AnyPS5 Desktop 0.1.18 (Windows + Linux preview)

AnyPS5 Desktop 0.1.18 is the biggest update yet: Save Sync, Theme Studio and the Theme Hub, share play, Remote Play, broadcasting, Find Players, activity and leaderboards, battery and heat profiles, Discord status, presence statuses and more. It pairs with AnyPS5-ARM 0.2.31, whose Windows and Linux engine (cadb758d4) is built from the release tag.

This is still an early preview. None of this release's new features were tested on real Windows or Linux hardware yet, so please report what works and what doesn't in the issues.

What's new

• Save Sync in Settings → Behaviour: each game's saves and trophies stay the same on your other computers. They are brought over before a game starts and sent after it ends. It works through a folder your computers share (OneDrive, Dropbox, Syncthing or a network drive, and iCloud Drive where iCloud for Windows set it up), in the Mac launcher's own layout, so a Mac and a PC can share one folder. Signed in to AnyTogether, it can go through your AnyTogether cloud instead, in parts that pick up where they stopped. When both sides changed, the launcher asks which to keep, and the other stays as a backup. Cloud Storage shows each game's cloud saves, with Restore and Delete. While saves sync, the game does not start twice and the profile does not change. A server that keeps no files yet hides the cloud choices.

• Settings → Battery & Heat. On battery (or with battery saver on) and when the processor runs hot, a game can be held to 30, 40 or 45 FPS, its frame generation paused and the launcher's Glass blur and animations turned down. Plugged in and cool, nothing changes. The cap and the pause change at once, during a game too, with the AnyPS5-ARM engine. A note shows over a game that runs hot, and Undo is in the quick menu. The battery is read with GetSystemPowerStatus on Windows and from /sys on Linux. The heat comes from the processor's sensors on Linux. Windows tells programs no temperature, so there only the battery profile works, and the page says so. The profiles are the Mac's, with its settings keys.

• Theme Hub, as on the Mac. Settings → Appearance → Themes lists the themes people share on AnyTogether's Hub, and one choice downloads, installs and uses a theme. Share on the Hub uploads the theme in use with a picture in its colours while you are signed in. A theme shared before goes up as its new version. Signed out, it saves the file and opens the page to send it from. An anyps5://theme/<ID> link installs that theme from the Hub.

• Theme Studio. Make your own look in Settings → Appearance → Theme Studio, with the launcher showing each change behind it: the motion, the colour, the highlight, the lightness, the accent, a picture or video behind it all, and menu music. Save as a File… makes one .anyps5theme file. It is the same file as the Mac launcher's, so themes move between the two.

• Theme files open with the launcher. Double-click a .anyps5theme and the launcher installs it and puts it on. A launcher already open takes it. Settings → Appearance → Themes lists the built-in looks and yours, and has Install from a File….

• Your own picture or video as the background, and your own menu music, in Settings → Appearance. A video loops without sound. It plays with ffmpeg, beside the launcher or installed, as clips do. The menu music plays when the selected game has no song of its own.

• Update Channel in Settings → About: Stable or Nightly. On Nightly the engine picker also offers the nightly AnyPS5-ARM engine, built from main on the days it changes, once it is signed. Stable never offers going back to an older engine than the one in use.

• Activity, leaderboards and notifications from AnyTogether, as on the Mac. Friends → Activity shows what your friends have been playing: trophies, platinums, first plays, long sessions, new friends and milestones. Each item takes one of four reactions. Left and right pick one, Enter gives it and △ opens the person's profile. Friends → Leaderboard ranks trophy points among friends or everyone, with your own place. A game's settings open its own board by points, play time or completion. A bell in the top bar, while you are signed in, holds AnyTogether's notifications with the unread count. Choosing one marks it read and opens where it points.

• How did it run? After a game of a minute or more, the launcher asks once per game and launcher version how far it got. One choice sends the report to AnyTogether's compatibility list with the launcher and engine versions, the computer and the system. A game's settings show what the community found on Windows or Linux and send a report any time. Don't ask after games turns the question off.

• Find Players, as on the Mac. Friends → Find Players shows people looking for a group, filtered by game, purpose, language and what starts soon. Select a post to say I'm in, and select it again to take that back. Find players for a game, in its settings or on the board, posts what you want to play with the slots, languages, start, how long it stays up and a note. My Posts lists who wants in, to let them into your party or say not now. Public Parties lists parties their leader opened to everyone, to ask to join or walk in. People suggests players to add. A game's hub shows who plays it now, its posts and parties, its leaderboard and how it runs. A party's leader can list it in public from the party panel. Settings → AnyTogether chooses whether people who don't know you find you, and the languages you play in. Share plays under Live now are left out, since this launcher has no share play to watch yet.

• Share play: friends watch your game, and up to three play along. While a game runs, the quick menu has Share for it (signed in to AnyTogether). Friends watch live in a browser on anytogether.net. Let Them Play hands a friend player 2, 3 or 4, and their controller reaches the game through the phone server's bridges, so it needs the phone server on and the AnyPS5-ARM engine. Invite online friends, open it to friends, choose how many may watch, and stop it from the same menu. It ends with the game. The picture and sound go from this PC straight to each friend over WebRTC, as from the Mac. Watching a friend's share play in this launcher is not here yet: use the website for that.

• Remote Play: the game's picture and sound on the phone. The phone app's Remote Play now works with the Windows and Linux launcher, with the same app as on the Mac. The launcher records the game's window with ffmpeg and encodes it at once on the graphics card (NVIDIA, Intel, AMD, or VA-API on Linux) when it can, and with x264 otherwise. Sound comes from the game alone on Windows 11 and on PulseAudio or PipeWire. Older Windows 10 sends everything the PC plays. It needs ffmpeg beside AnyPS5 or on the PATH, and an X11 session on Linux. A key frame comes every second, so a picture broken by a lost packet mends within a second.

• Broadcasting to Twitch, YouTube or any RTMP server. Set the service, the stream key and the quality in Settings → Broadcasting. The key shows as dots and is kept in a file only your account can read. Go live from the quick menu while a game plays, or with Go Live on the phone. The launcher shows how long you have been on air, the bit rate and dropped frames, and tries again a few times when the connection drops. It uses ffmpeg, with the graphics card's encoder when one works.

• Clips carry the game's sound, and the replay buffer encodes on the graphics card when it can, which takes far less of the processor. Create on the phone's pad saves a clip too.

• Frame Generation in a game's settings: a generated frame between each two of the game's, with vertical sync on while it is. It needs the AnyPS5-ARM engine, and the row says so on upstream's.

• Export and Import Settings in a game's settings: the game's keys and every setting in one JSON file. The file is the Mac launcher's own format, so it moves between Windows, Linux and macOS. A resolution only comes along when the game offers it.

• anyps5:// links and Copy Link. Copy Link in a game's settings puts its link on the clipboard. Opening anyps5://game/<title ID> shows the game, anyps5://play/<title ID> plays it, and anyps5://library and anyps5://settings open those screens, the same links as on the Mac. A link opened while the launcher runs goes to the open launcher. The launcher registers the links for your user at start (the registry on Windows, a desktop entry on Linux), and the installer and the .deb do it too.

• Choose the screenshots folder in Settings → Captures. Screenshots, trophy pictures and clips go there, and Show Screenshots opens it.

• Unreal games show what each button does. A game's Controls page reads the game's own input settings from its .pak files and writes the game's action under each pad button, such as Jump under Cross. It reads them once, the first time the page opens. Games with encrypted paks, Oodle compression or only Enhanced Input assets show nothing extra.

• Your game on Discord. With Discord open, your profile shows the game you play and for how long, as the Mac launcher does. A game Discord knows shows under its own name and icon. In a party it says In a party with the party's size, and a Join on AnyTogether button opens the party's join page. You still say yes to whoever asks. Both are on by default and switch off in Settings → Behaviour: Show the game you play on Discord and Show a Join button on Discord.

• Show me as Online, Idle, Do Not Disturb or Invisible, in Settings → AnyTogether. Friends who are idle show a yellow moon, and Do Not Disturb a red dot with a bar. Your own dot and word show on the home screen, your profile and the account rows.

• A translation in the Languages folder only changes the texts it has. Before, a file there replaced the built-in language whole, and every text it lacked showed in English, the home screen's hints too. A regional file (de-AT) now falls back to its base language before English, and a file saved with a byte order mark is read.

• A controller's battery shows as a level. SDL2 reports one of four levels, never a percentage, so the pill showed a made-up number. It now shows a battery with its bars and a word: Nearly empty, Low, Medium or Full.

• Engine. AnyPS5-ARM 0.2.31's Windows and Linux engine (cadb758d4, Settings → AnyPS5 Engine) has the same engine code as 0.2.30's. The online, remote pad, AppContent, UserService and power control tests pass on both.

• Built by CI. All five files of this release come from the repository's CI, from the release commit.

Install

Windows 10/11 (x64): run AnyPS5-Desktop-Setup-0.1.18-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-0.1.18-x86_64.AppImage, then run it.
• Ubuntu/Debian: sudo apt install ./anyps5-desktop_0.1.18_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 (or update it in Settings → AnyPS5 Engine) and choose your games folder. For clips, broadcasting and Remote Play, install ffmpeg (Windows: winget install ffmpeg, or put ffmpeg.exe beside the launcher. Linux: sudo apt install ffmpeg). Online play is in Settings → AnyTogether → Online play (experimental), off by default. 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.