The412Banner/Bannerlator

Before you start — check two things:

• Your phone needs an Adreno GPU (Snapdragon). Mali, Xclipse and PowerVR phones will get sound over a black screen. Contents → Linux Runtime warns you about this before the download.
• Turn on one Android setting first: go to Settings → Developer options → Disable child process restrictions and switch it on. Do not see Developer options? Go to Settings → About phone and tap Build number seven times, then it appears. Without this switch, Android randomly kills the Steam client and your session just dies for no visible reason. Some phones do not have the switch at all — on those, the client won't stay up yet.

Then:

1. Download and install the APK. There are four — just take standard unless you specifically use the pubg, ludashi or antutu build already.
2. Open the app and go to Contents → Linux Runtime → Download. This is about 755 MB, once. It is not in the APK, so this step is required.
3. When it finishes, a Steam (Linux) entry appears in your games list. Tap it.
4. First launch takes a few minutes. A loading screen first downloads Proton Experimental (ARM64) (about 400 MB), then lets Steam download and update itself. There's a clock on screen so you know it's still working.
5. Sign in with your Steam account. Password, or the QR code with the Steam mobile app — both work.
6. Install a game and play. There's nothing to pick and no restart to wait for, because Proton is already there.

If the Proton download on the loading screen fails, the app skips it and Steam fetches Proton itself instead. In that case, watch for the Proton Experimental (ARM64) install box, let the client restart itself once, and only then install a game. A game installed before that restart fails to launch.

That's it. Your existing Wine containers and games are completely untouched by any of this.

Optional tweaks — the ⚙️ next to the Steam (Linux) entry holds resolution (720p by default, because Steam's own interface is expensive to draw), drivers, cores, audio, frame generation, the HUD, Touch, Components, Your games in Steam and the Steam client update channel. GE-Proton and proton-cachyos (ARM64 builds) can be downloaded in Contents → Linux Runtime and picked per game on Steam's own Compatibility page.

• From 3.1.2: install over. Nothing else changes until you download the Linux Runtime.
• From a 3.1.3 pre-release: install over. You stay signed in, and your games, Proton and settings are kept.
• From the September 21 test build: install over, then open Contents → Linux Runtime once. That moves the Steam (Linux) entry out of its old Wine container and carries your settings over (HUD, LSFG, audio, drivers). Don't remove or re-download the runtime. If you made a container only for Steam, you can delete it afterwards (the Linux Desktop entry stays in the container — leave that one alone if you use it).

Post the whole session folder from Download/Bannerlator-LinuxSteam/session-<date>-<time>/. It is already scrubbed — tokens, Steam IDs and login files are masked or never copied, so it is safe to post.

Known and already on the list, no need to report: Steam Deck mode breaks game controllers, FlatOut shrinks to the corner after Guide → Resume, TF2 says "insecure", GTA V Enhanced does not run, Serious Sam Shatterverse is killed for memory, NFS Hot Pursuit Remastered faults. Almost everything was proven on one AYANEO Pocket FIT — reports from any other device are the single most useful thing right now.

• Wine Windows compatibility layer — run native Win32/Win64 applications and games.
• Box64 / Box86 x86 & x86-64 → ARM translation, with selectable performance presets.
• WOWBox64 for arm64ec containers (correctly labelled per container).
• FEXCore as an alternative x86/x64 emulation backend — with automatic unixlib (.so) matching: whichever FEXCore version you pick per game or container, the native .so companion is kept in sync on every launch (matched for unixlib builds, cleared for DLL-only), so there's never a stale or mismatched .so.
• arm64ec and x64 container support.

📖 Not sure which graphics driver or wrapper to use? Read the wrapper & driver guide → — what a wrapper actually does, a pick-by-GPU table (Adreno / Mali / Xclipse / PowerVR), every built-in driver explained, all 18 catalog wrappers with their authors and upstream links, which of them are byte-identical across projects (so you don't test the same file twice), and troubleshooting.

• DXVK — DirectX 8 / 9 / 10 / 11 → Vulkan (with GPLAsync and Sarek variants).
• VKD3D-Proton — DirectX 12 → Vulkan.
• WineD3D / DirectDraw OpenGL fallback paths for older titles.
• D7VK — DirectX 7 / DirectDraw (Direct3D 3–7) → Vulkan for old 2D/3D titles that otherwise take the slow OpenGL path (WinterSnowfall's DXVK-lineage Vulkan implementation). Selectable in the DDraw Wrapper picker per container and per game; ships bundled as the default and is catalog-backed — a "D7VK Version" dropdown lets you download and switch between nightly d7vk builds.
• Proton bionic translation layers (via GameNative) — including Proton 11.0-1 in arm64ec and x86-64 builds, packaged per Android SDK (SDK 28 for Android 9-era, SDK 35 for Android 15) and downloadable from the Compatibility Layers menu.
• VEGAS — Adreno-optimized DXVK for reduced stutter and real-time upscaling on mobile GPUs.

  • 📖 New to VEGAS? Read the VEGAS DXVK FAQ — install, config, FSR, tiers, frame generation & shader-stutter troubleshooting.

  • 🚀 Support VEGAS Development — low-level graphics dev & vibecoder: debugging, refactoring & improving original DXVK code for Adreno. ❤️ Sponsor isygold →

• Per-game texture filtering (new in 3.1.0) — Anisotropic filtering (2× / 4× / 8× / 16×) and Texture sharpness (Game default / Auto / −0.25 to −1.0; Auto matches your upscaling, following AMD's FSR guidance) in the DXVK / VEGAS settings, per container or per game. DirectX 9–11 (DXVK) only; nothing changes at Game default.
• Turnip / Mesa open-source Adreno Vulkan drivers, with Timeline Semaphore patches for newer DXVK; bundled and downloadable driver options.
• Driver-source management — add, toggle and remove your own adrenotools GPU-driver feeds (a custom JSON URL or a GitHub owner/repo) on top of the built-in sources, so you can pull Turnip / driver builds straight from the repos you trust. (Requested in #160.)
• BCn transcoding for Mali / Xclipse — a "Wrapper + bcn_layer" graphics driver (leegao's bcn_layer, shader-v3) that decodes BC textures on the GPU, so BCn games run on GPUs without hardware BC support — with a BCn Layer Settings panel (force-decode, ETC2 / ASTC transcode, image-view mode, debug logging). An experimental "Wrapper-gamenative" driver (BCn baked into the wrapper, Adreno-only) is also selectable. (Device-proven on Mali-G57.)
• Wrapper Version Manager — bring your own graphics wrapper: import / update / delete any .tzst wrapper (from another project or your own build), browse a curated downloadable catalog of wrappers from across the Winlator family (each credited to its source, flagged "Mali only" where relevant), and get auto-detected settings — real toggles / sliders / dropdowns read straight from what each wrapper actually supports, with driver internals and log noise filtered out. Per-entry Update / Reset / Edit / Delete / Details plus a pre-import inspection view. (Modeled on WinlatorMali's graphics-driver manager; requested in #132.) 📖 Which wrapper for my device? →
• Mali DX12 (experimental) — a new opt-in 6th graphics driver, "Wrapper + compat + bcn", pairing leegao's BCn transcode layer with a DX12 compat layer and a "Use GameNative engine (DX12)" toggle, for Valhall-class Mali GPUs. Inert unless selected and unaffected on Qualcomm / Adreno; DX12 on Mali is still being proven on hardware — treat it as a test path and report back with logs.

• Multiple host renderers — Vulkan, OpenGL, SurfaceFlinger, and VirGL.
• Wayland display backend (experimental, new in 3.1.2) — an alternative to the Java X server: the game draws into Bannerlator's own embedded Wayland compositor. Brings HDR10, launching a game on an external screen / TV, zero-copy presentation, real mouse-look and eight bundled Wayland Turnip drivers selectable per game. Chosen per container, off by default. (3.1.4 pre-release 1: a built-in adapter runs your normal Turnip driver on Wayland too, so it's one driver choice, like X11.)

  • ⚠️ Experimental, and not a replacement for X11. Expect bugs; X11 stays the default and stays supported. Requires a versionCode 8 arm64ec Proton 11 layer (the (v8) catalog rows) and an Adreno GPU — Mali / Xclipse / PowerVR stay on X11.

• SurfaceFlinger renderer colour fix — the SurfaceFlinger (ASurfaceRenderer) host renderer got a crash + colour-accuracy fix (red/blue channel swap corrected, GPU-side format converter, proper fencing), with a "Correct SurfaceFlinger colours" toggle available per container and per game (shown inline under the Renderer picker when SurfaceFlinger is selected, on by default). (Ported from GameNative #1620 / #1644.)

• ℹ️ The Vulkan host renderer uses the rendering path from StevenMXZ (Winlator-Ludashi); its AHardwareBuffer present path — what makes Vulkan / DXVK / VKD3D content actually display correctly — was ported from / cross-examined against GameNative. See Credits.

• Native Rendering (Low-Latency Mode) — low-latency direct-scanout presentation on both the Vulkan and OpenGL renderers, skipping the compositor blit to cut input lag (mutually exclusive with that renderer's post-processing effects / scaling, since it bypasses the compositor).
• Spatial upscalers on both the Vulkan and OpenGL renderers — SGSR (Snapdragon GSR 1.0), SGSR HQ (new in 3.1.0 — its edge-direction variant, for cleaner diagonals) and FSR / FSR-Fit (AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution 1.0), plus NIS (NVIDIA Image Scaling, Vulkan), a Sharpen (RCAS) mode and Linear / Nearest, all switchable live in the in-game drawer. On Vulkan it engages when a game renders below display resolution; on OpenGL it renders the scene at a reduced internal resolution and reconstructs it back up. Every sharpness slider runs 0 (off) → 100 (max). Your chosen scaling mode is now remembered per game across relaunch.
• Fullscreen aspect-ratio modes — control how a game fills the screen, per container and per game: Off (windowed, letterboxed), Fit (fullscreen, aspect preserved), Stretch (fills, ignores aspect), Fill (fills with aspect kept, cropping the overflow — no bars, no distortion) and Integer (largest whole-number scale, pixel-perfect and centered). A five-button selector in the in-game drawer switches modes live without closing the drawer, on all three host renderers. Your choice is saved per game.
• Supersampling (Render scale) — render above display resolution (1.25× / 1.5× / 2×) and downsample with a Lanczos-2 filter for DSR / OGSSAA-style anti-aliasing; set per container / per shortcut.
• Screen effects on both the OpenGL and Vulkan renderers — FXAA, Toon, CRT, NTSC, Color grading, CAS sharpening, and fake-HDR (the Vulkan path runs them through a new post-processing pipeline; previously they were OpenGL-only).
• Debanding (Vulkan) — an optional terminal dither pass that removes the visible banding from smooth gradients, skies, and dark scenes on 8-bit output, with an adjustable strength.
• ReShade post-processing — run real ReShade .fx effects (colour grading, sharpen, film grain, CRT, tonemap…) on DXVK / VKD3D games. Effects compile on-device via a bundled vkBasalt layer; pick from an on-demand catalog of ~100 curated MIT/CC0 effects or drop your own into the ReShade/ folder. A dedicated in-game ReShade tab auto-generates properly typed controls (sliders / toggles / dropdowns / colour pickers) from each shader, so you can toggle and tune effects live with a Reset-to-defaults button. Effects are configured per game (container or shortcut), persist across relaunch, and can be run solo or stacked. (Color effects today; depth effects such as SSAO/DOF are not included yet.)

  • ⚠️ Stacking multiple effects? Add them a few at a time. Each effect compiles on-device and costs GPU — selecting too many at once can stop a game from starting, showing a flat / blank screen instead of the game. If that happens, uncheck effects one at a time (or the specific heavy one) in the per-game ReShade effect settings until it boots, then add more gradually.

• Match refresh rate to FPS (VRR) — the display's refresh rate can follow your frame rate: an Auto (match FPS) toggle or a manual 60 / 90 / 120 / 144 Hz slider, on all three host renderers, auto-disabled on displays that don't support variable refresh.
• Adjustable resolution and frame-rate limit.

• Two selectable frame-generation engines — pick Off / Win-FG Native / LSFG Native per container; the running engine is shown as a badge in the in-game drawer. Both now run inside Bannerlator's own compositor, which is what lets their generated frames actually reach the panel.
  • Win-FG Native — Bannerlator's own clean-room frame generation (source, MIT): FSR3-family optical flow plus from-scratch synthesis, no proprietary weights, nothing to buy and nothing to import. Built in and ready out of the box. Device-proven 45 → 90 fps at 2× on an Adreno 750, and it arms in ~124 ms because its shaders are compiled in rather than parsed from a file. It previously ran as a layer inside the game, where the compositor discarded most of its generated frames — the in-game counter read 2× while the panel showed 1×; running it natively removes that hop.
  • LSFG Native (new in 3.0.6) — Lossless Scaling's frame generation running inside Bannerlator's own compositor, ported from the Eden emulator's native present path with WinNative's implementation as the reference. The shaders come from your own Lossless.dll, extracted on device. Device-proven 30 → 120 fps at the panel. Device support: generally Adreno A7xx and newer GPUs, plus some MediaTek Dimensity devices in community testing; elsewhere it reports itself unsupported in-game or may not keep up. Experimental (3.1.1, off by default): a capture resolution that runs the frame generation at a lower height and scales it up — far cheaper on weaker GPUs — and a Vulkan 1.1 compat switch for stock drivers that report only Vulkan 1.1 but have the needed extensions (#512 by clintOnSky). (The former lsfg-vk in-game layer engine is retired; anything still set to it runs LSFG Native.)

• ℹ️ Why win-fg exists, and what it is. Bannerlator previously bundled a different frame-generation layer that was later found to embed compute shaders whose model weights were essentially identical to the proprietary Lossless Scaling frame-generation model — which cannot be redistributed. That layer was removed, and win-fg is its clean-room replacement: a frame-gen engine we built from the ground up. Its motion estimation is our MIT adaptation of AMD FidelityFX FSR3 optical flow (an algorithm — no learned weights), and its frame synthesis is written from first principles using published, permissively-licensed math. It bundles no proprietary code or weights. That's also why the two engines sit side by side: LSFG Native relies on your own legally-owned Lossless.dll, while Win-FG Native is entirely Bannerlator's own and needs nothing to run. Its full source, shader-by-shader provenance and engineering log are public at The412Banner/win-fg.

• ⚠️ LSFG Native requires you to supply your own Lossless.dll. Bannerlator bundles no proprietary Lossless Scaling files. You must own Lossless Scaling (THS, on Steam) and import its Lossless.dll via Settings → Frame Generation — LSFG Native (Detect from the in-app Steam store, or import a copy). The DLL is copied into app storage, its shaders are extracted and cached on device, and it serves all containers. Until you import a valid Lossless.dll, the LSFG Native option stays greyed out; Win-FG Native needs no DLL and works without it.

• Live in-game controls for whichever engine the container runs: switch between Off / 2× / 3× / 4× and adjust the flow-scale slider right from the in-game Graphics drawer, hot-reloaded with no restart.
• Screen fit & warnings (new in 3.1.0) — while frame generation runs, Auto (match FPS) fits the display to Max FPS × multiplier (the exact rate or the closest one above; a per-game opt-out), the side menu warns when your numbers are more than the screen can show and offers a one-tap Set Max FPS to N, and a plain reason appears when frame generation can't run on your driver or renderer.
• FPS Limiter — a standalone, engine-independent live frame cap. It paces the X11 Present extension by delaying the IdleNotify that frees the guest's buffer, so the game itself throttles (the in-game HUD reflects the cap and GPU/power draw drops). Works the same with frame gen Off, win-fg, or LSFG Native, on both host renderers, all guest APIs. While LSFG Native is generating the limiter is locked on — a steady, capped game is what frame generation is built on — and restored when it stops. This guest-side present-pacing mechanism was ported from GameNative (see Credits).
• Performance model — LSFG Native always runs Lossless Scaling's lighter "performance" model (about 2 ms of GPU per generated frame on an Adreno 750). (The lsfg-vk Performance-mode toggle requested by @Tony57319 in #152 is retired with lsfg-vk; that model is now the one LSFG Native uses.)
• Confirmed on both the OpenGL and Vulkan host renderers.

Power-user device-tuning, reachable from App Settings → Performance and mirrored live in the in-game Debug tab (kept in two-way sync), with global defaults and optional per-game overrides — an override is honored only when it differs from the global default, and each has a one-tap reset-to-global.

• No root required — Sustained Performance Mode (steadies clock speeds over long sessions), Thread Priority Boost (raises the guest CPU-worker threads for more CPU time, never downgrading an already-hot thread), and Prefer Big Cores (pins the running game to the fastest CPU cluster instead of the efficiency cores).
• Opt-in root tier (Magisk / KernelSU / APatch) — behind a Grant Root gate and a scroll-to-accept "USE AT YOUR OWN RISK" disclaimer: CPU governor → performance, lock CPU frequency to max, keep all cores online, lock GPU to max clock, disable thermal throttling, fan to maximum, and a one-shot "Free memory now" action. Entirely optional — nothing writes to your system files unless you grant root and accept the warning.
• Always-on snapshot-revert — the first time a setting is touched its exact prior value is captured, and everything is restored to precisely that value on game-exit, app-background or crash. The snapshot is persisted to disk, so even a hard kill is repaired on next launch. It never guesses defaults and can't be disabled.
• Temperature Watchdog — anchored to your device's own thermal trip points, it polls the hottest CPU/GPU zone and force-reverts all performance state before the device overheats. Presets Conservative / Balanced / Aggressive / Manual, on by default (turning it off needs the same scroll-to-accept disclaimer).
• In-app help — a "?" explainer on every toggle, an "Explain toggles" overview, a watchdog "What's this?", and live CPU / GPU temps plus your device's own thermal limits shown inline. (Device-verified on an AYANEO Pocket FIT / Adreno.)

• Create and manage multiple isolated Wine containers.
• Redesigned container cards — a clean spec-chip layout (renderer · DXVK on top, driver · VKD3D · backend beneath) that matches the game cards.
• Auto-close on game exit — the session closes itself once the launched game quits (per-container "Close when game exits" toggle, on by default), so you're not left at a black Wine desktop.
• Import / export containers to move or back up setups.
• Per-container control of Wine version, graphics driver, DXVK / VKD3D version, Box64 preset, drive mappings, Z-drive selector, and environment variables — the Add Environment Variable picker includes a large set of presets (DXVK / VKD3D / Wine / Mesa) with typed value editors, so common tuning vars are one tap away.
• Desktop wallpaper picker — set an image as a container's Wine desktop wallpaper from the container editor, and choose whether it applies to just this container or globally to all of them.
• Compatibility Layers download menu — a cloud button on each component (Wine/Proton, DXVK, VKD3D, Box64/WOWBox64, FEXCore) opens a downloader to browse, install or remove versions, with Wine/Proton tabs, an "in use" marker, install-from-file, and byte-accurate download + install progress bars.
• In-game refresh-rate unlock — a per-container / per-game toggle that lets a game pick a refresh rate above 60 Hz from its own display menu (requires a "Refreshed" Proton 10.0-4 / 11.0-1 layer; stays off on older layers by design). Distinct from the display's Match refresh rate to FPS (VRR).
• Custom startup-services mode — alongside Normal / Essential / Aggressive, a Custom startup option starts with every Wine service off so you enable only the ones you need. (Requested in #168.)
• DXVK HUD off by default (new in 3.0.2) — new containers no longer show the DXVK overlay on top of the game. The DXVK_HUD variable stays listed but empty in the env-var editor, so it's one tap to opt back in whenever you want it.
• Screen size that fits your panel (new in 3.1.0) — new containers start at 1280×720 on 16:9 screens, 1280×800 on 16:10 and 3:2, and 1280×960 on 4:3 (Retroid Pocket, foldable inner screens). Existing containers and games are never changed.

• Game library with grid or list layout, sorting, and installed/updated filters.
• Redesigned game cards — primary chips (renderer · DXVK · frame-gen) over a muted driver · VKD3D · backend line, with the resolution in the subtitle; long component names no longer blank the game title.
• Add shortcuts from external storage — a single .exe, or a whole games folder (point at a library folder and every game subfolder is scanned for its real executable, named and cover-arted for one-tap batch add).
• Smart import — importing an .exe auto-resolves the authoritative game name and cover art from the Steam store, fixing generic launcher-exe misnames, with a Search Steam confirm step.
• Recommended components — a game's bundled redistributables are detected and surfaced as one-tap install chips.
• Back up & restore game saves as GameHub-compatible zips, with per-game save discovery and a confirm checklist before anything is overwritten.
• SteamGridDB cover-art scraping.
• Per-game settings including display language / locale.
• Virtual Controller Pro on-screen controls — a Compose-rebuilt controls editor with an in-game live editor, control types Button / D-Pad / Range / Stick / Trackpad plus Dynamic Stick, Mouse Area, Button Grid (with optional multitouch and QWERTY / F-row / NumPad quick-fill) and Expandable Buttons (radial or list fly-outs). Includes control groups (show/hide a whole set), key combos, per-element dead zones, a Hold key, custom control icons (import, tint or use as the whole button), a category-filtered binding picker, an editor reference image, and a control scale up to 300%. Profiles export as ICpx (or best-effort legacy ICP). Overlays follow your app theme or take a per-game custom colour set in the Controls editor. (PR #156 by arro000.) Swipeable controls (new in 3.0.1) — a per-element slide-to-press toggle plus live per-category swipe gates (Buttons / D-Pad / Sticks), mirrored to a dedicated Swipe tab in the in-game drawer so you can slide across buttons instead of tapping each one.
• Physical controller support (SDL2), plus touchpad / mouse emulation with adjustable cursor speed. The external controller-binding screen lists each input as a card with readable labels, and buttons you press while binding appear instantly.
• Steam Controller support (new in 3.1.0, opt-in) — the 2026 Steam Controller, and the original over Bluetooth, read directly through SDL3's Steam Controller driver (Input Controls → Device → Steam Controller): a real controller in games with rumble and your Default / Any Controller bindings, extra buttons (L4 / L5 / R4 / R5 and the … button) mappable to any button, click or key, a trackpad mouse (right / left / both / off), and full support in the Input Controls Test dialog. Other controllers are untouched.
• Controller vibration — PC-accurate dual-motor rumble (strong/weak driven independently) with a per-container vibration mode and intensity, backed by a winebus duration patch so sustained rumble doesn't auto-expire mid-effect (Proton 10/11, arm64ec + x86-64). Plus per-slot rumble toggles and a master switch (in the in-game Vibration section) that silences all rumble regardless of slot, saved globally.
• Gyroscope — motion aim — tilt to aim, driving the right stick, left stick or the mouse, in either Rate mode (how fast you turn) or Tilt to Aim orientation mode (the angle you hold), with a choice of activator button (L1 / L2 / R1 / R3 / always-on), Hold or Toggle activation, adjustable sensitivity / deadzone / smoothing / invert, device-level drift calibration, and settings saved per container and per game. 📖 Full guide →

Browse community-shared, per-game / per-device tuning configs in-app and apply a known-good setup in one tap.

• Catalog browser (globe button in the Games header) with search, Steam / Title filters, sort by upvotes / name / device count, and a "Matches my device" filter that narrows to configs shared from hardware like yours.
• Per-config cards showing ★ upvotes and ↓ downloads (best-rated first), the source device / SoC and the date, aggregated across every folder a game is known by.
• One-tap Apply that surgically merges just the config's settings — DXVK / VKD3D / Turnip driver / FEX preset / renderer / resolution / launch args / environment variables — into your shortcut, preserving everything else you've set. Applies to any shortcut, warning you if it doesn't match the game.
• Smart install of a config's missing DXVK / VKD3D / FEXCore build or Turnip GPU driver: an exact match installs with one confirm, otherwise pick from the closest versions (or browse all), and the config auto-applies afterward. FEX date builds match by their YYMM monthly tag; components you already have are recognised, not re-installed.
• Config detail page — provenance (source device / SoC / app / date), a plain-language list of what the config sets in Bannerlator's own component terms, and a before-you-apply diff against your shortcut, plus the config's live description, upvotes, downloads and comments — you can upvote and comment yourself.
• Read-only for your setup — nothing changes unless you tap Apply; your containers, imagefs and existing settings are never touched.
• Share your own setups — export a game's working settings and upload them for the community in a couple of taps. The export captures the full recipe (graphics translator + all its options, driver, renderer, resolution, launch args, env vars and the rest) plus your device / graphics chip — but never your files, store logins, or device-specific driver tuning. Sharing is anonymous by default and Bannerlator keeps its configs in its own space, separate from other apps' libraries. My uploads lets you edit a description inline or delete an upload any time.
• Optional account (no email needed) — you never need one, but a username + password account makes your uploads follow you to a new device, puts your name and picture on configs you share, and is recovered with a one-time recovery key instead of an email reset. Everything — browse, apply, share, manage, upvote, comment — works fully anonymously without it.
• 📖 Read the full plain-English guide → for a friendly, non-technical walkthrough of browsing, applying, sharing, and the optional account/recovery-key system.

Sign in to your existing storefronts and play from libraries you already own — Bannerlator does not sell, bundle or circumvent any game or DRM.

• Steam — sign in with username / password or QR code, browse your owned library, and download + install games through a built-in depot engine (built on JavaSteam). Includes a 4-tier download-speed picker (Slow / Medium / Fast / Blazing), session hardening that recovers from Steam's ~1-hour connection-manager logoff so long installs finish, a connection / login status pill, and a depot-download OOM fix.
  • DLC picker — a "Choose DLC" sheet lets you opt out of owned DLC before downloading, with the download size updating live as you check and uncheck, plus an "Includes DLC" line and a size breakdown (footprint / download / catalog / free space) and download ETA + speed on the detail page. A true-size install fix fetches real depot-manifest sizes so fully-downloaded games are no longer wrongly flagged "incomplete."
  • Optional Goldberg auto-patch on a game's detail page — a Goldberg / gbe_fork Steam-emulator patch for offline / emulated play, in Regular / Experimental / ColdClient tiers, installed automatically and cleanly reverted on switch-back. (Modifies a game's shipped files — use at your own risk, for games you own.)
  • Real-Steam (VAC) online — "SteamLite" launch mode — a per-game launch option (RealSteam / Goldberg / Raw) that runs the game through the genuine Steam client driven by a clean-room headless agent, for a VAC-eligible online session with real friends, matchmaking and achievements. It stages the game so Steam sees it installed (secure LaunchApp, not an insecure CreateProcess) and watches the launcher exe so the game launches secure regardless of which exe the shortcut names. The Steam client + agent ship as a downloadable steamlite-v1 content package, installed from inside the app. Device-proven online: CS 1.6, CS: Source, Team Fortress 2, Left 4 Dead 2 (VAC-secured), Brawlhalla and Stumble Guys (live-service); Borderlands 2 in testing.
  • EA games from your Steam library (new in 3.0.7) — EA-published Steam titles get an EA badge and a one-time Set up EA Desktop session; after that the game launches through Steam → EA Desktop automatically (SteamLite mode, GE-Proton 11.0-6 / Proton 11 layers). Proven with Need for Speed Payback / Most Wanted / Rivals and STAR WARS Jedi: Survivor. Origin-era titles ask for the EA sign-in every launch and EA rate-limits those activations — see the 3.0.7 notes.
  • Steam Friends & Chat (off by default) — a master-opt-in friends list with live presence (online / in-game / away), unread badges and collapsible sections; per-friend chat with text and images, persisted history, add-by-code / name-search / quick-invite, an in-app friend profile, a landscape two-pane layout, notifications with a sound toggle, typing indicators, and instant reconnect after a background drop.
  • Steam achievements — seeded from your account into a tabbed detail-page grid, with in-game gold unlock pills — working and syncing in both launch modes: unlocks fire and sync back whether you play through Goldberg (emulated) or SteamLite (real Steam / VAC).
  • Steam cloud saves + Save Manager "Sync Now" — automatic cloud-save parity around each play session, plus a one-touch "Sync Now" button on the Save Manager banner that syncs every flagged game at once, each in the correct direction (upload what's newer locally, pull what's newer in the cloud), with a live "Syncing 3/7…" count.
  • Install to an SD card — a per-game toggle installs a Steam download onto a removable SD card to free internal space; the shortcut resolves through a container drive letter, so secure launch, saves and achievements are unaffected.
  • Rebuilt game detail pages — a redesigned, landscape-aware tabbed per-game screen (overview · achievements grid · DLC) with the store badge, connection state and launch actions together in one place.
• Epic Games — sign in, browse your library, and download / install / launch your titles (including Epic free games).
• Amazon Games — sign in, browse your library, and download / install / launch your titles.
• GOG — sign in and browse your owned library; download and install your DRM-free games with cloud-save sync and one-tap launch into a container.
• ⬇ Cross-store Download Manager — one unified manager across all four stores: see every active download and your whole installed library in one place, with live two-bar download/install progress, background downloads + notification-shade support (a foreground service keeps them running when you leave the app), and launch / verified uninstall for any installed game. Install state, cover art and update-available status stay in sync across a game's detail page, its download card and the store list.

• 🔒 These sign-ins are a third-party login system, exactly like any other emulator/launcher that logs into these stores — use them at your own risk (see Security Hardening).

The Steam / Epic / GOG / Amazon sign-ins are a third-party login system, exactly like any other emulator or launcher that logs into these stores. Bannerlator is not affiliated with, authorised by, or endorsed by Valve/Steam, Epic Games, GOG, or Amazon.

• Use at your own risk. You are logging your real store account into a community app. That's a normal trade-off for this kind of tool — but it's your account and your call.
• Steam save sync & achievements — use at your own risk. Steam cloud-save sync and achievements run through third-party systems (Valve's Steam and Goldberg), exactly like the store sign-ins. They depend on your connection — an unstable or dropped internet connection or network, while downloading (syncing saves, achievements or games) or uploading, can leave data un-synced, incomplete or out of date. It is your responsibility to ensure a proper, stable connection and to complete the sync/download/upload when required; verify it finished before relying on it across devices.
• Your credentials are redacted from logs. This release strips sensitive values out of everything the stores write, to logcat and the shareable diagnostic files, via a new StoreLog.redactUrl helper: signed download / manifest URLs (Amazon / Epic / GOG CDN links carry access tokens in the query), OAuth authorization codes, GOG client_secret + refresh_token, and account identity IDs (Epic account ID, GOG user ID). Steam credentials were already redacted. None of this changes how login, downloads or cloud saves work — only what gets written to a log.
• Still be careful sharing logs. Even with redaction, a log or debug file can contain other diagnostic detail — so only share one publicly if you're comfortable doing so.

• New containers ship with handy Windows tools in the Start menu — Banner File Manager (our own file manager — see below), AIO Graphics Test, and Game Controller Test.
• .lnk working-directory ("Start in") support so shortcuts for apps that only run from their own folder launch correctly.

The bundled Windows file manager (C:\windows\wfm.exe) is Banner File Manager — our own native Win32 file manager, forked from BrunoSX's Winlator File Manager (MIT). It ships in every new container's Start menu.

• Dual-pane split view (View ▸ Split View) — two independent panes, active one highlighted, copy between them.
• File actions — Open as administrator, Open with ▸ (registered apps + choose another program), Properties.
• Native Win32 copy / move / delete instead of shell32 SHFileOperation — sidesteps the Wine shell32 copy-paste crash on Proton 10.0-4.
• Quality of life — keyboard shortcuts (F2 / Del / F5 / F6 / Backspace / Enter / Ctrl+C·X·V·A), Show Hidden Files, byte-accurate copy progress bar with cancel, status-bar total size.
• Theme-aware (light + dark, follows the container theme; owner-drawn header / status bar / search to match) and universal x86-64 (Box64 / wowbox64 / FEXCore).

Source, releases & issues: github.com/The412Banner/banner-file-manager.

• Modern Jetpack Compose user interface with a redesigned, icon-led navigation drawer.
• Theme-aware everywhere — your selected preset / accent recolours the whole app and the in-game side drawer, including dialogs, chips, sliders and overlays.
• Customizable themes — 16 presets (AMOLED default, Classic Dark, Ocean, Forest, Sunset, Rose, Steel, plus Midnight Cobalt, Phosphor, Carbon & Ember, Amethyst, Crimson, Synthwave, Royal Gold, Frost and Monochrome) plus an HSV custom-accent picker.
• XMB view (new in 3.1.1) — a fourth Games-tab layout after List, Grid and Compact: games run across and the focused game's options run down, with every per-game setting and tool (Settings, Game Details, Properties, Clone, Remove, logs, community configs, cover scraping, Copy to Drive C, save backup / restore, Change executable) opening as further XMB columns instead of pop-ups. Built for a controller (A / B, LB / RB, ◀ ▶ to change values), with touch and swipe too; portrait and landscape.
• Big Picture mode — a Compose-built couch launcher for TV / handheld use: full D-pad navigation, direct rails to your games, settings and features, and per-game spec chips showing what each title is actually set to.
• In-game overlay drawer for settings, input, and quick toggles, with a Task Manager that lists processes as cards and can launch new tasks on any renderer. The Controls tab is split into Touch / Mouse / Vibration / Gyro sub-tabs, with a uniform 3-across grid of toggle chips.
• In-game Task Manager — a full control panel. Beyond the process cards it now offers Windows-style per-process Processor Affinity ("Set affinity" on a process's ⋮ menu — pin it to specific CPU cores live, mid-game, applied through the guest's real affinity path with no relaunch), a live telemetry header (CPU & GPU usage and temperatures, GPU clock, FPS + minimum, RAM, swap, battery level / watts / temperature / charging, and a per-core clock strip), and a collapsible container info panel (Wine/Proton, DX wrapper, renderer, driver, resolution, device).
• Built-in File Manager with Favorites — bookmark folders and jump to them from a dedicated list, each labelled by storage source (Internal / SD card / a container's Drive C: or Z:) and full path. Image files show real thumbnails, and the File Manager doubles as the app's file picker for every import (WCP / ICP / wallpaper / drivers / assets) — reliable on OEM skins where Android's system picker fails, with the system picker still available as a secondary option. It also handles multi-select bulk operations, archive extraction (zip / 7z / tar / tar.gz / xz / bz2 / zst, Zip-Slip-guarded with progress and cancel), and search / sort / hidden-file toggle / free-space display.
• Performance HUD — FPS, frame time, CPU/GPU temperature, and RAM, in vertical or horizontal layout, with its on-screen position saved per game. Four switchable overlay styles — Classic, GameHub, a GameNative-style HUD with live graphs, and the new Fusion HUD (MangoHud-style: size modes Full / Tiles / Pill / Minimal / Mega, VRAM, GPU model, 1% / 0.1% lows and a frametime graph) — with long-press to lock any HUD in place.
• FEX runtime indicator — a live badge in the Graphics tab shows what's actually translating the running game: arm64ec vs x86-64, the translator (FEXCore / wowbox64 / Box64), and — for FEXCore — whether the native unixlib (.so) or the classic DLL path is active. Read straight from the running process, so it reflects reality, not just the setting.

• Three build flavors with distinct package IDs — standard, PuBG, and Ludashi.
• Optimized release builds (not debug) for a smoother Compose UI, AOSP-testkey signed so updates install over previous installs.
• In-app updater — Settings → Updates checks GitHub for a newer release and installs the correct flavor APK for you, with notify-on-update and an opt-in include-prereleases (beta channel) toggle.
• Continuous GitHub Actions action builds and tagged stable releases.

Besides the built-in download catalog, you can add any ReShade effect yourself by dropping it into a folder. Follow these steps exactly:

1. Open the ReShade drop-in folder on your device (create the ReShade folder if it isn't there yet):

Android/data/com.winlator.banner/files/ReShade/

📁 That path is for the Standard build. For the other builds, swap the package name: PuBG → Android/data/com.tencent.ig/files/ReShade/ · Ludashi → Android/data/com.ludashi.benchmark/files/ReShade/ · AnTuTu → Android/data/com.antutu.ABenchMark/files/ReShade/.

2. Make one folder per effect. Name the folder whatever you want the effect to be called in the menu — for example MySepia.

3. Put the effect's files inside that folder — all in the same place, next to the .fx:

• the effect's .fx file (required),
• any .fxh files it #includes (very common — e.g. ReShade.fxh, ReShadeUI.fxh),
• any image / texture files the effect uses.

ReShade/
  MySepia/
    MySepia.fx          ← the effect (folder name match = used first)
    ReShade.fxh         ← copy in any .fxh the .fx #includes
    ReShadeUI.fxh
    noise.png           ← copy in any textures it uses

4. Pick it in the app. Open the app → edit a container or a game shortcut → ReShade effect picker. Your folder now appears in the list — select it.

5. Use it in-game. Launch a DirectX (DXVK / VKD3D) game, open the in-game drawer → ReShade tab, and turn the effect on/off and tune its sliders live.

⚠️ Read this if something doesn't show up or work

• Only colour effects work — sharpen, colour grading, film grain, CRT, tonemap, vignette, etc. Depth effects (SSAO, depth-of-field, MXAO) do not work yet.
• ReShade only affects DirectX games running through DXVK / VKD3D — it does nothing on OpenGL / WineD3D / older 2D titles.
• Effect not in the list? Make sure it's in its own subfolder and that the subfolder actually contains a .fx file (a loose .fx sitting directly in ReShade/ is ignored).
• Effect selected but no change in-game? Most often a missing #include — open the .fx in a text editor, find any #include "Something.fxh" lines, and make sure each of those .fxh files is copied into the same folder as the .fx. Same for any texture files.
• Game won't start / flat or blank screen after enabling effects? You likely stacked too many effects at once. Each one compiles on-device and costs GPU, and too many together can stop the game from launching. Go back into the per-game ReShade effect settings and uncheck the effects one at a time (or the specific heavy one) until the game boots correctly, then re-enable them gradually. Adding effects a few at a time avoids this.
• Can't even find Android/data? Many stock file managers hide it on Android 11+. Use a file manager that can open Android/data, or copy the effect folder over from a PC via a USB cable, then drop it in.

Bannerlator does not work by itself on frontends out of the box. See the frontends workaround guide to get it running.

Got a question about Bannerlator? Ask the codebase directly. An AI reads the actual source code and answers with the exact file names and line numbers, so you can check it yourself. It never guesses — if the answer isn't in the code, it says so.

It's three steps:

1. Open an issue (you'll need a free GitHub account).
2. Type your question — be specific, and name a feature, setting, or file.
3. Submit. The AI replies in a comment on your issue, usually within 1–2 minutes.

That's it — no form, no approval step, nothing else to do.

ℹ️ The AI replies to every new issue automatically. A few per person per day are free; past that, it will ask you to try again later.

Good things to ask:

• "How does the FPS limiter work?"
• "Where is the GOG store integration implemented?"
• "What values does the scaling mode picker accept?"
• "How are release builds signed and distributed?"

Avoid device-specific troubleshooting like "why is my game slow?" — the AI explains what the code does, not how a game runs on your phone.

opencode run "your question" --agent ama-agent --model opencode/big-pickle

This build stands on a long chain of prior work — its direct lineage, plus the projects whose commits and work are cherry-picked and implemented here:

The Wine/translation stack this app bundles or downloads:

Much of Bannerlator's polish is driven by the people who file issues and test builds. Recent features came directly from:

• Angel — requested the environment-variable presets that seeded 2.5.1's new preset set (DXVK_DISABLE_TIMELINE_SEMAPHORES, VKD3D_SHADER_MODEL).
• @kylinzang — the driving force behind 2.5's Mali / BCn support (#70, originally #54 / #53): the original request, the env-var spec, the in-game logging overhaul, and iterative on-device testing on Mali-G57 through a full sign-off. Also fullscreen aspect-ratio modes (#71) and the in-app File-Manager import picker (#73).
• @rizky2-crypto — Mali-G610 BCn testing (#30).
• @SombraShadow — the container wallpaper picker (#66).
• @abdogm — magnifier cursor-follow & no-dim fixes (#44).
• @Devaspe — the Steam install-blocker report that drove the true-size depot install fix.
• iamtooshaar (Discord) — testing and bug-hunting on Steam Friends & Chat (3.0.2), helping shake out the presence, history and image-send issues on real hardware.
• TAR (Discord) — tested the Steam Controller support through six builds (3.1.0) and shaped it: the bindings fix, the remappable back buttons and … button, the 18-input controller test and the left / both trackpad options.

…and everyone in the Discord and on GitHub who tests builds and reports issues. 🙏

Additional credits surfaced in the Star Bionic REVAMPED project (star.bionic-revamp):

• @The412Banner — Converting the UI to Jetpack Compose and rewriting the controller implementation.
• @jacojayy — Timeline Semaphore patches in Turnip.

If you have contributed and are not listed, open a PR — this list is intended to be complete.