LaunchBox 13.28 Beta Thread

[Jabb3rJaw]

On 7/9/2026 at 9:43 PM, JoeViking245 said:

If rolling back to v13.27, with LaunchBox not running, delete the \LaunchBox\Plugins\LaunchBox Reader\ folder. Start LaunchBox.

Thanks Joe! Finally had time to do that and it worked. Videos are back to playing again. 

[faeran]

On 7/16/2026 at 1:49 PM, SqHd said:

I recently noticed (on Beta 4, default theme) that Launchbox no longer recognizes if a game entry is pointing to a missing rom. Also, the badge still shows for a save even if it is missing. Previously, the PLAY button would be grayed out and the save badge would disappear. 

This still happens, granted you are using Default theme or a theme based on the same Play button logic, and you haven't enabled the option Assume game application paths exist (skip file checks), under Options > Visuals > Game Details. Having that option on stops the checks from happening, so the Play button will always remain a play button, although for people that have their ROMs on a different computer/server (or just a generally slow computer), they will gain performance by not having LaunchBox run that check.

[faeran]

Hi Everyone,

Beta 5 is now available. This should be the last beta that we expect to contain major changes, and this time those changes are centered on Big Box. We’ve reworked several of its core navigation, transition, and image loading paths to hopefully make browsing feel a bit smoother and more responsive, especially when moving rapidly through wheel, wall, CoverFlow, CoverFlow with Details, hybrid, and Game Discovery Center views. Selected and visible artwork is now prioritized while duplicate loading work is reduced, transitions and video handoffs are cleaner, and 3D FlowModel navigation has a smoother, more natural feel with less redundant animation work. These changes also improve how wall-style views settle and update, while helping the selected metadata and media remain synchronized as you move around.

There’s plenty more included as well, including continued improvements to the Fast Grid, more reliable metadata updates and shutdown handling, fixes for Vita3K imports, MAME high-score uploads, and Bezel Project downloads, plus a substantial modernization of plugin management and bundled integrations.

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

• Big Box navigation - Rapidly browse wheel, wall, CoverFlow, CoverFlow with Details, and hybrid views; use Filter / Sort, playlist sort orders, Jump To, and Game Details, and confirm navigation remains smooth while the wheel, selected game, artwork, videos, and details stay synchronized and fully load
• Big Box long-running Attract Mode - Run Attract Mode for an extended period with an image-heavy theme or CoinOP-style wheel, then confirm wheel images continue loading, navigation remains responsive, and Windows does not begin failing to create new windows or UI resources
• Big Box startup videos, game videos, and background music - Test startup videos with keyboard/controller skipping, slower Big Box startup, Jump To, Search, and Filter / Sort popups, and large background-music folders; confirm startup videos remain visible until Big Box is ready, game videos continue behind navigation popups, music discovery does not stall navigation, and game-launch focus is not taken back after handoff
• LaunchBox Image Grid and image caching - Change Fast Grid section heights by clicking and dragging, restart LaunchBox, clear selection, inspect badge tooltips, download or replace artwork, and rapidly resize or scroll; confirm layout overrides persist, the empty Game Details background remains correct, downloads resume correctly, and artwork caches update without file-lock errors
• Metadata update reliability - Refresh the metadata package while performing searches or imports and confirm brief file locks recover automatically, large lookups complete, and the previous metadata remains usable if an update cannot be applied
• Startup and shutdown - Close LaunchBox and Big Box several times and confirm the shutdown progress window appears, displays useful progress, and both programs close cleanly without hanging
• Controller input settings - Disable controller input separately in LaunchBox and Big Box, then connect, disconnect, and switch physical or virtual controllers; confirm background detection never silently re-enables controller input
• PlayStation Vita imports - Import Vita3K games through watched folders, drag-and-drop, and manual import workflows, including a custom platform scraping as PlayStation Vita; confirm embedded titles are used instead of title IDs and that version, region, duplicate detection, and changed param.sfo metadata behave correctly
• MAME high scores from Big Box - Sign in to the LaunchBox Games Database, launch supported MAME games from Big Box, set or beat a score, and confirm legitimate scores upload and appear on the leaderboards
• Bezel Project downloads - Download and apply Bezel Project artwork for MAME and RetroArch, including retrying after a cancelled or failed attempt; confirm extraction succeeds without ZIP file-lock errors and temporary downloads are cleaned up
• LaunchBox window and Options behavior - With VLC - Media Engine video playing, minimize LaunchBox and restore it using the taskbar and Alt+Tab; also open Options with Ctrl+, and repeated rapid input, confirming one activation restores the window and only one Options workflow opens
• Plugin Manager and bundled integrations - Upgrade an existing Beta 4 installation containing LaunchBox Reader, VLC - Media Engine, official emulator integrations, and third-party plugins; confirm everything remains installed and functional, then test install, update, repair, uninstall, restart handling, compatibility messages, and source-code links

Beta 5 changelog:

• New Feature: Added Ctrl + , as a keyboard shortcut for opening LaunchBox Options, with repeated input prevented from opening overlapping Options workflows
• Improvement: Fast Grid selection now uses a polished glass highlight with a smoother specular animation
• Improvement: Big Box view transitions and 3D FlowModel navigation are smoother and more responsive during rapid browsing, with cleaner video handoffs and fewer redundant visual updates
• Improvement: Big Box wheel, wall, CoverFlow, and Discovery artwork now prioritizes selected and visible items, reducing duplicate loading and making images appear more quickly during rapid navigation
• Improvement: Big Box background music discovery now runs outside the UI thread so startup and navigation remain responsive while music folders are scanned
• Improvement: Higher-resolution fullscreen screenshots now scale smoothly to the available display, while lower-resolution screenshots retain crisp pixel-art integer scaling
• Improvement: Big Box game videos now continue playing while Jump To, Search, and Filter / Sort navigation popups are open
• Improvement: LaunchBox and Big Box now close more reliably while the shutdown progress window tracks cleanup work
• Improvement: Plugin management and bundled system integrations have been modernized with safer installation, update, repair, uninstall, migration, compatibility handling, failure isolation, and source-code links for supported plugins
• Improvement: 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
• Improvement: Added a themeable BlurredVideoBackground element that safely provides blurred video backdrops for custom Big Box themes across supported video players
• Fixed: Long-running Big Box Attract Mode sessions no longer leak WPF image-worker resources that could cause wheel images to disappear or prevent Windows from creating new UI resources
• Fixed: Rapid navigation into Big Box Game Details no longer leaves menus, metadata, images, or videos empty because an outgoing view cancelled the incoming view's load
• Fixed: Big Box playlist views once again respect each playlist's configured sort order, with a contextual Playlist Sort option and per-playlist Big Box overrides
• Fixed: Big Box Filter / Sort changes now keep the wheel, selected game, Game Details, and Jump To navigation synchronized
• Fixed: Big Box startup videos remain visible until the interface is ready after being skipped, and startup cancel input no longer brings Big Box in front of a game after focus has been handed off
• Fixed: MAME high scores launched from Big Box now use the same parsing and upload path as LaunchBox, including safer factory-score filtering and recovery from transient archive failures
• Fixed: PlayStation Vita imports now use embedded Vita3K metadata for game titles, versions, and regions instead of displaying title IDs
• Fixed: Metadata updates now recover more reliably from brief database and ancillary-file sharing conflicts instead of failing the entire updateFixed: Image cache deletion, decoder-affine cache writes, and image-download queue persistence are more reliable during concurrent artwork loading and replacement
• Fixed: LaunchBox now restores with a single taskbar click or Alt+Tab activation after being minimized while VLC - Media Engine video is playing
• Fixed: Bezel Project downloads now close temporary ZIP files before extraction, preventing file-lock failures for MAME and RetroArch bezel installation
• Fixed: Fast Grid section height overrides persist correctly, badge tooltips are restored, and clearing selection retains the intended empty Game Details background
• Fixed: Disabling controller input now consistently prevents background controller initialization and polling from silently turning it back on
• Fixed: Steam game discovery no longer shows an error when Steam replaces an application manifest while LaunchBox is scanning it
• Fixed: Invalid custom carousel scrollbar styles now fall back to the built-in style instead of preventing the carousel from initializing
• Fixed: Grouped old and custom LaunchBox grids retain stable scroll anchoring during keyboard navigation and programmatic selection while still scrolling upward smoothly
• Fixed: Powered-off or disconnected DirectInput controllers no longer cause repeated phantom navigation when Use All Controllers is enabled

 

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. With the major changes now in place, the remaining betas will be focused on fixes, stability, and general polish as we work toward the official release.

[Drybonz]

The Image Height override in the Configure Layout options does seem to be working properly now.  When I restart LB my settings are still there.

[Drybonz]

Also... I've been through the options a couple times and can't find the one that turns the jump list scrollbar off and on.  Was it moved, or I just can't find it?

[JoeViking245]

4 minutes ago, Drybonz said:

Also... I've been through the options a couple times and can't find the one that turns the jump list scrollbar off and on.  Was it moved, or I just can't find it?

Tools > Options > Visuals > Main Window Theme > Features - Use Arrange By scrollbar

or...

Ctrl + , (Ctrl and comma key-combo) > Visuals > Main Window Theme > Features - Use Arrange By scrollbar

[Drybonz]

Thanks.  I keep accidentally tapping it and jumping while it's hidden so turning it off for now.  (I liked the suggestion someone made to have an option to leave it non-hidden)

My personal suggestion for the option is maybe bump it up a couple levels in the options hierarchy and call it scrollbar or something for ease of locating.

Edited 16 hours ago by Drybonz

[JoeViking245]

LaunchBox Image Grid and image caching
- Badge tooltips working again
- Item Height (Section Override) persist per platform upon restart (confirming what Drybonz said)
- download or replace artwork resume correctly after closing download mid-process

PlayStation Vita imports
- auto-imports now with proper game Titles (vs. game IDs) as the game Title

Bezel Project downloads
- cancelled during partial download without issue
- started download - extracts correctly (tested for stand-alone MAME)

LaunchBox window and Options behavior
- minimize and restore LaunchBox via clicking the upper-right {minimize} button, taskbar, Win+M and Alt+Tabing all function as expected 
- Ctrl + , (Ctrl and comma key-combo) work great to bring to the Options window. No matter the Video Playback Engine

Plugin Manager and bundled integrations
- All in separate instances,
   -  tested Repair plugin
   -  tested Uninstall plugin
  These both showed clear messages and restarted LB without issue
   -  tested install plugin
  Message showed the plugin was installed.  LB did not (need to?) restart.

[TheNewClassics]

Appreciate you guys knocking out so many bugs, BB's feeling good. Might be a dumb question, but didn't it used to be that if you got to the end of a row in the Game Discovery center, it would scroll back to the other side if you kept going? I could be making that up.

[thoraiden]

Beta 5 is running as smooth as Gordon Ramsay's scrambled eggs. Everything seems to be working fine now and I have no issues thus far. Thanks for all the fixes and hard work! This even feels like its ready for 28 full release!

[salofan]

Beta 5 is working great for both LB and BB for me as well. Especially love the new arrange by scrollbar in LB - have been hoping for a feature like that for years. Cheers!

[Heartless1Riku]

Beta 5 has broken VLC big box video transitions (not playing) for me using the critical zone theme, windows 11. I have attached files showing VLC big box on beta 5 and then on my stable 13.19. Beta 4 did not break video transitions from when I had tested it.

 

Beta 5^

 

13.19^

Launchbox also still exhibits the behavior of showing a static image briefly before starting the video when using auto play and browsing the library with VLC as the media player.

 

 

[Suhrvivor]

I updated to 13.28 Beta 5 and I'm still getting random crashes on Bigbox in my laptop setup (intel GPU).

Using the WMP playback on my desktop PC with and nvidia GPU the colors of the videos are washed up, seems like it defaults to limited colors rather than full color (16-235 instead of 0-255). I fixed that by changing color settings on the old nvidia control panel.

Edited 5 hours ago by Suhrvivor

[Lintence]

Launchbox and Bigbox are both freezing upon returning from games using the xemu emulator, not sure if is effecting any other emulators.  Unchecking "Force Launchbox or Big Box back into focus when the shutdown screen closes" or  Disabling startup screen outright prevents the freeze.

Edited 5 hours ago by Lintence

[JaredN]

Hello!

I'm really happy with this Beta 5, which fixes a lot of the issues I was still experiencing:
- Playlist organization is preserved in BB
- No more issues returning to BB when pressing the B button while the startup screen is active
- My issue with Alt-Tab when switching from another Windows window to LB has even been fixed!
- ...

However, a couple of minor issues have cropped up:
- The general settings for the reader aren’t being saved.
- In BB (see video), when “Play video audio with background music” is deselected, the video’s audio plays briefly when the video starts, before being replaced by the background music. It didn’t do this before. It’s a minor issue that can be worked around by setting the video volume to 0, but it’s still there.
- For @faeran, in 3D-DIMENSIONS (see video), as well as in VisioN, the “Play” button is highlighted for the first selected game. However, it disappears afterward if, for example, you go back and select another game—or even the same one. It reappears for the first selected game after exiting a running game or for the first selected game after switching platforms or playlists. This problem does not occur in CriticalZoneV2, for example.
- One last point—though impossible to demonstrate—is that the pause menu is very slow to appear (more than a second, during which the game remains active...), but only the first time it’s used in each game. On subsequent uses, there’s no issue, it becomes responsive.

Overall, there have been a lot of very positive developments, even though I’ve noticed a few minor issues… but it’s all good!

I can’t wait for the final version, and I hope these little issues will be fixed!

Great work, anyway, and thank you!

Edited 2 hours ago by JaredN