Minecraft Bedrock handheld port 2.0.0-rc.12

muOS now plays Bedrock, with no PC involved. Testing pre-release — see what was and was not verified at the bottom before installing.

NOT AN OFFICIAL MINECRAFT PRODUCT. NOT APPROVED BY OR ASSOCIATED WITH MOJANG OR MICROSOFT. No game files are included — you supply your own legally owned Bedrock APK.

If you are on muOS

rc.11 and everything before it opened to a black screen on muOS and dropped back to the menu. Nothing had crashed: no Bedrock version was installed, the launcher said so, and muOS renders no console for it to say it on. That is fixed, along with everything that was hiding behind it.

On an RG34XX-SP running muOS 2601.0 (JACARANDA) the port now signs you in to Google on the handheld, downloads your purchase, installs it and plays it. From that session's boot report:

cfw=muos (explicit, CFW_NAME=muOS, os=muOS)
graphics=backend=mali compositor=none
audio=backend=pipewire alsa=1 pulse=0 pipewire=1
failsafe=rung=0 (tuned) floor=0 pinned=0
bedrock=1.16.221.01 code=971622101 abi=arm64
exit_status=0 after 488s (success)

Controls and sound both work.

Getting your APK on the device

Get APK from Google Play in the launcher menu signs you in on Google's own page, downloads the build you choose, validates it and installs it. You need Wi-Fi, about 1.5 GB free for the one-time browser runtime, and the Google account that owns Minecraft. Your password is only ever typed into Google's page.

This is a prototype, limited to 64-bit H700 devices on muOS, Knulli or Batocera — RG34XX-SP, RG35XX-H/Plus/2024 and relatives. The tile is greyed out elsewhere, which is not a bug: the sign-in browser needs a graphics path only those devices are proven on. Everyone else uses the Windows or Linux helper below, as before.

What was actually wrong

Eight faults, each hiding the next. In order:

1. PortMaster resolved to a stub. muOS ships /roms/ports/PortMaster holding only a control.txt that redirects at the real install. The launcher discarded that redirect and found no LOVE runtime, which removed the only route to installing an APK.
2. The message explaining it was invisible. show_msg wrote to /dev/tty1; muOS binds no framebuffer console. Messages now fall back to a LOVE frame, then to painting /dev/fb0 directly with the port's own font.
3. The downloader was gated to Knulli and Batocera, and behind the gate sat a real dependency: muOS has no Mesa. The same upstream package is now fetched and SHA-256 verified the way the Weston runtime already was.
4. Two firmware gates had drifted — the menu greyed the tile out from its own copy of the list. A test now fails if the two disagree.
5. muOS ships no 64-bit libcom_err.so.2, which the sign-in helper needs. The pinned Weston package carries it.
6. Crusty was never told where SDL is, so the sign-in helper died on its first SDL call, on every firmware — nothing had been setting $CRUSTY_LIBSDL.
7. The sign-in browser rendered nothing. Its Chromium renderer had no capabilities and could not allocate the shared memory a composited page arrives in.
8. Two more on the way in: a second muOS frontend drew over the running port and stole its input, and the sign-in window could not find the gamepad, because muOS calls it muOS-Keys where Knulli calls it Anbernic RG34XX-SP Controller.

Full detail, with the measurements behind each one, is in CHANGELOG.md and PR #13.

Which file do I download?

Download	Who needs it
minecraftbedrock-standard-v2.0.0-rc.12.zip	Normal single-screen PortMaster devices; aarch64 and armhf
minecraftbedrock-rgds-v2.0.0-rc.12.zip	Anbernic RG DS on ROCKNIX/Sway; arm64 only
mcbedrock-get-windows-v2.0.0-rc.12.zip	Fetch your Google Play purchase from a Windows PC
mcbedrock-get-linux-x86_64-v2.0.0-rc.12.AppImage	The same helper for x86_64 Linux

Extract one port archive at the root of the storage holding your ROM folders. Do not use GitHub's generated Source code archives. SHA256SUMS.txt verifies every file here.

What was verified, and what was not

Verified on hardware for this release: the muOS session above, end to end. Knulli and ROCKNIX reference devices continue to pass.

Still pending, unchanged from rc.11: the final R36S and revised RGDS physical acceptance rows. Nothing here is promoted to stable or newly labelled Validated.

Known limits: the failsafe ladder's FS-1, FS-2, FS-5 and FS-9 still need firmwares nobody on the project owns — an armhf 1.16.x build, the rk3326 and generic affinity profiles, and the ArkOS/KMSDRM display path. A volunteer on dArkOS running Self test remains the single most useful thing anyone could contribute.

If the port does not work on your device, run Self test from the launcher menu first. It prints a short redacted report that is safe to paste into an issue.