Currently in the middle of the ocean 😅so if I don’t respond that’s the reason haha but I recorded this yesterday before leaving to share for feedback and maybe get you all a bit excited about what is coming. 

When WinHud 2.0 releases it will be an immediate release for everyone not tied to early access.

I wanted to speak to the design thinking behind the decisions that went into this redesign for those who are curious as well. 

WinHUD was designed with 3 main principles, speed, organization and a bit of WHimsy!

The biggest thing you will notice is that new structure. Gone is the 2 page playout of 1.0  instead is a single scroll 4 section expand and collapse system with sorting. 

Section 1: what used to be its own page called game options now an expand in place menu. This allows for less back tracking just to get to the game options menu, while still allowing it to get out of the way when you don’t want to see it. 

Section 2: is the power profiles tile row. Gone is the drop down with text options, and in its place is a better 4 tile system with better naming and icons. Each tile also displays the TDP wattage that would be set if you used it tailored to your hardware for more insight into what your system is doing this wattage and FPS also gets displayed as pulls in the widget header for folks who don’t want to leave the overlay on all the time and for games that don’t support RTSS. 

Section 3: this is the core change in this update what used to bee a single scroll long list of small touch targets with basic organization is now a filter able toggle grid that can be filtered on the fly to only display the toggles you want to see. 

Each toggle is now larger for better touch screen accuracy and some are now expandable when expanded to expand in place as to not take up more visual height/ not shuffle things around. Some options have also been combined into these expandable views such as moving the unlined frame-rate toggle into the frame limit tile. 

Section 4: is the new home of lossless scaling, this saw the least change but now instead of being taken to a separate options subpage all the LS options are accessible bing the expandable toggle. 

Beyond this through the widget are fun expand and collapse bouncy animation to provide more visual feedback on what you selected, and there is better visuals around what is being disabled by what options and why. 

Definitely let me know what you think! Super curious to hear your thoughts. 

Morning everyone! So the plan was to try and have this ready by yesterday, but I can’t in good conscience release this when there are still a few bugs to squash.

I’m leaving on vacation for the next week, but I still wanted to share with you what you all can expect when I get back!

Ok no shade against the keyboard and track pad that come with the Z13 flow the keyboard is surprising passable. But I hate that diving board trackpad so much. It gets the job done, but since switching to a mouse and lowfree flow 1 I can't go back haha.

Just work in progress for one of the alternative winhanced layouts you will be able to have in the app in the future. I am also thinking of exploring an Xbox 360 style modern blades UI layout. but that one will need much more work lol

Hey everyone,

For all my Early Access folks, ahead of release 0.9.9.0 I would love your help. If you come to the Discord on our supporter chat I will be adding a test build very soon.

This test build includes the new store, as a part of the store and game details cards we are introducing a new badge system. For folks who have opted in to share analytics in the settings we are now able to use that session data to create per game per hardware config badges that indicate game performance.

All I need from you all is to download this version and just start playing games haha over time these badges will start to populate as more users play games : )

Discord link: https://discord.gg/winhanced-1324139457972277299

Hey everyone! I wanted to share a bit more progress about the Winhanced store tab! A few days ago I showed off an early look at the Discover page, but i now have wishlist with price notifications functioning, and a working calendar view. Would love to hear what everyone thinks? The idea is that this store will be introduced to early access as part of the next patch if I can get everything functioning the way i want it to, so I would love feedback.

Wishlist: The wishlist is one of my all-time favorite features, it works cross store, and can even import your current wishlist from Steam so you don't have to start over. and it has a baked in price monitor and notification system. if you set it up it will alert you via the whats new page when a game you have wishlisted falls below that threshold, additionally if a game on your wishlist gets a deal at all it will show as a row within the discover page.

Calendar: I really really love a good calendar. The idea of the calendar view is to help you keep track of the games you care about and when they are going to release. There are currently 4 views:

- Wishlist: This view breaks down the calendar to only show the games you have specifically wishlisted based on their release date if they have not come out yet.

- For you: This uses the Discover feeds Discovery engine to show a view of upcoming games that you might find interesting broken down by release date

- Anticipated: These are the games the industry at large is hotly anticipating

- Game pass: this is for you Gamepass lovers, Its a list of when all the games on Gamepass will be leaving so you can decide if you should finally play that one game you have been meaning to before it leaves the service.

Outside of the four main tabs, I am also experimentting with a sale tracker right now its just for steam but in the video you can see the example of the steam summer sale in the top right with the countdown, the app will let you know when a sale is coming up and highlight the timeline with that color so you can see how long the sale is going to last.

What do you all think! I am really really loving how this feature is coming out!

So just a heads up, this is VERY early work, so definitely provide feedback, but keep that in mind haha. I wanted to share my thinking for a major feature within Winhanced and the progress I have been making towards it.

The idea is a storefront agnostic storefront and game tracker built right within the app!

Winhanced is already ecosystem agnostic by nature, and you already import your entire library of games into it. The idea is that this storefront would take your tastes and full library into consideration and provide game recommendations based on the games you actually play and care about.

But that is not all, beyond just highly accurate recommendations, the store page also gives you the ability to search for any game, compare deals across other stores, read reviews watch game trailers and even wishlish and price monitor games.

what do you all think?

What's new in 0.9.8.9

Redesigned game details (the new "dock")

• Full-bleed hero art with title logo, service pill, and a bottom action dock
• Hero art now animates in the banner (animated .webp box art plays instead of a still frame)
• In-dock Game Options — launch arguments, exe override, Remote Play toggle, Manage, and "Choose artwork" with the SteamGridDB browser, all without leaving the panel
• In-dock Smart Profiles editing
• Adaptive dock height, art-tinted legibility fades, and full controller navigation through the panels and tabs

Achievements & Trophies (early access)

• Achievement support added across platforms: Xbox, Steam, GOG, and PlayStation trophies
• Controller-navigable achievements grid shown right in the details dock
• Steam achievements show proper display names + descriptions; honest per-platform empty states (e.g. Epic = EOS overlay only)
• This feature is early access only for the next 30 days

New slide-up animation for expanded views

• Library,Settings, Friends Hub, and What's New articles all reparented into one reusable slide-up drawer for consistent navigation
• Fixes folded in: settings D-pad nav, header centering/spacing, and library scroll resetting to top on LB/RB filter switches

Library

• Steam My Games | Non-Steam pivot (mirrors the Xbox split)
• Pivot sort preference now persists per-library across restarts
• App Library "Run at startup" + non-Steam shortcuts.vdf import
• Per-library "Rescan metadata" button; smarter enrichment backoff so the library stops re-scanning every launch (faster, quieter startup)

Streaming

• New 16:10 and 21:9 resolution options plus high-refresh FPS options

Controller & input

• MSI Claw/Ally family L3/R3 paddle remap support (+ fixed M2 firmware offset)
• Controller support for stock confirmation dialogs (uninstall blacklist dialog etc.)

Update Center

• Driver "Update All" silent install, redesigned groupings for drivers, app OTA self-update, and an install splash during updates

Visual polish

• Box-art color drives the game-card specular rim; filter cards migrated to the shared specular engine (targets long-uptime GPU corruption); themed accent focus and a footer brand logo

You can download now via the apps "Update Center" or from the link below:

Download link: https://ota.winhanced.com/lg/Winhanced-Installer-0.9.8.9.exe

This started from a user saying that they wished they could see more of the game artwork when the game details window was open.

I took it to the logical extreme of that ask, but I do think it makes for a more immersive, more integrated feeling experience. hooked into this new game details panel I took several different app screens that already existed and integrated them directly into what I am calling the "Dynamic dock".

What here?

- Play button with launch options same as before
- You can still see download and install progress
- You can see the full artwork no matter if the dock is expanded or not
- Achievements for Steam, Xbox, GOG, and Playstation (NEW)
- The game options panel is now directly integrated
- The smart profiles panel is now directly integrated

Do look forward to this update coming in the next release of Winhanced!

Winhanced 0.9.8.7

Released 6/11/2026

Features

• App and Emulator libraries are now available for everyone. These 2 libraries are now available to all Winhanced users.
  • Apps Library Scan and add any app you want to the new Winhanced App Library (including Progressive Web Apps). This library is separated from the Other Library. 
    • How it works: Head over to Settings -> Libraries -> Apps and select the option “Scan apps”. This will open a dialog similar to the manual games library, where you can search for and check any app you want to be able to launch through Winhanced. Note that the app library will not show up if you don’t have any apps added

     

  • Emulator Library Winhanced now supports automatic import of 108 different emulators natively, and has the ability to manually scan for and add any emulators not in this list. 
    • How it works: like the different libraries within Winhanced if you have emulators already installed on your system Winhanced will automatically add from a list of 108 different emulators if it detects them installed to the new Emulator Library. Also within Settings -> Libraries -> Emulators, you can see a full list of your detected emulators, and have the ability to manually add any emulator that Winhanced currently does not pick up automatically (works like the app scanner dialog) 
    • Note: Winhanced does not natively import and display your ROMs like an emulator frontend. It only supports direct launch of your emulators or your emulator frontends like Emulation Station.

     

  • For both Apps and Emulator library Winhanced treats these more like shortcuts than game launches. To ensures that your native emulator apps and their button mappings don’t get overwritten by Winhanced.

 

Performance & Memory

• Much smoother library scrolling. every game tile used to re-render its entire card off-screen just to draw its shadow. Tiles now share a single shadow, so scrolling stays smooth.
• Specular highlight tiles are far lighter on the GPU. The glossy edge effect no longer spins up a separate GPU surface for every tile; it's created only when actually needed, so leaving the effect on no longer costs you frames while scrolling.
• Box art no longer re-decodes when you scroll back. Artwork you've already seen is cached to fit the whole library, so re-scrolling through tiles is instant instead of re-decoding each image.
• Lower input latency while navigating. Controller polling is now much faster (50 ms → 4 ms) for snappier menu movement.
• Fixed a freeze when scrolling quickly past animated game art. The app could lock up entirely while navigating fast through the library; it now stays responsive.
• Fixed a large memory leak from animated box art. Animated tiles were leaving graphics decoders behind on every Recent Games refresh, ballooning memory over repeated launch/close cycles (and visibly slowing the animated cards). Memory now stays flat and returns to baseline.

Game Launching & Sessions

• More reliable game-exit detection. Fixed a bug where a game could be reported as "exited" a few seconds after launch, and stopped the app from double-counting a single close.
• Cleaner exit visuals. The game's splash artwork now stays visible through the exit animation, the window no longer flashes when restoring from fullscreen, and the shrink animation collapses the artwork, dim, and overlay together as one piece.
• Widget keeps tracking a still-running game. If you close one game while another is still open, the HUD widget now stays pointed at the game that's still running instead of going blank.
• Suspend Game no longer freezes Steam/launchers. Suspending a quick-resume game could accidentally freeze Steam, other launchers, or OS processes; added guards so only the actual game is suspended.

Graphics

• Fixed frame-rate capping on Intel devices. Frame limiting now works correctly on Intel GPUs.

Smart Profiles

• Fixed a sign-in / auth path issue.
• Removed the Smart Profiles pop-up dialogs from the game launch flow so launching is cleaner
• Fixed a bug that could prevent saving a Smart Profiles deactivation.

App Startup

• Fixed a bug that was preventing Winhanced from launching at startup in desktop mode. Added helper text for when Winhanced is set as xbox home we disable the option in settings otherwise the 2 can compete leading to double launches

Stability & Shutdown

• Hardened closing the app during startup. Quitting while the app was still loading (library sync, friends, image caching) could crash the shutdown sequence and leave orphaned/zombie processes behind. Background loaders can no longer take down the teardown.

you can download the latest patch via the update center in the app or the link below.

Download Link: https://ota.winhanced.com/lg/Winhanced-Installer-0.9.8.7.exe

Released June 7, 2026

New for Early Access

RGB Lighting Control with Per-Game Profiles

Control your controller's RGB lighting directly from the general settings page, with full per-game profile support.

• MSI Claw: Off, Steady, Breath, Color Cycle, and Wave effects with per-zone color customization (sticks and ABXY buttons) and adjustable speed. Lighting persists in-game and re-applies automatically on reconnect.
• ROG Ally / Ally X  Off, Static, Match Theme (follows your app accent color), Breath, Color Cycle, and Wave with custom colors, speed, and direction.
• Lighting layouts let you save named setups or assign change per game. Lighting switches automatically when a game launches and restores when it exits.

Back Paddle and OEM Button Remapping flushed out further (MSI and ASUS)

Remap your handheld's back paddles and front OEM buttons directly in Winhanced.

Buttons can be mapped to:

• Controller buttons (back paddles): A, B, X, Y, LB, RB, LT, RT
• App actions: Open Game Bar, Task Switcher, Navigate to Library, Virtual Keyboard (toggle on-screen keyboard)
• Shortcuts: Steam Overlay (Shift+Tab), OptiScaler (Insert), Switch Window (Alt+Tab), Show Desktop (Win+D), Close Window (Alt+F4), Copy (Ctrl+C), Paste (Ctrl+V), Undo (Ctrl+Z), Enter, Esc.
• Or leave a button unbound entirely

Per-device support:

• ROG Ally / Ally X: Full support. Back paddles (M1/M2) map to controller buttons, app actions, or shortcuts, Command Center and Armoury Crate front buttons map to app actions and shortcuts.
• MSI Claw: Back paddles (M1/M2) map to controller buttons only. The Claw's paddle firmware has no keyboard path, so keyboard actions and shortcuts aren't available on paddles. MSI Center and Quick Settings front buttons map to app actions and shortcuts.
• Legion Go (Gen 1): Working. All five grip paddles (Y1-Y3, M2, M3) map to controller buttons, and Legion L/R front buttons map to app actions and shortcuts. Important: unbind your paddles in Legion Space first, or the mappings will conflict.
• Legion Go 2: In progress. The Go 2's firmware behaves differently from the Gen 1, and this build includes diagnostic logging to help us figure it out. If you have a Legion Go 2 and early access, your logs can directly help us finish this. Reach out.

New for Everyone

Controller and Input

• Prefer External Controller: a new HUD toggle that disables the built-in gamepad whenever an external controller is connected (ROG Ally and MSI Claw). The built-in controller re-enables automatically if your external pad disconnects, and the preference persists across restarts.
• Further enhanced Sleep wake logic for better reliability and stability.

 

Performance

• AutoPilot Dynamic TDP v5.3: fixed AutoPilot engaging in auto mode when a target FPS was set, fixed urgent power raises not triggering at lower FPS targets, and added Radeon Chill support.
• Added Intel GPU support with improved AutoPilot behavior.

Startup

• Cold-boot launch is dramatically faster. Sign-in now appears in under a second and the app is ready in about 5 seconds, down from up to 28 seconds of dead air previously.
• Fixed Armoury Crate services failing to initialize correctly after a fast boot.

Other Fixes

• Fixed Steam sign-in being lost on first launch after onboarding.
• Fixed the pinned filter row not showing controller focus on first page load.
• Fixed an issue where download guard was permanently setting the power button to do nothing and corrupting the Winhanced sleep power plan. You can download today via the update center in the app or via the download link below. Download: https://ota.winhanced.com/lg/Winhanced-Installer-0.9.8.5.exe

Well today really kinda sucked? a certificate expiriation..... even though i renewed last month and this shouldn't have happen..... caused some things to break chief among them was xbox mode app registration so i am pushing a hot fix 0.9.8.4 This patch includes:

• Certificate fix for FSE mode for both app and widget (you will need to delete Winahanced HUDprior to installing)
• Fix for BG3 not launching
• Some auto pilot tunings from AMD and Intel devices
• And because I was working on we are releasing back paddle support as an experimental feature into early access. it is currently confirmed working on MSI claw and Asus Ally X.

sorry about this ya'll! You can download momentarily in app via the update center or via the link below: Download links: App:https://ota.winhanced.com/lg/Winhanced-Installer-0.9.8.4.exe HUD: https://ota.winhanced.com/lg/WinhancedHUD.appinstaller

Winhanced 0.9.8.1

Released 5/31/2026

Features — for everyone

Now out of early access — available to everyone

- Friends Hub — see who's online and what they're playing across your connected accounts.

- Smart Profiles — per-game performance profiles, now unlocked for all users.

New device support

- MSI Claw is now fully supported — automatic detection, native TDP control, AutoPilot, and Smart Profiles. Driver and BIOS updates for the Claw are now available in the Update Center.

Steam

- Choose an install drive for Steam direct installs.

- Stream over Steam — launch and stream games you don't have installed locally.

PC Streaming

- Moonlight now works better with Winhanced, with automatic game adding to Sunshine, Wake-on-LAN, and seamless controller handoff.

Performance

- HDR on launch — automatically enable HDR when a game starts and turn it back off on exit. (Note: feature is built but will not be usable until a HUD update is made)

- Remap-OEM and Winhanced-TDP toggles are now linked and visually grouped so they stay in sync.

- AutoPilot improvements for more reliable power-profile switching.

Library

- Faster, smoother library scrolling and lower memory use, even with large collections.

New in early access

- SteamGridDB artwork browser — browse and apply custom game artwork directly in-app.

Bug fixes

MSI Claw

- Fixed OEM buttons double-toggling Game Bar; added button debouncing.

- Stopped the Xbox app and the MSI Quick Settings widget from auto-launching at boot.

- Fixed TDP not applying correctly on the Claw.

Streaming

- Repaired Steam/Epic/GOG launching through Sunshine after a Sunshine server update.

Library & Navigation

- Fixed controller focus and direct-launch on Apps/Emulators tiles.

- Corrected controller analog-stick navigation and home-screen focus when resuming.

- Fixed the settings side panel getting clipped when navigating in with the bumpers.

Performance / AutoPilot

- Fixed AutoPilot not always triggering a Windows power-profile change.

- Fixed game-exit not always restoring your normal profile.

- Smart Profiles now works for games with a missing/zero game ID.

Other

- "What's New" now pins an app-update card at the top when an update is available.

You can download this update now via the apps update center or via the link below

download link: https://ota.winhanced.com/lg/Winhanced-Installer-0.9.8.1.exe