options to disable side bar counts or not right align them have been implemented in LaunchBox.Next
  • Improvement: LaunchBox.Next side bar drop down scroll bar styles have been themed
  • Improvement: Color themes are now available in LaunchBox.Next
  • Improvement: The sidebar right-click menu has been implemented in LaunchBox.Next
  • Improvement: Arrange By has been implemented in LaunchBox.Next
  • Improvement: Implemented combine and expand games in LaunchBox.Next
  • Improvement: Drag and drop has been implemented in LaunchBox.Next
  • Improvement: Implemented custom fonts in LaunchBox.Next
  • Improvement: Alphanumeric navigation (press a key to jump to a game) has been implemented in LaunchBox.Next
  • Improvement: Controller automation (but not yet full controller support) has been implemented in LaunchBox.Next

New in LaunchBox 8.3 Beta 7 (May 24, 2018)

  • When a new beta is installed, does it clear the thumbnail cache? I've noticed that my thumbnails again need to regenerate, and wonder if it is because i updated LB with a new beta.

New in LaunchBox 8.3 Beta 1 (Apr 27, 2018)

  • We're still working on the two Retroarch-related items from the poll (those should be in for the next beta). However, what we do have in this beta is LaunchBox.Next implementations for the game details side bar and image groups:
  • There are still a million little things to do with LaunchBox.Next before it's complete, as well as getting Arrange By working properly. That said, the end is in sight. My current plan is to hopefully get everything mostly completed in LaunchBox.Next before releasing 8.3. Then once 8.4 is out we'll most likely do away with the old version of LaunchBox entirely. It will probably be a couple months yet, but I'm looking forward to LaunchBox.Next being the main release due to its ease of development and much improved performance.

New in LaunchBox 8.2 (Apr 12, 2018)

  • New Feature: LaunchBox.Next is now available; it's a complete overhaul for the main LaunchBox interface. IT'S LARGELY STILL IN DEVELOPMENT, but you can try it out by clicking the LaunchBox.Next button in the header or running the new LaunchBox.Next.exe file from the LaunchBox folder.
  • New Feature: Five new options have been added to the View menu in LaunchBox to hide games missing videos, front box art, screenshots, clear logos, and/or background images. These options will trigger a process to populate a missing media cache that will allow quick navigation. There's also an option underneath these five items to "Refresh All Missing Media" in case you've manually added or removed images directly from the file system.
  • New Feature: Images can now be deleted directly from the game details sidebar in LaunchBox via a new right-click menu
  • New Feature: The list view in LaunchBox now allows you to hide and show columns by right-clicking on the column headers, and will save your preferences as well as the column order
  • Improvement: The included CriticalZone theme for Big Box has been updated to version 2; huge thanks to CriticalCid for his continued work on the theme! To use it, select the new "CriticalZoneV2 - Default" theme under Options > Views in Big Box. More versions of the theme are also available on the LaunchBox forums.
  • Improvement: A new "Wheel Easing" option has been added to Big Box that makes wheels and CoverFlow appear smoother by easing animations in and out. It's on by default but can be disabled under Options > Views.
  • Improvement: A new "Show Platform Banner Images" option was added to Big Box to allow you to hide the platform banner images if you don't want them obstructing the view of the background; the setting is available under Options > Images.
  • Improvement: A new "Allow Computer to Sleep while not in Attract Mode" option has been added to the Big Box General options for users who want Big Box to allow their computers to sleep
  • Improvement: Scanning for added ROMs performance has been drastically improved
  • Improvement: The default platforms and settings for the Retroarch emulator have been updated with more platforms and more modern core choices
  • Improvement: RetroHumanoid's amazing theme videos have been added as an option to the Platform/Playlist theme video downloads
  • Improvement: A new "RotationAmount" property has been added to the Big Box FlowControl (for theme developers styling the wheels). This allows theme developers to create a more cohesive-feeling wheel with items that rotate as the wheel turns.
  • Fixed: Sorting by title in the LaunchBox list view now correctly sorts by Sort Title
  • Fixed: When using the search box in LaunchBox, the scroll position was not reset which was sometimes confusing because it appeared that not all results were shown
  • Fixed: The images portion of the Edit Game dialog had some minor positioning issues on higher DPIs
  • Fixed: Steam killed off our API key once again, again breaking the Steam import wizard. We've changed it to ask the user to get their own API key from Steam in order to resolve the issue.

New in LaunchBox 8.2 Beta 8 (Apr 5, 2018)

  • New Feature: LaunchBox.Next is now available; it's a complete overhaul for the main LaunchBox interface. It's largely still in development, but you can try it out by clicking the LaunchBox.Next button in the header or running the new LaunchBox.Next.exe file from the LaunchBox folder.
  • New Feature: Five new options have been added to the View menu in LaunchBox to hide games missing videos, front box art, screenshots, clear logos, and/or background images. These options will trigger a process to populate a missing media cache that will allow quick navigation. There's also an option underneath these five items to "Refresh All Missing Media" in case you've manually added or removed images directly from the file system.
  • New Feature: The list view in LaunchBox now allows you to hide and show columns by right-clicking on the column headers, and will save your preferences as well as the column order
  • Improvement: A new "Show Platform Banner Images" option was added to Big Box to allow you to hide the platform banner images if you don't want them obstructing the view of the background; the setting is available under Options > Images.
  • Improvement: A new "Allow Computer to Sleep while not in Attract Mode" option has been added to the Big Box General options for users who want Big Box to allow their computers to sleep
  • Improvement: Scanning for added ROMs performance has been drastically improved
  • Fixed: Sorting by title in the LaunchBox list view now correctly sorts by Sort Title
  • Fixed: When using the search box in LaunchBox, the scroll position was not reset which was sometimes confusing because it appeared that not all results were shown
  • Fixed: The images portion of the Edit Game dialog had some minor positioning issues on higher DPIs
  • Fixed: Steam killed off our API key once again, again breaking the Steam import wizard. We've changed it to ask the user to get their own API key from Steam in order to resolve the issue.

New in LaunchBox 8.2 Beta 2 (Mar 1, 2018)

  • New Feature: Images can now be deleted directly from the game details sidebar in LaunchBox via a new right-click menu
  • Improvement: The included CriticalZone theme for Big Box has been updated to version 2; huge thanks to CriticalCid for his continued work on the theme! To use it, select the new "CriticalZoneV2 - Default" theme under Options > Views in Big Box. More versions of the theme are also available on the LaunchBox forums.
  • Improvement: A new "Wheel Easing" option has been added to Big Box that makes wheels and CoverFlow appear smoother by easing animations in and out. It's on by default but can be disabled under Options > Views.

New in LaunchBox 8.1 Beta 1 (Feb 20, 2018)

  • Fixed: Alphanumeric navigation in LaunchBox caused a conflict with arrow key navigation (jumping to games starting with "Up")
  • Fixed: On rare occasions when switching themes in Big Box and returning to the filters view, the details were not populated and Escape could not be used without first switching the selection

New in LaunchBox 8.0 (Feb 17, 2018)

  • New Premium Feature: Big Box now includes a built-in PDF/browser viewer for manuals that can be controlled with all existing controllers. This is implemented via the Chromium Embedded Framework (an embedded, open-source version of Google Chrome). If desired, this can be disabled under the Big Box General options.
  • New Feature: Retroarch Netplay support is now built-in to LaunchBox and Big Box, largely thanks to Izegod from the forums who built a plugin for it! Simply right-click on a supported game and select Retroarch Netplay in LaunchBox, or access the Retroarch Netplay options from the game details menu in Big Box.
  • New Feature: A new "Download Updated Community Star Ratings" option is available under the Tools menu in LaunchBox; this makes it much easier and faster to update star ratings, rather than having to run the Download Metadata and Media wizard.
  • Improvement: LaunchBox and Big Box startup times have been significantly reduced. The "Populating Platforms" portion of the startup screen should now be instantaneous in most situations.
  • Improvement: LaunchBox now supports jump to game by letter (press an alphanumeric key on the keyboard), similar to Windows Explorer
  • Improvement: The LaunchBox Welcome form has been revamped and modernized
  • Improvement: Added community star ratings support to the LaunchBox Plugin API. The following fields have been added to the IGame interface: CommunityOrLocalStarRating, StarRatingFloat, CommunityStarRating, and CommunityStarRatingTotalVotes. See the documentation here: http://pluginapi.launchbox-app.com/html/b33d2055-e2be-3f42-12c6-adbc5668f454.htm
  • Improvement: Added retro achievements support to the LaunchBox Plugin API. See the new Unbroken.LaunchBox.Plugins.RetroAchievements namespace for details. Documentation is here: http://pluginapi.launchbox-app.com/
  • Improvement: Retro achievements will now use alternate names from the games database if the game is not found; this requires the game to be already matched up to a LaunchBox Games Database ID
  • Improvement: The Big Box wall view now supports videos for custom themes
  • Improvement: The FilterTitle property is now available for all games views in Big Box custom themes
  • Improvement: The included version of ScummVM has been updated to the latest version! The ScummVM games list has also been updated.
  • Improvement: The Big Box star rating popup has been changed to jump only to half-star and whole-star values; in addition, pressing the Back button/key will no longer save the changed star rating. Pressing the select/enter key/button will, of course, save the value.
  • Fixed: Valve/Steam decided to kill our API Key for no apparent reason (or at least none that we received any communication about), which broke the Steam import wizard. This has been fixed with a new API key. Hopefully they don't kill this one...
  • Fixed: Retro Achievements were causing errors to pop up in LaunchBox if the retroachievements.org website went down
  • Fixed: Some Big Box theme combinations resulted in issues saving different views for each platform
  • Fixed: The game details sidebar in LaunchBox was not remembering its sizing when closed and restarting LaunchBox

New in LaunchBox 7.15 (Dec 15, 2017)

  • Retro achievements are now accessible in LaunchBox from retroachievements.org! Add your account under Tools > Options > Search > Retro Achievements, and then your achievements will show up in the LaunchBox game details sidebar.
  • New Premium Feature: Retro achievements are now accessible in Big Box as well from the game details menu, or with a hotkey or controller button via Options > Keyboard Mappings > View Achievements or Options > Controller Buttons > View Achievements.
  • New Feature: Community star ratings are now available in LaunchBox and will show as a slightly different color. You can download the community's star ratings for your games by using Tools > Download Metadata and Media.
  • New Feature: Star ratings set in LaunchBox will now automatically upload to the LaunchBox Games Database in order to contribute to the community's ratings. You can disable this under Tools > Options > Search.
  • New Feature: Two new options have been added to Tools > Options > Search: "Use Community Star Ratings when Filtering or Arranging by Star Rating" and "Minimum number of community ratings in order to use". These will allow you to specify whether or not you want to use the community star ratings when filtering and arranging your collection, and how many community votes are required before considering the value.
  • New Premium Feature: Star ratings are now available in Big Box! They will show up by default in the game details views, but can be disabled under Options > Game Details.
  • New Premium Feature: Star ratings can now be set in Big Box from either the game details menu or via a hotkey or controller button under Options > Keyboard Mappings > Set Star Rating or Options > Controller Buttons > Set Star Rating. An option is available to hide the Star Rating from the game details menu as well.
  • Improvement: Three new fields have been added to the LaunchBox list view: Star Rating, Community Star Rating, and Community Star Rating Count
  • Improvement: Removed the seldom-used game details popup, which was made mostly irrelevant by the game details sidebar back when we implemented it. It wasn't very usable with all of the added images and became completely horrendous with the achievements; there are also some performance improvements as a result.
  • Improvement: Syncing your collection to the cloud now reports progress and is much quicker; viewing your collection on the web is much quicker as well :)
  • Improvement: Star ratings can now be set at half values
  • Improvement: The included version of 7-Zip has been upgraded to the latest version (16.04)
  • Improvement: The end of the Download Metadata and Media process in LaunchBox has been optimized to be multi-threaded so that the interface does not appear to be locked up when finishing up the process
  • Improvement: When switching the global theme in the Big Box options, platform-specific and playlist-specific themes are now reset in order to reduce confusion
  • Improvement: There are two new Theme Settings for Big Box custom themes: Force16X9AspectRatio and Force4X3AspectRatio, which should hopefully resolve issues running certain themes on 16x10 monitors and similar situations
  • Fixed: Game titles are no longer overwritten when downloading metadata and images and a new LaunchBox Games Database ID is found
  • Fixed: Developers, genres, and other non-game text lists in Big Box had an occasional issue with the text index caused by The, A, and An
  • Fixed: Big Box marquee screen had some placement issues when using a smaller resolution on the main display than on the marquee display
  • Fixed: When using the Text with Game Details view in Big Box, the logo at the top of the list was sometimes not updating
  • Fixed: Viewing videos full screen from the Big Box game details menu was sometimes not showing the video
  • Fixed: After closing the Options window, the LaunchBox main window border was corrupted on some systems
  • Fixed: "Prioritize Music over Video Audio" in Big Box was not working on rare occasions and the video audio and music would both play at the same time
  • Fixed: On Big Box games text list views, the selection bar was sometimes missing when first loading up the view
  • Fixed: When switching themes per platform or playlist in Big Box, sometimes it was confusing and/or the theme was not saving due to invalid views for certain themes. The view is now reset to the default when switching themes for a particular platform or playlist.

New in LaunchBox 7.12 (Oct 31, 2017)

  • New Premium Feature: Big Box Startup videos have been overhauled to be run from within Big Box instead of launching VLC directly; videos will now automatically run for the full length of the video unless skipped with a key or button press
  • New Premium Feature: Big Box now supports random startup videos as well; simply create a LaunchBoxVideosStartup folder and drop all videos to be randomized inside
  • New Premium Feature: Different themes for each platform can now be used in Big Box; simply map a key or controller button to the new "Switch Theme" item under Options > Keyboard Mappings or Options > Controller Buttons
  • New Feature: Media items and Windows shortcuts can now be imported more easily using the new "None of the Above" import type in the import games wizard. Simply drag media files or Windows shortcuts over to LaunchBox and select "None of the Above" when choosing the type of files you are importing.
  • Improvement: Big Box memory footprint significantly reduced (RAM usage)
  • Improvement: Big Box performance improvements, specifically with transition animations between selecting games or platforms
  • Improvement: Big Box Startup videos will now always start up on the monitor selected as the primary monitor
  • Improvement: Checkboxes on the Import and Download Metadata and Media wizards now remember their settings for each import/run (where relevant). Selected image types are also remembered.
  • Improvement: The import wizard now prefills the platform field with the currently selected platform in LaunchBox
  • Improvement: Upgraded once again to the .NET Framework 4.7 (had previously reverted due to some minor end user issues with .NET 4.7). Hopefully all issues are ironed out by now; if necessary, you will be prompted to install the latest .NET Framework when upgrading.
  • Improvement: Additional Applications in Big Box have now been moved into a sub-menu so that the names are not cut off and they don't clutter up the game details menu
  • Improvement: Due to memory limitations and the possibility for out of memory errors, CoverFlow image quality in Big Box is limited to a max of Medium on systems with 8 gigs of RAM or less
  • Fixed: Additional apps were sometimes showing out of order; they should now always be sorted alphabetically in both LaunchBox and Big Box
  • Fixed: Refreshing platform wheel images in Big Box was not working in some cases
  • Fixed: Rare NullReferenceException could occur in LaunchBox while populating the game details sidebar values

New in LaunchBox 7.10 (May 28, 2017)

  • New Feature: Plugins are now supported in LaunchBox and Big Box! If you're a developer, see documentation here: http://pluginapi.launchbox-app.com
  • Improvement: LaunchBox and Big Box updates are now downloaded automatically in the background so you don't have to wait for them; this can be disabled under Options > General > Updates in LaunchBox
  • Improvement: CRC checks are now used to eliminate duplicate images when downloading from the LaunchBox Games Database or EmuMovies on imports and metadata/media updates
  • Improvement: The Clean Up Images option from the Tools menu in LaunchBox has been modified to also remove duplicate images
  • Improvement: the Clean Up Images option from the Tools menu in LaunchBox has been tweaked to add a Cancel button and use all cores on your system in order to vastly improve performance
  • Improvement: Massive startup performance increases for both LaunchBox and Big Box; in some cases it is now well over twice as fast; used multi-threading and other strategies
  • Improvement: Significant performance increases when selecting platform categories in Big Box
  • Fixed: Titles are no longer duplicated into the Version field when importing games that don't have a Version

New in LaunchBox 7.9 (Apr 12, 2017)

  • New Premium Feature: Platform Categories are now accessible in Big Box! You can choose "View Platform Categories" in the main menu, and platform categories can be made the default view on startup in the view options.
  • New Premium Feature: Nested Filters are now available in Big Box as well! You can filter any games list in Big Box by pretty much any field or combination of fields. This includes keyboard and button shortcuts and a menu item listed in the alphanumeric navigation.
  • New Premium Feature: New options are available under Options > Image Cache in Big Box to force populate all cache images. This should help especially on lower-end devices like the GPD Win, where the device is too slow to do it during normal operation.
  • New Feature: Platform categories can now be edited with a sort title, video, etc. via the side bar in LaunchBox
  • Improvement: Five new platform category images are included by default with LaunchBox, thanks to GiantTitan from the forums :)
  • Improvement: Theme videos can now be downloaded for platform categories as well using Tools > Download Platform/Playlist Theme Videos
  • Improvement: Empty games lists in Big Box should now show "no games found" instead of an empty list
  • Improvement: A new Arabic translation is available thanks to MajKSA from the forums! :)
  • Improvement: Added missing field "Broken" to playlist auto-filters and nested filters
  • Improvement: Hide/Unhide is now available in Big Box in the game details view
  • Improvement: Added a new "CurrentTime" binding to all views in Big Box for custom themes
  • Improvement: Big Box CoverFlow performance has been marginally improved; also, for lower end machines such as the GPD Win, the reflections are what cause performance issues and can now be turned off under Big Box > Options > Images > CoverFlow Reflection Opacity. Set the opacity to 0% to drastically improve performance.
  • Improvement: Hide Taskbar is no longer the default for Big Box since it seems to cause some rare issues on some systems, specifically when coming back to Big Box from a game (thanks to Charco for figuring this out)
  • Fixed: Playlists in Big Box were not switching image types correctly
  • Fixed: Controller automation was occasionally causing issues with Big Box when closing out of certain emulators
  • Fixed: When selecting a platform, platform category, or playlist in the sidebar in LaunchBox and no previous image type had been selected for that item, LaunchBox was not using the default image type but rather it was using the image type that was used for the previous selection
  • Fixed: Playlists were not looking at additional apps when populating the games in the lists
  • Fixed: When creating automatic arcade playlists, some non-arcade games were ending up in the list

New in LaunchBox 7.8 (Apr 6, 2017)

  • - New Premium Feature: Playlists are now available with a ton of new options! They can also be displayed next to your platforms in LaunchBox and Big Box.
  • - New Premium Feature: Custom filters have now been replaced with auto-populating playlists, which are much more flexible and more performant!
  • - New Premium Feature: Playlists can now optionally created on imports to divide up Arcade platforms into various subdivisions such as Capcom Classics, Namco Classics, etc. These playlists can also be created after the fact using Tools > Create Missing Arcade/MAME Playlists.
  • - Improvement: Platforms and playlists now both have a Sort Title field that can be used to custom sort them
  • - Improvement: Theme videos can now be downloaded for playlists as well as platforms using the Download Platform/Playlist Theme Videos option from the Tools menu
  • - Improvement: New controller buttons and keyboard mappings have been added for each view type in Big Box (switching between platforms, playlists, genres, etc.)
  • - Improvement: Platforms (and playlists as well) can now be managed directly in the sidebar via right click instead of always using Tools > Manage Platforms
  • - Improvement: In order to better support some MAME games that don't have an associated zip file, LaunchBox will no longer complain that the ROM file does not exist if the emulator's "use file name only without file extension or path" box is checked
  • - Improvement: Updated the list of Patreon producers in the About dialog once again! As always, thank you very much to all producers! https://www.patreon.com/launchbox
  • - Fixed: Renaming platforms was creating duplicate platforms
  • - Fixed: When exiting Big Box with the exit shortcut key or button, the last platform used was not being saved