LaunchBox 13.28 Beta Thread

[skizzosjt]

On 7/2/2026 at 9:38 AM, skizzosjt said:

So I farted around with LB a bit and the scrolling does seem smoother. But then there is a worse part, badges are taking longer to load. The box images are loading fine. But all badge images "pop in" after the fact, especially when scrolling quickly. 

I realized now that badge images are not disappearing when scrolling if you use the mouse scroll wheel. the badges images only disappear when scrolling if I use the scroll bar and then they pop back in momentarily after you stop scrolling. 

[Hedgecore024]

Greetings,

Thank you guys for your hard work. I'm seeing a strange behavior when "arrange by" is changed to anything other than "title", Scrolling through library behaves oddly and LB becomes unstable. The behavior usually manifests itself as being unable to scroll back up to the top of the platform with a mouse. If I attempt to click on a game and then use the keyboard arrows to move back up to the top, LB freezes up and crashes. I have attempted this with several themes, and "arrange by" options which I have listed below. The default theme appears to be unaffected by this behavior. I have also tested this across two separate builds, across multiple platforms, while using both VLC & WMP as the default media player, but the behavior has been the same. I have also cleared/rebuilt the image cache on both machines as well. Not sure if related to the beta but I don't recall having this issue in previous  builds and I use the date added option fairly often. I am able to make it crash consistently and I have attached the debug log from the most recent crash.

Arrange By Options tested:
Date Added
Genre
Platform
Status
Installed
Publisher
Source

LB themes tested:
Default: no issues
Default Plus: behavior occurs
Big Details: behavior occurs
Omni: behavior occurs

Specs: 
I7 13700K               Ryzen 7 5800XT
Rog Strix Z790       Aorus B550M
RTX 4070 TIS          RTX 3060
Win 11                    Win 11
LB on SSD              LB on SSD

 

Debug 2026-07-06 10-33-45 AM.log

[thoraiden]

Im happy to report that the issues I was having on the previous betas of 13.28 where no music or sound was playing have been fixed and so far both LB and BB are running smooth as butter on beta 3. The update for the media manager plugin helped a lot as well and VLC seems to be the ace out of the 3 video options. I had a small lag issue on BB running for the first time after the update but a simple restart solved that so no worries. Thanks for all your hard work everyone! 

[faeran]

Hi Everyone,

Beta 4 is now available, and this one is focused heavily on continuing to address the biggest issues that have been reported throughout the last couple betas. We’d also love to hear how the new VLC-based Media Engine feels in this beta across LaunchBox and Big Box, both where it’s working well and where it still needs improvement. 

For this beta, we’d especially appreciate testing around:

• LaunchBox game list navigation - Enable Options > Visuals > Main Window Theme > Features > Use Arrange By scrollbar, or search Options for "Arrange By scrollbar", then test List View and the default Image Grid with large libraries arranged by Title, Platform, Genre, Series, Star Rating, Date Added, and Custom Fields; confirm the new scrollbar markers, hover labels, click jumping, drag scrolling, mouse wheel behavior, and native scrollbar fallback all behave correctly
• Fast Grid / Image Grid layout controls - In the default LaunchBox theme's Image Grid, open Configure Layout and test the Aspect Ratio slider and Fill image alignment option; resize box images quickly, switch between fit/fill alignment modes, restart LaunchBox, and confirm the layout, image cropping, rounded corners, and saved section overrides remain correct
• Fast Grid image loading and selection - Scroll quickly through large platforms and playlists, drag the scrollbar thumb, resize box images while images are loading, switch between List View and Image Grid, click empty space to deselect games, and confirm images stay matched to the right games, selection clears fully, and Game Details does not show stale content
• Plugin and Themes & Media Managers - Confirm the window appears immediately with a loading state while the plugin catalog loads; test installed plugins, available updates, tag filters, sorting, manually installed plugins, and newer local plugin versions to confirm update/repair labels are correct
• Pause screen manuals and documents - Launch a game, open the pause screen, then open manuals or additional documents using LaunchBox Reader, Windows default apps, and an external reader; confirm the document appears above the pause screen, duplicate launches are prevented while loading, and the pause screen regains focus/topmost behavior after the document closes
• Startup and LocalDb performance - Launch cold with a larger collection and test metadata searches/import lookups afterward; confirm startup remains stable and local metadata/platform lookups behave normally
• Big Box videos using VLC - Media Engine - Set Big Box video playback to VLC - Media Engine, then test startup videos, preview videos, background music, and video audio; confirm videos start, stop, mute, unmute, defer during startup, and switch games without stuck audio or leftover video state
• Controller input settings - Disable controller input, connect or switch controllers, restart LaunchBox/Big Box, and confirm fallback controller detection does not silently turn controller input back on
• Metadata refresh and search edge cases - Refresh metadata, test searches with titles containing characters such as +, ., (, ), [, ], and confirm searches complete normally; if possible, test a failed metadata extraction path and confirm the error remains clean while diagnostics are captured
• Xbox / UWP / Dolphin resilience - Scan Xbox/UWP imports on systems with inaccessible WindowsApps packages, and test Dolphin install/version detection with normal and file-in-use scenarios; confirm expected local failures produce clean warnings or normal failure messages instead of crashes

Beta 4 changelog:

• 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
• Improvement: Plugin Manager now opens immediately and loads the online plugin catalog in the background with a clear loading state
• Improvement: LaunchBox Themes & Media Manager now opens immediately and loads themes and media packs in the background with a clear loading state
• Improvement: LocalDb startup work has been optimized to reduce startup overhead during local metadata database initialization and lookups
• Improvement: Big Box VLC - Media Engine video playback and startup-video handling now include additional diagnostics when debug logging is enabled
• Fixed: Manuals and documents opened from the pause screen no longer appear behind the pause screen
• Fixed: Image cache writes and CoverFlow image loading are more reliable, reducing file-lock, stale-image, corrupt-cache, and cross-thread image loading issues
• Fixed: Clicking empty space in the default Image Grid now clears selection more reliably and prevents stale Game Details content from remaining visible
• Fixed: Fast List View column headers now stay aligned when columns are hidden, resized, or narrower than the available view
• Fixed: Installed plugin and media pack versions that are newer than the online catalog version no longer incorrectly appear as available updates
• Fixed: Controller fallback detection no longer re-enables controller input after controller input has been disabled
• Fixed: Metadata searches now handle titles containing regex-style characters more reliably
• Fixed: 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
• Fixed: Music volume changes now unmute Media Engine audio when raising volume above zero

As always, when reporting issues, please include your hardware specs, Windows version, theme, video engine, controller setup, any relevant plugins, and logs/crash details when available.

Thanks everyone for continuing to test and report back. If all goes well, we have one last change to Big Box we'll get to in the next round, along with more improvements, fixes, and general polish.

[Fursphere]

*** Breaking change / regression ***

Beta 4 has once again introduce controller auto-detection of game controllers (even though I've turned it off).  This 100% of the time results in loss of control of Launchbox, as its doing something with controller auto-config that makes the mouse automatically 'go down' continuously.  Fix is disable / unplug controller, go into config and clear all the bindings and uncheck the game controller box (again).   

Please stop turning this back on. 
I know its minor - but holy crap is it infuriating when I have to do it over and over and over and over again.   (Across four cabinets...  lol)

Edited 9 minutes ago by Fursphere

[Drybonz]

Sorry to report that Image Height settings in the Configure Layout are still not sticking in beta 4.  They reset when LB is re-started.