Release Day 2022.8.28

It’s Release Day again!

Two more weeks of work have been done and it’s time to celebrate another release day!

This release brings two major additions, some performance improvements and bug fixes.

News

Ok now let’s get to the point. What’s new in this version?

Library Mode

We often like to experiment with new features; these are usually immediately accessible in the experiments section of Bottles, so that users can test them and provide us with feedback, so that we can improve and complete them.

This time it is the turn of Library Mode, which becomes an official Bottles feature with this release. Before we get into the specifics, we would like to thank all the users who have contributed feedback, ideas, and advice!

Library Mode is a new way to access the programs installed in your Bottles. Bottles is a wineprefix manager and as such our approach does not start from the program but from the wineprefix (bottle); this means that you have to open the bottle to access the programs installed inside it, and if we have multiple bottles it might be cumbersome. So we integrated a library, a space where you can add any program from any bottle, so that you can access all your programs from one screen.

At first your library will appear empty, just open a bottle and choose the program you want, then from the context menu press “Add to My Library” to add it.

Each added program appears as a card with a cover, the context menu (top left), the program icon (bottom right), while below we have the name of the program, the bottle, and the button to launch or stop it.

Covers are automatically identified and downloaded from SteamGridDB. We are still working on the ability to add covers manually.

To remove a program from your library, you simply go to its context menu (top left of the cover) and choose “Remove from Library,” this does not remove the program from the bottle but only from the library.

Missing Runner

It may happen that a bottle is altered from the outside or is imported into a new Bottles installation without all the necessary components being present.

Now, opening a bottle that requires a runner that is not installed will display a dialog warning of this problem, inviting the user to install it or choose another one from preferences.

Legacy Tools - Reorganization

The Legacy Tools section has been re-organized with more specific and intuitive names, eliminating the noise that more advanced users (who this section is aimed at) might have encountered.

Runners Updates

The Soda runner has been updated to latest Valve commit. The Caffe and Vaniglia runners has been updated to Wine 7.15.

All other changes

There are many other changes and improvements in this release. Below are some noteworthy ones, for all others, please refer to the GitHub organization.

• Library mode is now a stable feature and enabled by default
• Dependencies “copy_file” action now creates the path if not exists (see maintainers docs.)
• Opening a bottle, a dialog is shown if the runner is not installed
• The C: drive is now marked as persistend in the Drives section and cannot be edited by the user
• All dialogs can now be closed pressing Escape
• The dark mode switcher is now available only for system which doesn’t support the standard
• Simplification of “Legacy Tools” section, thanks to @Knebergish
• Minor UI improvements, thanks to @TheEvilSkeleton, @orowith2os, @marhkb
• Fix a bug in the template system, was trying to unpack a partial one
• Fix a bug in setting overrides for old-structured program entries
• Fix a bug in vmtouch management
• Fix a bug in the WineCommand interface which was causing a crash if the executable path is not accessible
• Fix a bug in the Steam Manager, was generating wrong shortcuts when the program name has spaces in it
• Fix long names in library mode
• Fix a bug in bottle creation, sometimes it created a symlinks loop in the userdir
• Fix a bug in the crash dialog, the similarity check was set too high resulting in no similar reports
• Italian translations thanks to @alfonso133
• Bengali translations thanks to @zihadio
• Catalan translations thanks to @rogervc
• Tamil translations thanks to @kbdharun
• Dutch translations thanks to @flipflop97
• Spanish translations thanks to @ParadoxialN3
• Ukranian translations thanks to @c0m1c5an5
• Turkish translations thanks to @Dhizaes