LaunchBox

What's new in this version:

New:
- New Premium Feature: Added a new 3D Cassette Case model for tape-based platforms, with straight back, angled back, and clear case styles, portrait or landscape positioning, custom plastic and cover colors, and J-card spine artwork that falls back to a clear logo or a plain-text title
- New Premium Feature: Added a new 3D Double Jewel Case model, including automatic spine handling and dual-spine options
- New Feature: Added configurable Shutdown Applications, so apps can be closed automatically when LaunchBox or Big Box exits or when switching between them
- New Feature: Added a new shutdown progress window that shows what LaunchBox or Big Box is doing while closing, with a force-close option if shutdown hangs
- New Feature: Added play session history tracking, with an option under Data settings to enable or disable it
- New Feature: Added searchable Options pages, making it easier to find settings by name or related terms
- New Feature: Added a Default Image Group setting under Viewing options, so users can choose the default image type used across the interface
- New Feature: Added an optional Arrange By scrollbar for LaunchBox game lists and the default Image Grid, with group markers, hover labels, and click/drag jumping through the current arranged view
- New Feature: Introducing LaunchBox Reader, a built-in way to read game manuals, guides, magazines, and other documents directly inside LaunchBox and Big Box, with realistic page turns, customizable reading layouts, appearance settings, and keyboard/controller input mappings
- New Feature: Added a new Big Box Filter / Sort experience, making it easier to filter and reorder games from within Big Box using a controller, including sort options such as star rating
- New Feature: Added smarter game startup and shutdown screen handling, allowing LaunchBox and Big Box to monitor the launched game or emulator window directly so startup screens stay visible only as long as needed, storefront launchers are handled more reliably, shutdown screens appear when gameplay actually ends, play time tracking is more accurate, and game stats refresh more smoothly when returning from a game
- New Feature: Recommended emulator installation during ROM imports now supports multiple emulator options when more than one is applicable, allowing users to choose which supported emulator LaunchBox installs and configures for the selected platform
- New Feature: Additional applications are now organized into Applications, Versions, and Documents, making game extras, alternate versions, and manuals easier to manage in LaunchBox and easier to choose from in the Big Box Game Menu
- New Feature: Added Ctrl+, as a keyboard shortcut for opening LaunchBox Options

Improved:
- Reworked the LaunchBox list view for much better performance in the default theme, especially with large libraries, badges, custom columns, and fast scrolling. The new list view is fully themeable, and custom theme developers can update their themes to support it
- LaunchBox Themes & Media Manager now opens immediately and loads themes and media packs in the background with a clear loading state
- LocalDb startup work has been optimized to reduce startup overhead during local metadata database initialization and lookups
- Revamped the startup window with a newer WPF-based design and clearer startup status messages
- Improved metadata search when editing a game by showing best matches first, then other possible matches as they load
- Improved image group handling for platforms, playlists, and platform categories, including a new "Use Default" option to quickly clear a custom image group and return to the global default
- Improved LaunchBox and Big Box instance detection so separate installs or root folders can run independently without blocking each other
- LaunchBox and Big Box now save additional diagnostic information locally after certain severe crashes, helping the support team investigate problems that previously left no useful report
- Improved Options page performance and search responsiveness
- Improved ROM import parsing and welcome wizard import handoff behavior
- Improved startup/shutdown app handling and switching between LaunchBox and Big Box
- Updated the Windows build to use newer native launchers and the .NET 10 runtime/tooling stack
- Video playback now uses the LaunchBox Media Engine for VLC or Windows Media Player, with the legacy FFME playback engine and its bundled components removed
- Big Box startup video playback is now handled inside Big Box itself, making startup videos more reliable on some hardware configurations, including certain Windows handheld devices
- The default Big Box theme has been updated with new visual elements for Filter / Sort, including sort context labels and a redesigned popup, and the new controls are fully themeable for custom Big Box themes
- The default LaunchBox theme now uses a new Image Grid implementation with better performance, clearer selection highlighting, more reliable image refresh behavior, and a new Configure Layout option; custom themes can choose to adopt the new Image Grid, while existing custom themes continue using the previous implementation
- 3D model browsing now feels smoother and more responsive, with better drag handling, steadier carousel navigation, and better behavior across multi-monitor setups
- Automatic ROM Import now runs in the background with clearer progress, completion, and error notifications
- Embedded browser features now use WebView2, improving compatibility with modern web content and reducing older Chromium dependencies
- LaunchBox game details now update more smoothly while browsing large libraries, reducing unnecessary reloads when moving quickly through games, platforms, and playlists
- Related Games now loads recommendations and thumbnails more efficiently
- Auto-play music and LEDBlinky updates are more reliable when changing selections quickly
- Context menus now open more quickly after startup and view changes
- Big Box view transitions and 3D FlowModel navigation are smoother and more responsive during rapid browsing
- Big Box wheels and other artwork-heavy views now prioritize selected and visible images for faster, more responsive loading during navigation
- Big Box background music discovery now runs in the background so scanning larger music folders does not delay startup or navigation
- Higher-resolution fullscreen screenshots now scale smoothly to the available display, while lower-resolution screenshots retain crisp pixel-art scaling
- Plugin Manager now opens immediately and loads the online plugin catalog in the background with a clear loading state
- Windows CRC storage failures now show a clearer message identifying a drive or file-system problem instead of appearing as a generic startup, folder, or plugin error
- Steam games and Steam-linked additional applications now launch through Steam while preserving configured command-line arguments
- Error and crash reporting has been modernized, with separate options for sending automatic error reports and optional performance diagnostics
- Added a themeable BlurredVideoBackground element that safely provides blurred video backdrops for custom Big Box themes across supported video players

Fixed:
- Editing an additional version on a game that has not been saved yet no longer crashes, and game save detection now uses the platform currently selected in the game edit window
- The popped out game details and platform details windows now open in front of the main LaunchBox window instead of appearing behind it, and can still be moved behind LaunchBox afterwards
- LaunchBox now preserves existing bundled Default theme files and shows a controlled storage error instead of crashing when those files cannot be refreshed during startup
- LaunchBox and Big Box no longer crash when game-controller metadata is missing, inaccessible, or invalid; missing controller metadata is repaired automatically in the background when possible
- LaunchBox no longer crashes during startup when a configured Steam game library drive is unavailable
- LaunchBox and Big Box no longer crash with a threading error when two cloud syncs start at the same moment, such as when a game and its emulator exit together or when closing the app as a game exits
- The RetroAchievements menu is now available in custom LaunchBox themes, and RetroAchievements profile images load and refresh reliably
- Emulator and tool folders no longer leak into LaunchBox's own working directory, which could cause managed emulator updates to install into the wrong folder
- Long-running Big Box Attract Mode sessions no longer leak image-worker resources that could cause wheel images to disappear or exhaust Windows UI resources
- The alphanumeric index in Big Box's default theme shows its letters again, instead of an empty bar with only the highlighted selection visible
- Rapid navigation into Big Box Game Details no longer occasionally leaves menus, metadata, images, or videos empty
- MAME high scores launched from Big Box now parse and upload correctly
- Bezel Project downloads for MAME and RetroArch no longer fail because the downloaded ZIP remains locked during extraction
- Steam game discovery no longer reports an error when Steam replaces an application manifest during scanning
- Automatic PlayStation Vita imports now use game titles from Vita3K metadata instead of displaying title IDs
- Installed plugin and media pack versions that are newer than the online catalog version no longer incorrectly appear as available updates
- Several Xbox/UWP scanning, startup junction, Dolphin integration, plugin resource, and media extraction edge cases have been hardened to reduce crashes and noisy error reporting
- Resolved Big Box theme resource loading issues for themes loaded from their original installed location
- Steam media downloads now clean up temporary files more reliably
- Corrected platform alternate-name matching in the local metadata database
- Corrected playlist image group overrides so playlists with duplicate display names use the correct unique playlist entry
- VLC video preview audio now begins promptly with a short fade instead of cutting off the opening portion of videos.
- Big Box screen transitions now animate when navigating forward into platforms, games, and game details, and when leaving screens that have no video such as the system menu and options. Previously most of these switched instantly with no transition, whichever video playback engine was selected
- Big Box screen transitions no longer drop intermittently when leaving a view whose theme nests its own video-hosting transition area, such as navigating from a platform wheel into a game wheel. This mainly affected custom themes and could make a transition appear to work sometimes and not others