Usage Proton and Wine Runtimes

Proton & Wine runtimes

Part of the Usage reference. · ← Previous: Configuration · Next: Windows Steam runtime →

Download and manage the Proton/Wine runtimes games launch through. Three sources are supported:

• Official Valve Proton: free Steam apps (Proton Experimental, 9.0, 8.0, …), installed through the normal content pipeline into steamapps/common (needs an active session).
• GE community builds: GloriousEggroll's Proton-GE and Wine-GE, downloaded from GitHub releases and extracted into compatibilitytools.d (no session needed).
• Proton-CachyOS: the CachyOS community build, downloaded from GitHub. Aurelia detects the host CPU and, when it supports AVX2, prefers the microarchitecture-optimized x86_64_v3 asset (labelled AVX2 optimized in proton list), otherwise the generic x86_64 build.

Modern unified Proton layouts (Proton 11+, GE, and Proton-CachyOS, which nest their libraries under files/lib/wine/… with WOW64 -unix/-windows split components) are discovered automatically, with strict 32-/64-bit filtering so a game never loads a wrong-bitness DLL.

The global default runtime is used when a game has no per-game version (config game) set. Installing a runtime makes it the new default (the "last downloaded" rule). Change it explicitly with proton default.

proton list

List installable runtimes (Valve + GE, the latter fetched from GitHub) alongside what's already installed, with the current default marked.

aurelia proton list [--installed] [--json]

Option	Description
-i, --installed	Only show runtimes installed on disk (skips the network lookup).

The text view is a SOURCE / NAME / SIZE / STATUS table, while --json emits { "default", "installed": [...], "available": [...] }. Set GITHUB_TOKEN to lift GitHub's unauthenticated rate limit if you hit it.

aurelia proton list
aurelia proton list --installed
aurelia proton list --json

proton install

Download and install a runtime by name, then set it as the global default. GE builds are fetched/extracted directly. An official Proton name installs via Steam (with streamed progress, like install).

aurelia proton install <VERSION>

aurelia proton install GE-Proton9-20     # GE build from GitHub
aurelia proton install "Proton 9.0"      # official Valve Proton via Steam
aurelia proton install Proton-CachyOS    # CachyOS build (auto-picks the x86_64_v3 asset on AVX2 hosts)

proton uninstall

Delete an installed custom (GE) runtime from compatibilitytools.d. Official Valve Proton is removed through Steam (or aurelia uninstall <app_id>), not here.

<VERSION> must be a single plain folder name as listed by proton list. Anything else (empty, ., .., or a path with separators) is rejected with invalid runtime name, so the command can never delete outside compatibilitytools.d.

aurelia proton uninstall <VERSION>

aurelia proton uninstall GE-Proton9-19

proton default

Set the global default Proton/Wine version (used by any game without a per-game override).

aurelia proton default <VERSION>

aurelia proton default GE-Proton9-20