AnyPS5 Desktop 0.1.8 (Windows + Linux preview)

AnyPS5 Desktop 0.1.8: online play and Play Together come to Windows and Linux, with Human Fall Flat's Host Public and Join working, stream P2P between players, Try Anyway on a game version mismatch, confirmations before you leave or remove someone, and an Update Required screen for retired versions. It pairs with AnyPS5-ARM 0.2.22, whose Windows and Linux engine (0130d3b81) carries the online bridge.

This is still an early preview. Please report what works and what doesn't in the issues; a game's crash report makes that easy.

What's new

• Online play (experimental), as on the Mac. Settings → AnyTogether → Online play (experimental), off by default, starts games with the launcher's online bridge: a loopback service on 127.0.0.1 the engine connects to with a fresh secret every start (both sides prove it, the secret never crosses the socket). Games see you signed in as your AnyTogether handle, with your AnyTogether friends, their profiles and presence, an empty block list and no communication restriction; Player Sessions (sessionManager) are kept by the launcher for the game run, with push events to the game when someone joins or leaves. Game packets ride WebRTC data channels to the other players of the AnyTogether game session, signalled through AnyTogether's gateway with its STUN and TURN, each player at the same virtual address on every computer, broadcasts and LAN-style discovery included; Windows, Linux and Mac launchers play together. Nothing ever goes to Sony; groups the launcher does not know answer "not offered", as offline. What each game asks for is written to its online log (Windows %LOCALAPPDATA%\AnyPS5\Logs\Online\<TitleID>.jsonl, Linux ~/.local/state/AnyPS5/online/), opened from Open online log; a crash report carries the last lines of it. Needs an engine with the online bridge: AnyPS5-ARM's Windows and Linux engine (0130d3b81, below) carries it; with an engine without it the setting changes nothing.
• Play Together, as on the Mac. In a party, Play Together: starts the game picked on Home for the party, with online play on for that game only (the setting stays as you left it). Everyone else in the party hears " started — Join"; Join checks you have the same game, version and AnyPS5 engine (or offers Unlock and Play / Update and Play, or says who should update), then starts it in the host's session so the games find each other on the virtual LAN. The party panel shows who plays and whether each connection is up; the host can hand out a join code for someone outside the party, and it ends for everyone when the host's game exits. Friends see "Playing together (2/8)".
• Human Fall Flat online: Host Public and Join work. Player Sessions answer as the platform does (201 for every request that makes something, with Content-Type and Content-Length), so hosting a public game no longer crashes it; a join into a session made on the host's machine is taken, and the session fetch after the join is answered from its session IDs header, so Join gets into the host's game.
• Games that stream between players play online too. Stream P2P sockets (TCP between players) ride the bridge and a second, reliable data channel next to the game's packets, byte for byte as the Mac launcher carries them, so a PC and a Mac stream to each other. A stream a game or player closed stays closed; one left open when a game or player goes is reset on the other side. A Mac that restarted its answer is met with a fresh connection.
• Try Anyway in Play Together. When only the game version keeps you out (never the engine), Join offers Try Anyway, and the party sees who tried anyway.
• Asks first. Leaving the party, removing someone from it, ending or leaving Play Together and removing a friend ask first, with Cancel focused; Back answers Cancel.
• Update Required. When AnyTogether retires this version, the launcher says so once, with its own download and restart, or the downloads page.
• The newest engine is offered. When a release keeps an older AnyPS5-ARM engine beside a newer one, the newest upload is the one offered.
• New engine for online play. AnyPS5-ARM 0.2.22 carries AnyPS5-toolkit-windows-0130d3b81.zip and AnyPS5-toolkit-linux-0130d3b81.tar.gz / .zip (built on Ubuntu 22.04, glibc 2.35): the online bridge and P2P relay over Winsock, stream P2P sockets, the Player Sessions fixes, and the phone controller over Winsock so it reaches Windows games. Settings → AnyPS5 Engine offers it.

Install

Windows 10/11 (x64): run AnyPS5-Desktop-Setup-0.1.8-x64.exe (per user, no admin needed; it installs over earlier versions). SmartScreen may say "Windows protected your PC": click More info → Run anyway. Portable: unzip AnyPS5-Desktop-windows-x64.zip and run anyps5_desktop.exe (SDL2.dll and the Visual C++ runtime are beside it). Already on 0.1.3 or later: the launcher offers this update by itself.

Linux (x64):

• AppImage: chmod +x AnyPS5-Desktop-0.1.8-x86_64.AppImage, then run it.
• Ubuntu/Debian: sudo apt install ./anyps5-desktop_0.1.8_amd64.deb.
• Archive: unpack the .tar.gz and run AnyPS5-Desktop/anyps5_desktop.
• The launcher runs on glibc 2.34+ (Ubuntu 22.04 or newer). AnyPS5-ARM's Linux engine needs glibc 2.35+ (Ubuntu 22.04 or newer); upstream AnyPS5's Linux engine needs glibc 2.38+ (Ubuntu 24.04, Debian 13, Fedora 39 or newer).

Then open the launcher, press Download the AnyPS5 engine and choose your games folder. Online play is in Settings → AnyTogether → Online play (experimental), off by default; it needs an engine with the online bridge (AnyPS5-ARM's). Nothing ever goes to Sony.

Checksums: SHA256SUMS lists every file, and SHA256SUMS.sig is its Ed25519 signature with the AnyPS5 release key (f8fe0d55df962105).

Requirements: a CPU and GPU that AnyPS5 supports (see upstream), and decrypted copies of games you own.