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 22 hours 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.

[TheNewClassics]

Thanks for continuing to hammer out the problems LB team. Any thoughts as to why when I'm in BB and I launch a game, if I hit B twice on my Xbox controller it brings me back to BB/ loses focus on the current game? (It still runs in the background). This appears to be happening in all emus and even PC games.

[Fursphere]

There is a new bug when you exit BigBox - it goes to the desktop, then goes to a black screen and acts like its trying to shutdown windows, but just hangs instead.    This happened on all four of my cabinets, so I suspect its not unique to just one of my installs.  

After a reboot, the problem seems to go away.   Meaning it only happened the first BigBox 'exit' after the upgrade to Beta 4.

And for the previously reported memory leak - I have not been able to consistently reproduce it since Beta 3, so that's why I haven't brought it up again.  Hopefully it was just something wrong with my installs that appears to have worked itself out.

[SqHd]

Hello. Thanks for the betas and new updates! I've been trying out the new media engine. I noticed some alignment issues: Align to the left, widescreen does not completely fill the area, and the blurred background video does not show for the 4:3 videos on the sides (see screenshots).
My specs: AMD, Win 11, Aetherial, VLC (new media engine), standard plugins (all up-to-date).

[JaredN]

On 6/30/2026 at 7:36 PM, JaredN said:

One more thing: when minimized to the taskbar, LaunchBox resists "Alt-Tab" (it just makes a "DONG" sound). It doesn't do this when you use "Alt-Tab" from within LaunchBox without minimizing it.

Returning to LaunchBox via the taskbar doesn’t work on the first click either. The first click triggers a “dong,” and the second click brings you back to LaunchBox.

I don’t know if this is the intended behavior, but it’s definitely strange...

This “issue” was already present in Beta 2, but I hadn’t found the time to report it.

 

Still the exact same behavior ...

On 7/2/2026 at 6:44 AM, JaredN said:

Hello,
I use a lot of playlists, especially for collections where games are sorted by release date.
In LaunchBox, there's no problem.
However, in BigBox, they are no longer sorted by release date but by alphabetical order... 
Thanks again for your work!

Nothing has changed ...

On 7/3/2026 at 6:26 AM, JaredN said:

Hi,

I have the same problem and used the same temporary "solution": disabling the startup screen.

This workaround addressed the issue of returning to BB when the B button was double-pressed. The problem is still present, as is the workaround.

On 7/3/2026 at 7:07 AM, JaredN said:

Hi,

A few details about the issue with reading the manual from the pause menu. It also seems to be a focus issue. When I select “Read Manual,” it does open the manual in a separate window, but BB doesn't release the focus, and Alt+Tab doesn't change anything. If I press it again, BB opens a new one, and so on. Closing the pause menu, however, does allow me to access the manual window (see video).

On the topic of focus, there’s another issue: in what seems to me to be a random manner (though it likely isn’t), when I launch LaunchBox from Windows (not BB), it often doesn’t take focus, and I have to find it in the taskbar or use Alt-Tab to bring it up (see video). However, I have absolutely no issues opening or closing LB or BB—everything is fast and runs smoothly. I have a library of about 10,000 games with a strong focus on collections (300+ playlists and about 40 platforms). However, I don’t use the automatic ROM import or the automatic game import from storefronts (which I don’t use at all). I have both of these options unchecked. I don’t know if that helps.

I have a “good” PC, but it's not exactly a “powerhouse” either. I have an Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-14400F (2.50 GHz), a GeForce RTX 5060 Ti (16 GB), and 32 GB of DDR5. LB/BB is installed on a 4 GB Crucial X9 external SSD (with about 1 GB of free space). And I'm running Windows 11 Home.

Finally, here’s a video illustrating the issue with playlists in BigBox that don’t follow the display rule (release date in this case) I’ve chosen—a rule that is applied in LB.

Thanks for your work anyway!

Hello,

All in all, I have to admit that I’m rather disappointed with this Beta 4, which—aside from the issue with displaying manuals in BB—doesn’t fix many problems I reported in Beta 3.

So, the previous reports are still entirely relevant to me.

Thanks for your work anyway.
I’m well aware that not everything can be fixed all at once!

Edited 17 hours ago by JaredN

[Rlad]

Performance wise everything seems very smooth and fast now, just have the same issues others have mentioned still.

Losing focus in BB when pressing B.

Item height of box details not saving.

Also i can map a controller in Reader mappings since Beta 3 but control is always on a different pad, a Dinput pad which is not the one im mapping or even the one that its supposedley detecting (Xinput).

[Rlad]

Quote

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

This is enabled under options> Features if anyone was wondering.

Edit: it does actually say that in the post, my bad

Edited 7 hours ago by Rlad
Reading comprehension

[JoeViking245]

Tools > Options > Visuals > Main Window Theme > Features   

[Drybonz]

1 hour ago, JoeViking245 said:

Tools > Options > Visuals > Main Window Theme > Features   

This is a really nice feature but I have to admit I never would have found this buried here.  I think some people may never be aware of it.

[faeran]

16 hours ago, Fursphere said:

*** 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)

This is a tough one, as it's not actually a thing that's happening using any of our controllers, so we'll try again to fix this blindly. We'll shore up some edge cases and see if that helps for the next beta, What you can test is going into Big Box options, turning off controllers, immediately exiting the Options, and checking BigBoxSettings.xml to see if <EnableGamepad>false</EnableGamepad>. Then close Big Box and see if it's somehow changed to true for you.

16 hours ago, Drybonz said:

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.

I checked our fix and while I'm unable to actually break it, although I'm currently leaning towards a possible obfuscation issue (which basically means code = good, but some other process garbles code and breaks things later down the pipeline). We'll put in some extra protections for next beta here.

15 hours ago, TheNewClassics said:

Thanks for continuing to hammer out the problems LB team. Any thoughts as to why when I'm in BB and I launch a game, if I hit B twice on my Xbox controller it brings me back to BB/ loses focus on the current game? (It still runs in the background). This appears to be happening in all emus and even PC games.

This one is my bad. We fixed it internally and then it looks like it missed the cut off time of beta 4, so the fix will be in beta 5. It's happening due to a safety measure put in for the new startup screen system that allows users to escape out of a situation where the startup screen may wait for a game that never ends up loading due to windows issues. It also only affects certain controllers, but when it does, affects them 100% of the time. Either way, beta 5 will have this fixed.

14 hours ago, Fursphere said:

There is a new bug when you exit BigBox - it goes to the desktop, then goes to a black screen and acts like its trying to shutdown windows, but just hangs instead.    This happened on all four of my cabinets, so I suspect its not unique to just one of my installs.  

After a reboot, the problem seems to go away.   Meaning it only happened the first BigBox 'exit' after the upgrade to Beta 4.

And for the previously reported memory leak - I have not been able to consistently reproduce it since Beta 3, so that's why I haven't brought it up again.  Hopefully it was just something wrong with my installs that appears to have worked itself out.

Also not able to reproduce this. Maybe LEDBlinky specific? That's just a guess, but some things that seem global end up being very edge case, and this one may one one of those scenarios.

13 hours ago, SqHd said:

Hello. Thanks for the betas and new updates! I've been trying out the new media engine. I noticed some alignment issues: Align to the left, widescreen does not completely fill the area, and the blurred background video does not show for the 4:3 videos on the sides (see screenshots).
My specs: AMD, Win 11, Aetherial, VLC (new media engine), standard plugins (all up-to-date).

This is one of those VLC quirks that has been around since the beginning of time (well, since VLC was a thing in BB from all the years ago). Be curious if we can figure it out before release. Thanks for the reminder.

12 hours ago, JaredN said:

Still the exact same behavior ...

Nothing has changed ...

This workaround addressed the issue of returning to BB when the B button was double-pressed. The problem is still present, as is the workaround.

Hello,

All in all, I have to admit that I’m rather disappointed with this Beta 4, which—aside from the issue with displaying manuals in BB—doesn’t fix many problems I reported in Beta 3.

So, the previous reports are still entirely relevant to me.

Thanks for your work anyway.
I’m well aware that not everything can be fixed all at once!

Unable to reproduce your alt-tab situation, so sounds more of an edge case scenario there.

As far as Playlist sort order in Big Box, we haven't yet investigated it yet, but it's slated for beta 5. I assume the sort order set in LB made its way to Big Box before we added the ability to sort games in Big Box. We should have something in place for Beta 5 that should allow respecting the playlist sort order while still allowing the option to change it.

[faeran]

11 minutes ago, Drybonz said:

This is a really nice feature but I have to admit I never would have found this buried here.  I think some people may never be aware of it.

This feature is designed to be on for new users and off for users that upgrade. It's one of those features that you either love it or hate it, but I may look at adding it into the new configure layout options as well for the new fast image grid path.

[faeran]

1 hour ago, Rlad said:

Also i can map a controller in Reader mappings since Beta 3 but control is always on a different pad, a Dinput pad which is not the one im mapping or even the one that its supposedley detecting (Xinput).

I think what is happening right now is that the reader is setting mappings to the first controller, regardless if you have many controllers. Curious how you would like this to work. Are you wanting to have a specific physical controller be your "reader" controller, or do you want all your controllers to be able to navigate the reader, or are you wanting a specific controller index to navigate the reader (ie: controller 3 is always the reader controller).

[Rlad]

17 minutes ago, faeran said:

I think what is happening right now is that the reader is setting mappings to the first controller, regardless if you have many controllers. Curious how you would like this to work. Are you wanting to have a specific physical controller be your "reader" controller, or do you want all your controllers to be able to navigate the reader, or are you wanting a specific controller index to navigate the reader (ie: controller 3 is always the reader controller).

All controllers makes sense to me, how it currently works, whichever I'm browsing BB with also works viewing manuals. 

[JaredN]

47 minutes ago, faeran said:

This is a tough one, as it's not actually a thing that's happening using any of our controllers, so we'll try again to fix this blindly. We'll shore up some edge cases and see if that helps for the next beta, What you can test is going into Big Box options, turning off controllers, immediately exiting the Options, and checking BigBoxSettings.xml to see if <EnableGamepad>false</EnableGamepad>. Then close Big Box and see if it's somehow changed to true for you.

I checked our fix and while I'm unable to actually break it, although I'm currently leaning towards a possible obfuscation issue (which basically means code = good, but some other process garbles code and breaks things later down the pipeline). We'll put in some extra protections for next beta here.

This one is my bad. We fixed it internally and then it looks like it missed the cut off time of beta 4, so the fix will be in beta 5. It's happening due to a safety measure put in for the new startup screen system that allows users to escape out of a situation where the startup screen may wait for a game that never ends up loading due to windows issues. It also only affects certain controllers, but when it does, affects them 100% of the time. Either way, beta 5 will have this fixed.

Also not able to reproduce this. Maybe LEDBlinky specific? That's just a guess, but some things that seem global end up being very edge case, and this one may one one of those scenarios.

This is one of those VLC quirks that has been around since the beginning of time (well, since VLC was a thing in BB from all the years ago). Be curious if we can figure it out before release. Thanks for the reminder.

Unable to reproduce your alt-tab situation, so sounds more of an edge case scenario there.

As far as Playlist sort order in Big Box, we haven't yet investigated it yet, but it's slated for beta 5. I assume the sort order set in LB made its way to Big Box before we added the ability to sort games in Big Box. We should have something in place for Beta 5 that should allow respecting the playlist sort order while .

Hi @faeran!

What do you mean by an “edge case scenario”?
Is it something related to Microsoft Edge settings?
Do you have any ideas I could test?
Don’t worry, it’s no big deal, and if I can’t fix it, I’ll just deal with it.
But since I’m at it, I’d prefer to understand where it might be coming from!

Otherwise, I see that the other issues I was having should be fixed in the next beta! That’s great!

Thanks for your reply and for all your hard work!

[Drybonz]

10 minutes ago, JaredN said:

What do you mean by an “edge case scenario”?

I think he means it's a problem most people aren't having.