LaunchBox 13.28 Beta Thread

[christhed]

Like a lot of people have already pointed out, Launchbox is acting pretty weird for me with this beta.

The most frustrating issue I have is that my box images take forever to load in, and disappear as soon as I scroll by. I started the screen recording about 5 minutes after starting up launchbox and as you can see, images are not all showing.

• Windows 11
• AMD Ryzen 7700x
• AMD 7800XT
• 32gb ram
• Launchbox and all media is on a SSD

 

 

Edited Wednesday at 06:44 PM by christhed

[crusadeRGP]

When I open a game manual from the pause screen it stays hidden and does not show in the foreground.

 

Using PauseShift game pause screen

[Retrofrogg]

On 6/15/2026 at 10:10 AM, Retrofrogg said:

I find that the current beta often gets stuck on "loading interface" and won't open Launchbox. This happens intermittenly, maybe one out of 4 times. 

This seems to happen more when you do something else on your PC whilst Launchbox is loading. If you don't do anything else, the problem is less likely to happen. And sometimes it just seems to take a lot longer than usual before starting. 

[JoeViking245]

7 hours ago, crusadeRGP said:

When I open a game manual from the pause screen it stays hidden and does not show in the foreground.

I'm seeing the same thing with the Default Pause Theme.

 

My findings:
The LaunchBox Reader is opening, but the pause screen forces focus back onto itself (with the Reader sitting at the bottom Z).  You can Alt+Tab to the Reader to have it be the 'active' window, but the Pause Menu is still forced on top (top Z order).

With the Reader as the active window, you can Win+Shift+Left (or Right) and move the Reader to a second monitor and use it as normal.

With the Reader being left open (whether sitting on the bottom Z, or just not 'Escaped' to close it), when exiting the game, it stays open when exiting the game.  Maybe that's a "feature".  

[JoeViking245]

On 6/15/2026 at 2:10 AM, Retrofrogg said:

I find that the current beta often gets stuck on "loading interface" and won't open Launchbox. This happens intermittenly, maybe one out of 4 times. 

Though possibly not the same thing, another user had a similar issue.

• Start LaunchBox. No issues
• Exit/restart LaunchBox
  • it gets stuck on Loading Interface
• Restart the PC
• Start LaunchBox. No issues
• Exit/restart LaunchBox
  • it gets stuck on Loading Interface
• wash/rinse/repeat

Turns out (in this situation) their C-drive was near maxed out. Full. In-the-red. Note, their LaunchBox install was on their E-drive.

Freeing up space on the C-drive completely resolved the issue.

[Retrofrogg]

20 hours ago, JoeViking245 said:

Turns out (in this situation) their C-drive was near maxed out. Full. In-the-red. Note, their LaunchBox install was on their E-drive.

Freeing up space on the C-drive completely resolved the issue.

All my drives are blue, i.e. not nearing full - so I don't think that's the issue here.

[AstroBob]

Hi Folks,

Thanks for all the continued reports here. We wanted to provide an update on where we’re at with this beta.

First, we want to acknowledge the rocky start to beta-2. We really appreciate all the reports, but apologies that many more folks than usual seem to be having issues, particularly around performance. This beta updated some of our core services under the hood, but a lot of issues appear to be largely stem from our new grid implementation.

For some context, we completely rebuilt the grid view for this beta with a focus on much snappier responses when quickly scrolling through incredibly large libraries. To get to this point, we had to make the decision to use a fixed grid size (which you can adjust on a per-section basis). While our performance tests have been largely positive compared to the old grid, we are seeing reports of unintended side effects, particularly around images loading into the grid and issues with surrounding elements like badges, which gives the perception of decreased performance. We know that’s not the only related issue, but we initially had trouble reproducing it internally on one of our many builds, as it appeared to be largely library-dependent.

That said, after much trial and error, we’ve now managed to recreate a build exhibiting similar issues and already have several fixes in place to help mitigate them. We also want to acknowledge other issues such as the large number of reports around controller issues in Big Box, which have also been fixed internally.

We know this only scratches the surface of what people have been reporting, and we’ve been following your feedback closely. Beta-3 includes a number of changes aimed at addressing the biggest issues we’ve seen so far. We may not have fixed everything just yet, but we’re hopeful it will eliminate the major pain points so we can focus on what’s left.

Thank you all for helping us test this. We know this beta has been a bit rockier than usual given the scope of the changes, but your reports have been invaluable in helping us identify and address the biggest performance issues, along with a variety of other fixes.

We’re hoping to have beta-3 available as soon as possible so you can probably halt with the beta-2 reports for now, but we’d love to hear whether those who experienced issues with beta-2 notice improvements. We’ll keep you all posted once it’s ready.

[kobaturtle]

Thanks for the feedback! That's what betas are here for, right? I'll speak for myself, take all the time you need to cook a good beta3!  And again, this new game grid looks promising.

 

[dukdukgoos]

Great, looking forward to Beta 3. On a positive note, in my build I've not seen any performance problems with Beta 2. Scrolling speed of image grid is very snappy.

[izzishor]

Any way to get a notification when Beta 3 drops? Because there's no way of knowing if you're updating to Beta 2 or Beta 3, atm.

Thank you for the development, looking forward to the release.

[JoeViking245]

1 hour ago, izzishor said:

Any way to get a notification when Beta 3 drops? Because there's no way of knowing if you're updating to Beta 2 or Beta 3, atm.

If you have betas enabled (Tools < Options < General < Updates - Update to beta releases), you'll get a notification that an update is available. It won't tell you the beta #, but if you're on beta-1, it will be beta-2. If on beta-2, it will be beta-3. etc. 

With the feature enabled, you can't choose to skip a beta.  Unless you installed beta-1, then disabled beta updates, then you will not get notified [from within LB].  If you've opted out of betas, you can click Follow (near the top of this page) and select how frequently you'd like to get notification about this thread.  But you'll get notifications for every post to this thread. Then at some point, one of those will be from Admin stating beta-3 is out.

Another option could be to bookmark this thread and periodically check the 1st post as that will get updated with new beta release information.

[izzishor]

17 minutes ago, JoeViking245 said:

If you have betas enabled (Tools < Options < General < Updates - Update to beta releases), you'll get a notification that an update is available. It won't tell you the beta #, but if you're on beta-1, it will be beta-2. If on beta-2, it will be beta-3. etc. 

With the feature enabled, you can't choose to skip a beta.  Unless you installed beta-1, then disabled beta updates, then you will not get notified [from within LB].  If you've opted out of betas, you can click Follow (near the top of this page) and select how frequently you'd like to get notification about this thread.  But you'll get notifications for every post to this thread. Then at some point, one of those will be from Admin stating beta-3 is out.

Another option could be to bookmark this thread and periodically check the 1st post as that will get updated with new beta release information.

Thank you for the answer, but you just explained exactly the UX issue I asked to be fixed.

The notification says 'New Beta Version', not 'Version xxx Available' to download. You never KNOW what version you're downloading untill the install screen, which is set to AUTOINSTALL, as well, so no way of cancelling it.

Meaning, if I download the beta version and it's still Beta 2 in this case, it will be broken again, and I will have to remove plugin, reinstall beta 1 manually from the update folder. Which I've done 4-5 times so far.

What I was asking for was a VERSION NUMBER before you download, to actually understand what it is you're downloading so you can ignore it if it's a bad version.

The fix should be very easy to implement, since you only need to show the download filename before you download it, which has the version number before the file extension.

That's all, ty for taking the time to answer, and big up on all the updates and optimizations 👑

Edited Sunday at 05:44 PM by izzishor
Grammar

[JoeViking245]

9 minutes ago, izzishor said:

What I was asking for was a VERSION NUMBER before you download, to actually understand what it is you're downloading so you can ignore it if it's a bad version.

Apologies. I may have missed a prior post or didn't read deeper into the last post.  Just merely replied to 'how to get notified of the beta-3 release'. 😊

So you are on beta-1 and (I presume) have Automatically Download Updates in the Background un-checked (disabled).   And just want the Update Available notification to be more specific.

Though I want to say it's not really a beta issue but more of a Feature Request, for this particular release series I can see how it would be super helpful.  

However, I believe this would be something that could only be available from a future release, as the notification toast verbiage comes from the currently installed version/release.  So I don't think [in this case] you'll be able to see 'a beta-3 update is available'.  (which sort of brings back to the latter part of my previous post.)

Again, sorry for my confusion.

[QuincyR]

For me its constantly crashing after this update. I see the follwing:

- Crash when loading certain playlists ( I have a recently played playlist where it crashes the moment i open it on launchbox ), or clicking on a game in a playlist.
- Some playlists that look different with the new layout, and i can't make it look the same as the default view in launchbox
- I even had a strange warning popup saying there were missing dependency files for a few games, but there was no dependecies listed on the emulator.

Reason: I think its crashing when Ive made a change to a platform list ( adding a game or updating a game ) and other playlists that reference that platform ( like my arcade all playlist) have not updated to reflect the change. that causes my recently played playlist to crash the moment it tries to update. 

The crashing also happens in bigbox when accessing those playlists that trigger a crash.
Prior to this the only crash i experienced was when i edit a game and access the harddrive to search or load a file, and i right click (techncially that crash has been happening for a long time)  

[faeran]

Hi guys,

Beta 3 is now available.

To elaborate on what @AstroBob mentioned, we spent the majority of the time smoothing out the experience of all our big features of beta 2. It took a while to get a specific build made to see a lot of what you guys were seeing, and from there we were able to get beta 3 into a much better state. Beta 3 is essentially an extension of beta 2, in a way, and I would expect that more computers out there will see the benefits of the new fast image grid. Please keep the reports coming, especially if you were affected by the Image Grid, Game Details, video playback, or controller issues in beta 2.

We still have much more that we want to do, so expect even more changes to the image grid, the media engine, and Big Box in the near future.

 

This means the beta is still very much in progress, and there are known issues we still need to dig into. A few examples that we already know about (thanks to you guys):

• Opening a document from the Pause Menu can leave the Pause Menu over top of the Reader/document window
• List View still has some column/header issues, especially after removing a larger number of columns
• Media Engine playback navigational information needs tweaking
• LaunchBox Image Caching needs tweaking

For beta 3, here are the main areas we’d love feedback on:

• LaunchBox Image Grid - Browse large libraries in the default Image Grid, scroll quickly, drag the scrollbar thumb, resize box images, switch between List View and Image Grid, and try the new Image Corner Roundness setting in Configure Layout; confirm images stay accurate, responsive, and visually update as expected
• Image cache progress - Browse a large platform or playlist that needs image cache work, then confirm the processing progress appears below the working overlay, advances consistently, and goes away when the cache work is finished
• Game Details and media previews - Move quickly between games with screenshots, videos, music, and achievements, then confirm Game Details updates to the selected game without stale media, wrong achievements, stuck videos, or short UI freezes
• Video playback engines - Test VLC, FFME, and Windows Media Player video playback with preview videos, fullscreen videos, Big Box videos, and Big Box startup videos, then confirm videos start, stop, loop, resize, and switch games
• Related Games - Open Related Games for several games in large libraries, then confirm recommendations and thumbnails load quickly and stay matched to the selected game
• Music and LEDBlinky switching - Move quickly through platforms, playlists, and games with auto-play music and LEDBlinky enabled, then confirm music and LEDBlinky update to the current selection without lagging behind

Beta 3 changelog:

• Improvement: LaunchBox Fast Image Grid scrolling and image cache handling are smoother, with fewer stale images, better fast-scroll behavior, and clearer cache progress while background image work is running, and contains a new Corner Roundness option
• Improvement: Game Details now refreshes media, videos, music, and achievements more smoothly while browsing, reducing stale content and short pauses when changing games
• Improvement: VLC Media Engine video playback now starts, stops, and switches videos more reliably, with fewer UI stalls while videos are loading
• Improvement: Related Games now loads recommendations and thumbnails more efficiently
• Improvement: LaunchBox Reader default input mappings have been updated to avoid overlapping page-turn bindings
• Improvement: Context menus are warmed and cached so right-click menus open more quickly after startup and view changes
• Improvement: Startup ROM Import no longer shows a notification when no new games are found
• Improvement: Auto-play music and LEDBlinky updates are more reliable when changing selections quickly
• Fixed: Steam media temp files are cleaned up more reliably after media downloads
• Fixed: Local metadata game IDs now align more reliably with the local database schema
• Fixed: Repeated “None” arrange-by groups no longer appear in some views
• Fixed: Box image cache cleanup now handles stale image sizes and cache writes more reliably
• Fixed: Big Box startup abort handling is more stable

Thanks again for all the detailed reports

[Fursphere]

Just installed Beta-3 on four machines.   No issues with the installs.

Good News - 
'BigBox --> Shutdown --> LEDBlinky "execute 'exit front-end' command before executing windows shutdown" code improvement is working.   Thank you!  

Not So Good News - 
Looks like LaunchBox is auto-discovering and configuring controllers again.  100% of the time this configures a controller that shouldn't be used in Launchbox and causes complete loss of mouse control (most consistent behavior is mouse always moves down).  Turning off the game controller stops the behavior, then unbinding everything.  This was 'fixed' a few versions ago I had thought, but with Beta 3, it appears to be back.     (this time it was the Fanatec wheels).   (Not sure if BigBox is doing this too - I forgot to check)

On the suspected memory leak issue I observed with Beta 1 - I haven't been able to re-create it.  So...   hoping that was just something goofy with my installs and a fluke.   I'll let them run tomorrow and see how it goes on Beta 3.