Releases: Shirowwww/Achievement-Watcher-Next
Release list
Achievement Watcher Next 3.10.4
Achievement Watcher Next 3.10.4
The release that opens on the library it already had, lists the games your Epic and Xbox accounts
own even when none of them is installed here, and stops keeping your sign-ins behind a passphrase
anyone could read in the source.
Highlights
- Epic and Xbox PC list what your account owns. Both sources offered an on/off switch that only
ever meant "the games installed on this PC", so a machine with no Epic game installed showed no
Epic game at all. They now open as a dropdown with the same three states as Steam - None,
Installed, Owned - and Owned brings the account library, each game with its full
achievement list, its unlock state and its rarity. The Xbox import, which answered "0 created, 0
updated, 0 failed" for everyone whose games are not installed here, brings them back with their
artwork. - What AW Next stores on your PC is encrypted with a key only your Windows account can read. The
emulator Steam password and the Epic and Xbox sign-in tokens were scrambled with a passphrase
written in the source of a public repository, which is obfuscation, not encryption. Each install
now generates its own key and keeps it under Windows DPAPI. Existing files are re-written in the
new format on their own; nothing has to be entered again. - A launch that changed nothing no longer rebuilds the library. Every start walked every game
folder and reloaded every game to arrive at the list it had shown the moment before: the same 155
games are now ready in 0.3 s instead of 6.5 s, and the window itself is on screen in 0.6 s instead
of 1.5 s. Anything installed, removed or unlocked while the app was closed still triggers a real
scan. - One game is one tile, and the record kept is the useful one. A game owned on an account and
installed here showed up twice - the local copy at 0%, and the store entry holding the unlocks.
The two records are merged now, so unlocks earned on a store and unlocks earned on an installed
copy add up on the same tile. - The game screen carries what the tile carries. Where these achievements come from, whether
they are healthy, and what the store says you own were all readable in the library list and
nowhere else. The same badges now sit beside the game's name. - The update prompt can show you what is in the version first. A View changelog button opens
the release notes and brings the question back once you have read them.
See the full changelog
for the complete list, including the Epic and cover fixes, the Game Health repairs and the rest of
the startup work.
Install
Download Achievement.Watcher.Setup.3.10.4.exe from the
v3.10.4 release, or let
the app update itself.
The .blockmap and latest.yml assets are used by automatic updates.
Achievement Watcher Next 3.10.3
Achievement Watcher Next 3.10.3
A hotfix for the antivirus alert people were getting with no explanation, and for the documentation
that never told them what it was.
Highlights
- The antivirus alert is announced before it happens. Recording achievements for a game with no
store client running means putting a stand-in library beside it, and replacing a game's Steam or
Ubisoft library is exactly what detection engines look for. With automatic repair on, that writing
happens during a scan, so the alert arrived with nothing on screen to connect it to a setting
switched on days earlier. Turning the setting on now says so first and offers to allow the folder
in Windows Defender before anything is written; if it was already on, the same thing is said once,
the first time it is about to act, with the exclusion and the off switch beside it. - A quarantine during an automatic repair is no longer silent. Only the downloaded Goldberg
package was reported, so a blocked Ubisoft loader failed with nothing said at all. - Nothing is written, or announced, behind a hidden window. AW Next spends most of its life in
the tray, where a dialog is one nobody can see and an answer that never comes. Automatic repair
waits for the window to be open rather than stalling on a modal nobody can answer, or repairing
games unannounced. - The false positive is documented where people look for it. The README, the FAQ and
Troubleshooting now say what gets flagged and why, what triggers it, that nothing is written unless
you asked, what an exclusion does and does not cover, and how to check the files yourself.
See the full changelog
for the complete list.
Install
Download Achievement.Watcher.Setup.3.10.3.exe from the
v3.10.3 release, or let
the app update itself.
The .blockmap and latest.yml assets are used by automatic updates.
Achievement Watcher Next 3.10.2
Achievement Watcher Next 3.10.2
A follow-up to 3.10.1: the square game logos are back, Ubisoft games that silently never asked for
their achievements can be unblocked, and the repair path no longer claims fixes it did not make.
Highlights
- Game logos came back empty. A lint pass left a block comment open, which turned the two
declarations below it into prose. Every square logo went with them: the page header, the
notification card, the overlay and the test notification. - Ubisoft games that never ask for their achievements can be unblocked. The loader answers the
game's session request from an ini key it leaves empty, and several titles read that emptiness as
"signed out" and stop calling the achievement API at all, so the setup looks perfect and records
nothing. AW Next now offers a placeholder session, only when the loader log shows the game asked
for nothing, and offers to take it back out if that did not change anything. - A game's own icon is used when it is a good one. An executable carrying a real 256px icon now
provides the game's logo ahead of anything looked up, including for games with no store artwork at
all. - The offline achievements fix is honest about what it did. It was offered on older Ubisoft
loaders that have no such setting, which were then blamed for a line that did nothing; that line is
taken back out on sight. A repair also refreshes the copy of the achievement list the loader seeds
once and never rereads, so a rewritten list reaches the game. - An antivirus is named as an antivirus. Windows Defender takes these loaders as a whole; that
now gets the explanation, an offer to allow the folder in Defender and a button to put the files
back, instead of a file picker asking for a package you never had. - Two silent bugs found by the new lint pass. Both SSE parsers reversed a four-byte slice, which
is a view over the same bytes, so a second parse read every CRC and unlock time byte-swapped, and
four Watchdog listeners bound to a callback parameter instead of the monitor module. - The Steam parser threw whenever it ran outside the window, once per game.
See the full changelog
for the complete list.
Install
Download Achievement.Watcher.Setup.3.10.2.exe from the
v3.10.2 release, or let
the app update itself.
The .blockmap and latest.yml assets are used by automatic updates.
Achievement Watcher Next 3.10.1
Achievement Watcher Next 3.10.1
Ubisoft games from before 2019 are supported at last, Games for Windows LIVE titles report their
achievements, the first scan after a launch is as fast as the ones after it, and the websocket
broadcast listens on the local machine again.
Highlights
- Many more Ubisoft games can be set up. Titles from before 2019 call the older Uplay R1 API and
can never load an R2 loader, so Assassin's Creed Origins, Odyssey, Unity, Rogue and Black Flag, the
Far Cry and Watch Dogs entries of that era and the South Park games could not be repaired at all.
AW Next now reads which generation a game asks for, ships the matching loader and watches its save
folder. Titles whose achievement names carry no objective number - Brawlhalla, The Crew 2, ZOMBI,
Champions of Anteria, Roller Champions and the Ubisoft-published indies - are matched by title
against Ubisoft's own public achievement data instead of being refused outright. - Games for Windows LIVE games report their achievements. A GFWL title running XLiveLessNess kept
its unlocks in a profile AW Next could not read, so the whole era was invisible. Those profiles are
now read, and the achievement list, its texts and its icons come out of the game's own executable,
so nothing has to be downloaded. FINAL FANTASY VII (2013), which predates Steamworks achievements
and keeps its 36 unlocks in a bitfield beside its saves, is read too. - The first scan after a launch is as fast as the ones after it. Where a game's schema sits on
disk and which AppID a title resolves to were remembered in memory only and paid for again on every
start; both are now kept on disk. The Steam ownership call gives up after fifteen seconds rather
than holding the library forever. - AW Next costs less while it sits in the tray. Working sets are emptied on the way into idle, the
overlay hotkey no longer keeps a PowerShell host alive for the session, and the background library
scan holds while a game is running. - A connected Steam account stays connected. The access token Steam hands out lasts a day, so
Settings reported the account disconnected every morning and asked for the password again. A new
token is now minted silently from the refresh token, with no window and no sign-in. - The websocket broadcast is back on
127.0.0.1. The Settings row is labelled
Websocket @localhost:8082and the guides promised the local machine, but the listener was given
no host at all - which in Node means every interface. Anything on the same network that Windows
Firewall let through could read the feed, unauthenticated, and it carries game and achievement
names. If you deliberately served it to another machine, that now needs an explicit host. - Every theme is editable. Selecting any theme - a built-in palette, one you saved, one somebody
sent you - opens the editor on its colours. Save theme beside the name field keeps it: the same
name updates that theme, a new one creates a second and leaves the first alone. An imported theme
also survives a restart now. - Updating no longer looks like a crash. A chip beside the Watchdog indicator shows the download
percentage - with a Cancel while the file is downloading - then that the update is ready, then that
it is installing. The installer runs with its own progress window instead of nothing at all. - Smart Find reads your launchers, and emulator data folders are resolved instead of assumed:
RPCS3 followsvfs.yml, ShadPS4 itsuserfolder, Xenia itsstorage_root. - HDR souvenirs no longer blow out, and are written about 1.6x faster.
- Translation fixes across nineteen languages, and the site is fully translated into nine -
Italian, Polish and Japanese joining the six it already had.
See the full changelog
for the complete list.
Install
Download Achievement.Watcher.Setup.3.10.1.exe from the
v3.10.1 release, or let
the app update itself.
The .blockmap and latest.yml assets are used by automatic updates.
Achievement Watcher Next 3.10.0
Achievement Watcher Next 3.10.0
A big release: portable themes and a real website with two community galleries, an optional Steam
account connection, per-game notification appearance, and a long list of fixes gathered along the way.
Highlights
-
Themes are now one portable file, shared through a new community theme gallery.
Export packs the colours, gradients, effects and any background image into a single.awtheme;
Import previews it before installing anything, and nothing it carries can run code or reach the network. -
A real website, not just a documentation folder:
https://shirowwww.github.io/Achievement-Watcher-Next/ now has a home page, the
preset gallery and the theme gallery above, live notification previews, and guides in six languages besides English. -
An optional Steam account connection. AW Next never sees your password - the sign-in page is
Valve's own. Connecting reads achievements from a private profile, marks games shared through
Steam Family, and can hide games no longer in your library, never a game installed here or shared with you. -
Each game can carry its own notification appearance - preset, position, sound and scale -
instead of only the global setting, with the same previews as the main notification settings. -
Artwork the game already has on disk is used before the network (issue #38), and Steam artwork
behind a hashed CDN path now resolves too, instead of leaving a blank tile. -
The preset designer got easier to search and more to build with: a filter, group jump chips,
undo/redo on whole designs, a background picture of your own, an outline and a pulsing glow, six
new starting presets, and a Steam Achievement Notifier.sanimporter. -
The library gained six reusable views - landscape and portrait cards, compact variants, list
and details - and a game confirmed bought on an official store now carries its own small badge. -
Screenshot souvenirs handle Windows HDR automatically, tone-mapping to a normal PNG instead of
a washed-out capture. -
Slovak, Dutch, Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, Finnish, Greek, Indonesian and Vietnamese join the
bundled interface languages, and RPCS3 trophies now raise live notifications like the other
console emulators.
See the full changelog for the complete list, including the many smaller fixes gathered since 3.9.2.
Install
Download Achievement.Watcher.Setup.3.10.0.exe from the v3.10.0 release, or let the app update itself.
The .blockmap and latest.yml assets are used by automatic updates.
Achievement Watcher Next 3.9.2
Achievement Watcher Next 3.9.2
A bug-fix release. Thanks to everyone who filed a report - several of these came straight from an
issue.
Highlights
-
A wedged Watchdog monitor is detected. The old check only proved the monitor process still
existed, not that it was doing anything - a blocking call or a runaway loop kept it looking alive
while it tracked nothing. The monitor now reports a heartbeat, and the title bar shows starting,
running, unresponsive or stopped; a manual restart repaints it immediately. -
A portable release with no emulator config is discovered. The 3.9.1 portable probing was
anchored on the emulator ini, so a release that ships none - or whose ini was deleted - fell
outside it. Known save-tree layouts are walked directly instead, so the game is found without any
config, and a refused folder now says which kind of folder it is instead of just "invalid". (#32) -
The Steam API check bypass no longer breaks achievements on games that don't need it. It is
meant to redirect a SteamStub integrity re-check back to the original DLL; without a re-check to
absorb that redirect it landed on the game's real runtime load instead, and Steam's own "no
license" prompt won before the GBE Fork DLL could. It now only runs when a SteamStub was actually
detected. -
RLD! saves that record an unlock through Time alone are read correctly, instead of every
achievement in that save reading as locked. -
Icon downloads used during a repair or a background re-check try the same CDN mirrors as a
normal icon fetch, instead of giving up and marking the art unobtainable the moment the raw
schema URL 404s - routine for a new appid whose achievement art isn't on Steam's primary CDN yet. -
A Goldberg save no longer loses progress to its own unwritten twin folder. The automatic
emulator fix pre-creates both the GBE Fork and classic Goldberg save roots, since it can't know in
advance which one the installed build will write to; whichever folder actually holds
achievements.jsonis now the one that's kept. -
Clicking an achievement toast lands on that achievement's row, and the cover picker keeps the
schema's default cover as its own tile once a per-game override is set. -
Autoscroll on a game page is smooth again, without the per-frame viewport cost the 3.9.1 fix
for #35 introduced.
Install
Download Achievement.Watcher.Setup.3.9.2.exe from the v3.9.2 release, or let the app update itself.
The .blockmap and latest.yml assets are used by automatic updates.
Achievement Watcher Next 3.9.1
Achievement Watcher Next 3.9.1
A bug-fix release built from the reports that came in after 3.9.0. Thanks to everyone who took the
time to file one - each of these came from a detailed issue.
Highlights
-
Your library is the same on every scan again. A game whose metadata lookup failed or timed out
was dropped from the list entirely, so the same disk produced a different handful of games each
time and a missing card looked exactly like a game that was never installed. What is on disk now
decides that a game exists; the online lookup only decorates it. An entry that could not be
described yet is listed anyway and fills itself in on a later scan. (#33) -
No more cards titled with a number. When the name lookup came back empty, the bare Steam AppID
became the title even though the real name was usually already in hand - in the app-list response,
in the cache from the previous scan, or in the game's own install folder. All of those are asked
first now, and a nameless record is never cached or handed to the Watchdog, so one bad response
cannot keep a numeric title alive scan after scan. (#34) -
Middle-button autoscroll is smooth. A rare achievement row runs an animation that Chromium
cannot composite, so every rare row in a game's list repainted on the main thread every frame,
on screen or not. Off-screen rows are skipped now. (#35) -
Updates install again when you ask for them. A finished download was held back whenever a game
was running, and a permanently resident Steam app (a controller utility like DSX, an overlay tool)
counts as a running game for as long as the machine is on. On those setups every check downloaded
the update, none of them installed it, and nothing said why. An update you explicitly ask for now
installs regardless, and one genuinely held back for a game announces itself. -
Portable and repack releases are found. A CODEX/RUNE/CPY release installed the usual way
writes its saves to a shared public folder, which was scanned. A portable one keeps that same tree
next to the game instead, which was not, so the game had no card at all and looked exactly like a
game that was never installed. Those layouts are checked now. (#32) -
Changing a setting no longer interrupts achievement watching. The Settings tabs save on every
keystroke, and each save restarted the Watchdog - a dozen restarts for one gesture, with an unlock
landing in one of the gaps getting missed. A burst of changes is now a single restart. -
"Choose another cover" opens in about half a second and offers up to 48 covers instead of 8,
including Steam's own store artwork, with the landscape gallery finally populated. -
Lighter in the tray. Playtime tracking no longer spawns a process every three seconds: idle
CPU use drops from about 7% of a core to 0.4%.
Install
Download Achievement.Watcher.Setup.3.9.1.exe from the v3.9.1 release, or let the app update itself.
The .blockmap and latest.yml assets are used by automatic updates.
Achievement Watcher Next 3.9.0
Achievement Watcher Next 3.9.0
Achievement Watcher is now Achievement Watcher Next — AW Next. This release consolidates the
work of the whole 3.x cycle behind a new name, a new icon set and an interface you can scale to how
much control you actually want.
Highlights
-
Notifications that pick their own transport. The new Automatic mode shows the in-game
overlay when it can be seen and a Windows notification when it cannot — never both, and never a
silent miss. Overlay, Windows notification and Both are still there if you prefer to decide. -
Game Health. Every game now answers the question "why isn't this tracking?" itself: one clear
state, the checks behind it, and only the repairs that genuinely apply to that game — locating it,
rewriting its achievement data, restoring an emulator file or correcting a mismatched game ID. -
A new preset library and a real Preset Designer. Nine redesigned popups replace the old
seventeen, each with a proper 100% completion state. The designer builds your own with ordinary
controls and previews the real notification — same page, same engine a game gets — at any screen
size. Share the result as a single.awpresetfile. -
Simple and Advanced modes. Pick one during setup. Simple keeps the everyday settings; Advanced
restores the full control panel. Nothing is hidden that would explain a missing game. -
Reset and restore achievements. Replay a game from zero across every local source, always with
a backup taken first, and put it back with one action. -
Faster where you feel it. The library no longer refreshes itself minutes after launch, each
achievement folder is watched once instead of twice, and startup does markedly less blocking work.
Upgrading from 3.8.x
Install over your existing version — nothing else to do.
Your settings, presets, themes, covers, backups, souvenir screenshots and playtime history are
carried across to the new %APPDATA%\Achievement Watcher Next folder on first launch. The previous
folder is left completely intact, so you can still go back. Shortcuts, the "start with Windows"
entry and automatic updates continue to work unchanged.
Install
Download Achievement.Watcher.Setup.3.9.0.exe from the
v3.9.0 release.
The .blockmap and latest.yml assets are used by automatic updates.
The project repository is now Achievement-Watcher-Next. Existing installs update normally —
GitHub redirects the previous address permanently.
Achievement Watcher 3.8.6
Achievement Watcher 3.8.6
A feature and reliability release: keyless Steam schemas, a clearer Help and cache-management
experience, safer updates, fixes for custom notification placement and scaled displays, plus
hardened HTML fallback sanitization.
Highlights
- Keyless Steam schemas. Achievement metadata now uses the official public endpoint first, then
SteamHunters, SteamCommunity and the existing browser fallback. No Steam Web API key is required. - Clear caches. Settings → Advanced can remove disposable updater, schema, icon, cover and
emulator-tool caches while preserving settings, saves, backups, themes and manually seeded files. - Better Help and localization. Help reflects the actual hotkey, controller layout, notification
mode, theme and enabled sources, with searchable localized guides. - Safer updates. Differential downloads are disabled; a checksum mismatch clears the poisoned
updater cache and retries a complete download once. If that also fails, the app explains the cache
location and offers the official release page. - Custom notification placement fixed. Saved positions now stay on their original display and
use full display bounds, so a scaled popup can sit flush over the taskbar again (issue #25). - HTML fallback hardened. Malformed nested markup is stripped with a stateful scanner, and
Markdown anchor parsing has matching regression coverage. - Reliability and privacy. The release includes the related cache-recovery fix (issue #24),
safer process launches, redacted diagnostics, localized dialogs and more resilient schema and
library fallbacks.
Install
Download Achievement.Watcher.Setup.3.8.6.exe from the
v3.8.6 release.
The .blockmap and latest.yml assets are used by automatic updates. Upgrading preserves data.
See the changelog for the full list of changes.
Achievement Watcher 3.8.5
Achievement Watcher 3.8.5
A feature release: full gamepad control for the app and overlay, layer-based themes with ten new
palettes, playtime tracking for non-Steam games, faster library scans, and a batch of controller,
detection and appearance fixes.
Highlights
- Control the whole app with a controller. Beyond the overlay, a gamepad can now navigate the
library, game details, settings and searches. Controller settings moved to their own tab with a
button-layout selector (Auto/Xbox/PlayStation/Switch), fully configurable bindings, and a
Focus overlay when it opens option for games that pause on focus loss. Settings can also send
Escape to the game when opening the overlay with a controller, so many games pause automatically. - New layer-based theme system. Ten new built-in themes - Catppuccin Mocha, Rosé Pine,
Synthwave '84, Everforest, Cyberpunk, Ember, Ocean, Hacker, Burgundy and Champagne - replace the
earlier Solarized/One Dark/Monokai set, and the theme picker gained a dropdown alongside the
arrow controls. - Non-Steam playtime. Ubisoft Connect, Uplay R2, Epic, GOG, EA, Xbox PC and standalone installs
now show tracked playtime and last-played date on the achievements page, matching Steam games. - Faster, smoother library. The overlay window stays hidden and reused for five minutes so
reopening it is near-instant; the first scan of a session serves cached data immediately; off-screen
tiles skip image decoding; skeleton shimmer is GPU-composited; and locating an emulator's local
achievement schema no longer walks the whole game install on every scan. - Stale "installed" state fixed. A Steam game left "installed" after being uninstalled (a stale
registry flag, or a folder-name substring match) is now cross-checked against Steam's own library
manifests, and Source-engine SDK tools are no longer mistaken for the game's real executable. - Controller-binding fixes. The default overlay combo is now Back + Start + LB (harder to trigger
by accident), the overlay-control and move/scroll combos no longer conflict when held together, a
duplicated button in a custom binding is now rejected consistently, and DualShock 4 stick correction
now applies on the XInput backend too. - Security: the Epic account login no longer injects the redirect URL into an
executeJavaScriptscript body, closing a CodeQL "improper code sanitization" finding.
Install
Download Achievement.Watcher.Setup.3.8.5.exe from the
v3.8.5 release.
The .blockmap and latest.yml assets are used by automatic updates. Upgrading preserves data.
See the changelog for the full list of changes.