Windows applications and games on Android.

Ask AI • Download • Discord • Telegram • Builds • Credits

Bannerlator is a personal build — made by me (The412Banner), for my own device, my own needs, and my own use.

It's a personal continuation of the Winlator Star Bionic project (star-emu/star) after it was discontinued and archived. None of the original developers are involved except me; it stands on their work plus cherry-picked commits from across the community — all credited below.

This is NOT an official or general-purpose Winlator release. It is built and tuned for my hardware and my workflow, and published as-is purely in case it happens to be useful to someone else.

• No guarantee it works on any other device, GPU, or Android version.
• No support, and no commitment to fix anything that works for me but not for you. If a feature works on my device, it isn't broken — for me, which is what this build is for.
• Bug reports / feature requests for setups I don't run may simply be closed. That's not personal; this just isn't a community-support project.

You're free to use, modify, fork, or share it (GPL-3.0). If it doesn't work on your setup, that's expected — it wasn't built for it.

2.4 is the fit & finish release. Take control of how your game fills the screen, import files without fighting Android's system picker, and make your in-game choices stick per game. Nearly every headline feature here came straight from a GitHub report or request. It's an app-side update — no ImageFS reinstall — your containers, themes, custom accent and per-game settings carry over untouched.

🖥️ Fullscreen aspect-ratio modes — new. No more forced stretching on wide games. Choose exactly how the picture fits the screen, per container and per game: Off (windowed, letterboxed), Fit (fullscreen, aspect preserved), Stretch (fills, ignores aspect), Fill (fills with aspect kept, cropping the overflow — no bars, no distortion) and Integer (largest whole-number scale, pixel-perfect and centered). Switch live from the in-game drawer with a new five-button selector that applies instantly and keeps the drawer open so you can compare. Works on the OpenGL, Vulkan and SurfaceFlinger renderers. (GitHub #71.)

📁 Import files with the built-in File Manager — new. Android's system file picker (SAF) silently fails or crawls on a lot of OEM skins. Every local import now opens Bannerlator's own File Manager in a pick mode instead — covering content packs (.wcp), control profiles (.icp), wallpapers, custom icons, saves, shortcuts, drivers and the big Proton / Wine / DXVK / box64 / FEXCore assets. It starts in Download, remembers your last folder, filters to the file types you need, and now shows a real thumbnail for image files (jpg/png/webp…) instead of a generic icon — so picking a wallpaper is no longer done blind. Large imports show a progress bar with percentage and ETA. The system picker is still available as a "Pick via system…" option for cloud / document providers. (GitHub #73.)

🎚️ In-game choices that stick — per game — new. Three settings you tune in-game are now remembered per game and restored on relaunch: the Scaling mode (SGSR / FSR / FSR-Fit / Sharpen / NIS used to reset to a plain filter every launch), the Fullscreen mode, and your dragged FPS overlay position (classic and GameHub HUD).

🧩 Choose your DLC + smarter Steam installs — new. A "Choose DLC" sheet lets you opt out of owned DLC before downloading, with the download size updating live as you check and uncheck; an "Includes DLC" line on the detail page; and a true-size install fix — Steam's catalog over-reported some games' sizes, so a fully-downloaded game could be wrongly flagged "incomplete" and refuse to launch, which is now resolved by fetching the real depot-manifest sizes. The detail page also gains a size breakdown (on-disk footprint, download size, catalog size, free space) and download ETA + speed across the detail page, Download Manager and notification. (Install-blocker reported by @Devaspe.)

🖼️ Container wallpaper picker — new. Pick an image as your container's desktop wallpaper — the picker now actually appears in the container editor — and choose whether a wallpaper applies to just this container or globally to all of them. (GitHub #66.)

💾 Back up & restore game saves — new. Export and import your saves as GameHub-compatible zips, with per-game save discovery, a confirm checklist before anything is overwritten, and a caution prompt so you verify before replacing originals.

🔧 Fixes. The magnifier follows the cursor on Vulkan now (parity with OpenGL, fullscreen and windowed) (GitHub #44) and no longer dims the whole screen while zoomed; the Settings "Enable File Provider" help button no longer crashes; and Scrape cover is available from the list-view overflow menu, not just the grid.

Everything Bannerlator offers, at a glance. No PC and no root required — it runs Windows apps and games directly on your Android device.

• Wine Windows compatibility layer — run native Win32/Win64 applications and games.
• Box64 / Box86 x86 & x86-64 → ARM translation, with selectable performance presets.
• WOWBox64 for arm64ec containers (correctly labelled per container).
• FEXCore as an alternative x86/x64 emulation backend.
• arm64ec and x64 container support.

• DXVK — DirectX 8 / 9 / 10 / 11 → Vulkan (with GPLAsync and Sarek variants).
• VKD3D-Proton — DirectX 12 → Vulkan.
• WineD3D / DirectDraw OpenGL fallback paths for older titles.
• Proton bionic translation layers (via GameNative).
• VEGAS — Adreno-optimized DXVK for reduced stutter and real-time upscaling on mobile GPUs.

  • 📖 New to VEGAS? Read the VEGAS DXVK FAQ — install, config, FSR, tiers, frame generation & shader-stutter troubleshooting.

  • 🚀 Support VEGAS Development — low-level graphics dev & vibecoder: debugging, refactoring & improving original DXVK code for Adreno. ❤️ Sponsor isygold →

• Turnip / Mesa open-source Adreno Vulkan drivers, with Timeline Semaphore patches for newer DXVK; bundled and downloadable driver options. A turnip-26.1.0 option loads Turnip as a direct system Vulkan ICD (no adrenotools hook) so it works on Android 10 / pre-11 devices too.

• Multiple host renderers — Vulkan, OpenGL, and VirGL.

• ℹ️ The Vulkan host renderer uses the rendering path from StevenMXZ (Winlator-Ludashi); its AHardwareBuffer present path — what makes Vulkan / DXVK / VKD3D content actually display correctly — was ported from / cross-examined against GameNative. See Credits.

• Native Rendering (Low-Latency Mode) — low-latency direct-scanout presentation on both the Vulkan and OpenGL renderers, skipping the compositor blit to cut input lag (mutually exclusive with that renderer's post-processing effects / scaling, since it bypasses the compositor).
• Spatial upscalers on both the Vulkan and OpenGL renderers — SGSR (Snapdragon GSR 1.0) and FSR / FSR-Fit (AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution 1.0), plus NIS (NVIDIA Image Scaling, Vulkan), a Sharpen (RCAS) mode and Linear / Nearest, all switchable live in the in-game drawer. On Vulkan it engages when a game renders below display resolution; on OpenGL it renders the scene at a reduced internal resolution and reconstructs it back up. Every sharpness slider runs 0 (off) → 100 (max). Your chosen scaling mode is now remembered per game across relaunch.
• Fullscreen aspect-ratio modes — control how a game fills the screen, per container and per game: Off (windowed, letterboxed), Fit (fullscreen, aspect preserved), Stretch (fills, ignores aspect), Fill (fills with aspect kept, cropping the overflow — no bars, no distortion) and Integer (largest whole-number scale, pixel-perfect and centered). A five-button selector in the in-game drawer switches modes live without closing the drawer, on all three host renderers. Your choice is saved per game.
• Supersampling (Render scale) — render above display resolution (1.25× / 1.5× / 2×) and downsample with a Lanczos-2 filter for DSR / OGSSAA-style anti-aliasing; set per container / per shortcut.
• Screen effects on both the OpenGL and Vulkan renderers — FXAA, Toon, CRT, NTSC, Color grading, CAS sharpening, and fake-HDR (the Vulkan path runs them through a new post-processing pipeline; previously they were OpenGL-only).
• Debanding (Vulkan) — an optional terminal dither pass that removes the visible banding from smooth gradients, skies, and dark scenes on 8-bit output, with an adjustable strength.
• ReShade post-processing — run real ReShade .fx effects (colour grading, sharpen, film grain, CRT, tonemap…) on DXVK / VKD3D games. Effects compile on-device via a bundled vkBasalt layer; pick from an on-demand catalog of ~100 curated MIT/CC0 effects or drop your own into the ReShade/ folder. A dedicated in-game ReShade tab auto-generates properly typed controls (sliders / toggles / dropdowns / colour pickers) from each shader, so you can toggle and tune effects live with a Reset-to-defaults button. Effects are configured per game (container or shortcut), persist across relaunch, and can be run solo or stacked. (Color effects today; depth effects such as SSAO/DOF are not included yet.)

  • ⚠️ Stacking multiple effects? Add them a few at a time. Each effect compiles on-device and costs GPU — selecting too many at once can stop a game from starting, showing a flat / blank screen instead of the game. If that happens, uncheck effects one at a time (or the specific heavy one) in the per-game ReShade effect settings until it boots, then add more gradually.

• Match refresh rate to FPS (VRR) — the display's refresh rate can follow your frame rate: an Auto (match FPS) toggle or a manual 60 / 90 / 120 / 144 Hz slider, on all three host renderers, auto-disabled on displays that don't support variable refresh.
• Adjustable resolution and frame-rate limit.

• Two selectable frame-generation engines — pick Off / bionic-fg / lsfg-vk per container; the running engine is shown as a badge in the in-game drawer.
  • bionic-fg — powered by the bionic-fg Vulkan layer (Lossless-Scaling lineage), bundled and ready to use out of the box.
  • lsfg-vk — powered by the lsfg-vk Vulkan layer (Android port by FrankBarretta).

• ⚠️ lsfg-vk requires you to supply your own Lossless.dll. Bannerlator bundles no proprietary Lossless Scaling files. You must own Lossless Scaling (THS, on Steam) and import its Lossless.dll via Settings → Frame Generation (lsfg-vk) → pick DLL. The DLL is copied into app storage and serves all containers. Until you import a valid Lossless.dll, the lsfg-vk option stays greyed out; bionic-fg needs no DLL and works without it.

• Live in-game controls for whichever engine the container runs: switch between Off / 2× / 3× / 4× and adjust the flow-scale slider right from the in-game Graphics drawer, hot-reloaded with no restart.
• FPS Limiter — a standalone, engine-independent live frame cap. It paces the X11 Present extension by delaying the IdleNotify that frees the guest's buffer, so the game itself throttles (the in-game HUD reflects the cap and GPU/power draw drops). Works the same with frame gen Off, bionic-fg, or lsfg-vk, on both host renderers, all guest APIs. When lsfg-vk is multiplying (2×+) the limiter automatically steps aside so lsfg's own pacing governs — no double-cap. This guest-side present-pacing mechanism was ported from GameNative (see Credits).
• Confirmed on both the OpenGL and Vulkan host renderers.

• Create and manage multiple isolated Wine containers.
• Redesigned container cards — a clean spec-chip layout (renderer · DXVK on top, driver · VKD3D · backend beneath) that matches the game cards.
• Auto-close on game exit — the session closes itself once the launched game quits (per-container "Close when game exits" toggle, on by default), so you're not left at a black Wine desktop.
• Import / export containers to move or back up setups.
• Per-container control of Wine version, graphics driver, DXVK / VKD3D version, Box64 preset, drive mappings, Z-drive selector, and environment variables.
• Desktop wallpaper picker — set an image as a container's Wine desktop wallpaper from the container editor, and choose whether it applies to just this container or globally to all of them.
• Compatibility Layers download menu — a cloud button on each component (Wine/Proton, DXVK, VKD3D, Box64/WOWBox64, FEXCore) opens a downloader to browse, install or remove versions, with Wine/Proton tabs, an "in use" marker, install-from-file, and byte-accurate download + install progress bars.

• Game library with grid or list layout, sorting, and installed/updated filters.
• Redesigned game cards — primary chips (renderer · DXVK · frame-gen) over a muted driver · VKD3D · backend line, with the resolution in the subtitle; long component names no longer blank the game title.
• Add shortcuts from external storage.
• Back up & restore game saves as GameHub-compatible zips, with per-game save discovery and a confirm checklist before anything is overwritten.
• SteamGridDB cover-art scraping.
• Per-game settings including display language / locale.
• Customizable on-screen touch controls and virtual gamepad overlays, which follow your app theme or take a per-game custom colour you set in the Controls editor.
• Physical controller support (SDL2), plus touchpad / mouse emulation with adjustable cursor speed. The external controller-binding screen lists each input as a card with readable labels, and buttons you press while binding appear instantly.

Sign in to your existing storefronts and play from libraries you already own — Bannerlator does not sell, bundle or circumvent any game or DRM.

• Steam — sign in with username / password or QR code, browse your owned library, and download + install games through a built-in depot engine (built on JavaSteam). Includes a 4-tier download-speed picker (Slow / Medium / Fast / Blazing), session hardening that recovers from Steam's ~1-hour connection-manager logoff so long installs finish, a connection / login status pill, and a depot-download OOM fix.
  • DLC picker — a "Choose DLC" sheet lets you opt out of owned DLC before downloading, with the download size updating live as you check and uncheck, plus an "Includes DLC" line and a size breakdown (footprint / download / catalog / free space) and download ETA + speed on the detail page. A true-size install fix fetches real depot-manifest sizes so fully-downloaded games are no longer wrongly flagged "incomplete."
  • Optional Goldberg auto-patch on a game's detail page — a Goldberg / gbe_fork Steam-emulator patch for offline / emulated play, in Regular / Experimental / ColdClient tiers, installed automatically and cleanly reverted on switch-back. (Modifies a game's shipped files — use at your own risk, for games you own.)
• Epic Games — sign in, browse your library, and download / install / launch your titles (including Epic free games).
• Amazon Games — sign in, browse your library, and download / install / launch your titles.
• GOG — sign in and browse your owned library; download and install your DRM-free games with cloud-save sync and one-tap launch into a container.
• ⬇ Cross-store Download Manager — one unified manager across all four stores: see every active download and your whole installed library in one place, with live two-bar download/install progress, background downloads + notification-shade support (a foreground service keeps them running when you leave the app), and launch / verified uninstall for any installed game. Install state, cover art and update-available status stay in sync across a game's detail page, its download card and the store list.

• 🔒 These sign-ins are a third-party login system, exactly like any other emulator/launcher that logs into these stores — use them at your own risk (see Security Hardening).

The Steam / Epic / GOG / Amazon sign-ins are a third-party login system, exactly like any other emulator or launcher that logs into these stores. Bannerlator is not affiliated with, authorised by, or endorsed by Valve/Steam, Epic Games, GOG, or Amazon.

• Use at your own risk. You are logging your real store account into a community app. That's a normal trade-off for this kind of tool — but it's your account and your call.
• Your credentials are redacted from logs. This release strips sensitive values out of everything the stores write, to logcat and the shareable diagnostic files, via a new StoreLog.redactUrl helper: signed download / manifest URLs (Amazon / Epic / GOG CDN links carry access tokens in the query), OAuth authorization codes, GOG client_secret + refresh_token, and account identity IDs (Epic account ID, GOG user ID). Steam credentials were already redacted. None of this changes how login, downloads or cloud saves work — only what gets written to a log.
• Still be careful sharing logs. Even with redaction, a log or debug file can contain other diagnostic detail — so only share one publicly if you're comfortable doing so.

• New containers ship with handy Windows tools in the Start menu — Winlator File Manager (WFM), AIO Graphics Test, and Game Controller Test.
• .lnk working-directory ("Start in") support so shortcuts for apps that only run from their own folder launch correctly.

• Modern Jetpack Compose user interface with a redesigned, icon-led navigation drawer.
• Theme-aware everywhere — your selected preset / accent recolours the whole app and the in-game side drawer, including dialogs, chips, sliders and overlays.
• Customizable themes — 16 presets (AMOLED default, Classic Dark, Ocean, Forest, Sunset, Rose, Steel, plus Midnight Cobalt, Phosphor, Carbon & Ember, Amethyst, Crimson, Synthwave, Royal Gold, Frost and Monochrome) plus an HSV custom-accent picker.
• In-game overlay drawer for settings, input, and quick toggles, with a Task Manager that lists processes as cards and can launch new tasks on any renderer.
• Built-in File Manager with Favorites — bookmark folders and jump to them from a dedicated list, each labelled by storage source (Internal / SD card / a container's Drive C: or Z:) and full path. Image files show real thumbnails, and the File Manager doubles as the app's file picker for every import (WCP / ICP / wallpaper / drivers / assets) — reliable on OEM skins where Android's system picker fails, with the system picker still available as a secondary option.
• Performance HUD — FPS, frame time, CPU/GPU temperature, and RAM, in vertical or horizontal layout, with its on-screen position saved per game.

• Three build flavors with distinct package IDs — standard, PuBG, and Ludashi.
• Optimized release builds (not debug) for a smoother Compose UI, AOSP-testkey signed so updates install over previous installs.
• Continuous GitHub Actions action builds and tagged stable releases.

Besides the built-in download catalog, you can add any ReShade effect yourself by dropping it into a folder. Follow these steps exactly:

1. Open the ReShade drop-in folder on your device (create the ReShade folder if it isn't there yet):

Android/data/com.winlator.banner/files/ReShade/

📁 That path is for the Standard build. For the other builds, swap the package name: PuBG → Android/data/com.tencent.ig/files/ReShade/ · Ludashi → Android/data/com.ludashi.benchmark/files/ReShade/.

2. Make one folder per effect. Name the folder whatever you want the effect to be called in the menu — for example MySepia.

3. Put the effect's files inside that folder — all in the same place, next to the .fx:

• the effect's .fx file (required),
• any .fxh files it #includes (very common — e.g. ReShade.fxh, ReShadeUI.fxh),
• any image / texture files the effect uses.

ReShade/
  MySepia/
    MySepia.fx          ← the effect (folder name match = used first)
    ReShade.fxh         ← copy in any .fxh the .fx #includes
    ReShadeUI.fxh
    noise.png           ← copy in any textures it uses

4. Pick it in the app. Open the app → edit a container or a game shortcut → ReShade effect picker. Your folder now appears in the list — select it.

5. Use it in-game. Launch a DirectX (DXVK / VKD3D) game, open the in-game drawer → ReShade tab, and turn the effect on/off and tune its sliders live.

⚠️ Read this if something doesn't show up or work

• Only colour effects work — sharpen, colour grading, film grain, CRT, tonemap, vignette, etc. Depth effects (SSAO, depth-of-field, MXAO) do not work yet.
• ReShade only affects DirectX games running through DXVK / VKD3D — it does nothing on OpenGL / WineD3D / older 2D titles.
• Effect not in the list? Make sure it's in its own subfolder and that the subfolder actually contains a .fx file (a loose .fx sitting directly in ReShade/ is ignored).
• Effect selected but no change in-game? Most often a missing #include — open the .fx in a text editor, find any #include "Something.fxh" lines, and make sure each of those .fxh files is copied into the same folder as the .fx. Same for any texture files.
• Game won't start / flat or blank screen after enabling effects? You likely stacked too many effects at once. Each one compiles on-device and costs GPU, and too many together can stop the game from launching. Go back into the per-game ReShade effect settings and uncheck the effects one at a time (or the specific heavy one) until the game boots correctly, then re-enable them gradually. Adding effects a few at a time avoids this.
• Can't even find Android/data? Many stock file managers hide it on Android 11+. Use a file manager that can open Android/data, or copy the effect folder over from a PC via a USB cable, then drop it in.

Bannerlator does not work by itself on frontends out of the box. See the frontends workaround guide to get it running.

This project is built via GitHub Actions only — local builds are not supported.

• Action builds — every fix is compiled and published as a downloadable workflow artifact.
• Releases — tagged stable builds are published as GitHub Releases.

Got a question about Bannerlator? Ask the codebase directly. An AI reads the actual source code and answers with the exact file names and line numbers, so you can check it yourself. It never guesses — if the answer isn't in the code, it says so.

It's three steps:

1. Open an issue (you'll need a free GitHub account).
2. Type your question — be specific, and name a feature, setting, or file.
3. Submit. The AI replies in a comment on your issue, usually within 1–2 minutes.

That's it — no form, no approval step, nothing else to do.

ℹ️ The AI replies to every new issue automatically. A few per person per day are free; past that, it will ask you to try again later.

Good things to ask:

• "How does the FPS limiter work?"
• "Where is the GOG store integration implemented?"
• "What values does the scaling mode picker accept?"
• "How are release builds signed and distributed?"

Avoid device-specific troubleshooting like "why is my game slow?" — the AI explains what the code does, not how a game runs on your phone.

opencode run "your question" --agent ama-agent --model opencode/big-pickle

This build stands on a long chain of prior work — its direct lineage, plus the projects whose commits and work are cherry-picked and implemented here:

The Wine/translation stack this app bundles or downloads:

Much of Bannerlator's polish is driven by the people who file issues and test builds. Recent features came directly from:

• @kylinzang — fullscreen aspect-ratio modes (#71) and the in-app File-Manager import picker (#73), plus the ongoing Mali / BCn-layer work.
• @SombraShadow — the container wallpaper picker (#66).
• @abdogm — magnifier cursor-follow & no-dim fixes (#44).
• @Devaspe — the Steam install-blocker report that drove the true-size depot install fix.

…and everyone in the Discord and on GitHub who tests builds and reports issues. 🙏

Additional credits surfaced in the Star Bionic REVAMPED project (star.bionic-revamp):

• @The412Banner — Converting the UI to Jetpack Compose and rewriting the controller implementation.
• @jacojayy — Timeline Semaphore patches in Turnip.

If you have contributed and are not listed, open a PR — this list is intended to be complete.

Winlator and its forks are unofficial community projects. They are not affiliated with or endorsed by Microsoft, Wine, the Mesa project, Qualcomm, Valve/Steam, Epic Games, GOG, Amazon, or any game publisher. The built-in store sign-ins are a third-party login system for libraries you already own — see Security Hardening & your store accounts, and use them at your own risk. Compatibility varies by device GPU, Android version, and individual game.

Inherits the license of the upstream Winlator project (GPL-3.0). See LICENSE for the full text.