PKG MUTANT SHOP 3.99.5

This release is about Payloads & Homebrews. Every window - the PC, the PS5's own page, the PS4's
own page and a phone - now shows the same thing: what each console really holds and runs, not what
the PC happens to have downloaded. An Update now does the whole job on the console, the Queue shows
each step, and a console that is switched off and on again keeps what it was given. Five new
projects join the catalogue.

The full list, with the technical detail behind each change, is in the
changelog.

Added

An Update that finishes the job

• Download once, then deliver. Pressing Update downloads the release once and carries it to every
  console that has the item: a package is installed by the app's own installer, a folder app is
  unpacked into place, a payload is put where Payload Manager (PS5) or the payload folder (PS4) starts
  it from, and the helpers, extra files, data and allowlist lines an item needs go with it. Then the
  version is recorded on the console itself.
• Running payloads switch over, stopped ones stay stopped. A payload that was running is
  restarted on the new copy when that is safe - ShadowMountPlus, for example, but never while a game
  is running, and FTP never during a transfer. One that was not running is updated and left stopped.
  The jailbreak layer (HENs, kstuff, the Linux loader, Payload Manager) is updated but never started
  or restarted by the app, and OmniPad and PS4Mount are left for you to restart from their own panels.
• The Queue shows every step - Download, Unpack, Extra files, Copy to the console, Install,
  Helpers, Record the version, Restart - each ticked, skipped (with the reason) or failed, and a last
  line saying what is left to do, such as "start it from its tile" or "it switches once the game is
  closed".
• The console can do it on its own. With the PC switched off, each console's own page downloads,
  installs or unpacks and records the update itself, and the PC's Queue shows that work too once the
  PC is back.

New in the catalogue

• Playden (PS5): a Steam launcher - sign in, download your Windows games and play them through
  Wine, each with its own tile. Alpha software.
• OmniPad PS5 (PS5): USB and 2.4 GHz controllers (Xbox, DualShock 4, Switch Pro, 8BitDo and
  others) as players 2 to 4.
• XCloud4 (PS4): Xbox Cloud Gaming with the DualShock 4 (needs a Game Pass plan with cloud gaming).
• VCFG (PS4): a GoldHEN plugin that shows verified 30 fps games at 60. Experimental.
• HENkaku (PS4): PlayStation Vita games on the PS4. Its first start needs the Vita's system files,
  which you put in /data/HENkaku/install yourself - the app never downloads console firmware.

Fixed

• Every window agrees. A tile's version is the one the console runs. A copy the PC holds is shown
  as "This PC has ... - not on the PS5 yet" instead of being taken for what is installed, and a
  download is never shown as an installation.
• Updates no longer come back after a power cycle. What a console is given is kept by its exact
  bytes, so a restart never puts the bundled copy back over a newer one, and an update that was done
  is not offered again.
• Refreshing works the first time, on the side that changed and on the other side alike, and the
  Queue follows straight away instead of after a few refreshes.
• The PS5 Linux loader and PS4Mount 0.7.0 are accepted again: both projects had changed the text
  the app used to recognise their files.
• The PS4's home-screen icon starts the shop that is on your PS4, so it can no longer bring back an
  older version of the app or its page. If the shop's file is not on the console yet, the icon
  tells you to send PKG-MUTANT-SHOP-PS4.elf once from a PC or a phone.
• PS5SX2's helper, XPSemu's helper and PS5X360's optional extra are fetched correctly, and a release
  rebuilt at the same version number is recognised as a different build.

Notes

• If you use the app on more than one PC, update every PC to 3.99.5. An older PC can still send
  to a 3.99.5 console, and what it sends survives a restart, but the console cannot name its
  version until a 3.99.5 PC has seen it.

Tested on

• PS5 13.60 and PS4 13.52, with a PC running the app and with each console on its own.
• The Payloads & Homebrews drawer, its tiles and the Queue on a PC, on each console's own page and on
  a phone, in all twenty-five languages.

Download

PKG-MUTANT-SHOP.exe	Windows companion
PKG-MUTANT-SHOP.elf	PS5 — firmware up to 13.60, load from Payload Manager
PKG-MUTANT-SHOP-PS4.elf	PS4 — FW 13.52, load through GoldHEN
PKG-MUTANT-SHOP-3.99.5.zip	all three, with checksums

Update the Windows app first, then load the new .elf on your consoles — an older Windows app
loads its own, older PS4 build back whenever the PS4's shop restarts.

PKG MUTANT SHOP 3.99.4

Settings has been rebuilt so every section fits on one screen, the app now speaks twenty-five
languages, sending files from your phone reads each file and puts it exactly where it belongs on
the console, updates the app can see are offered as updates, PS4Mount comes to the PS4, and a
console on its own opens its library faster.

The full list, with the technical detail behind each change, is in the
changelog.

Added

Settings, rebuilt

• Nine sections, each on one screen. Your consoles, Your games, Installing, Power & helpers,
  Cheats & mods, Devices & sources, Language, Troubleshooting and About. On a PC or a TV nothing in
  Settings scrolls: your PS5 and PS4 sit side by side, status is a quick grid, each section's buttons
  are in its heading, and the explanation of whatever you point at or select with the controller
  appears in one line at the bottom. On a phone the list of sections is the first page and each
  section opens as its own page.
• Every setting saves itself the moment you change it - there is no Save button any more - and
  a console's address is checked before it is kept.
• Troubleshooting has the connection check and the install log as two tabs in one place, and a
  long check shows its problems first.

Languages

• Ten new languages: Traditional Chinese, Ukrainian, Vietnamese, Indonesian, Thai, Czech,
  Hungarian, Greek, Romanian and Swedish - twenty-five in all. Russian was already there; it has
  been reviewed from top to bottom and more than 200 strings were improved.
• The app opens in your device's language when it is one of these, and a language only loads when
  you pick it, so the page itself is half the size it was.

Sending from your phone

• Every file is read before it is sent. A package says which game it is, which console it is
  for, whether it is the game, an update or DLC, and which version. So a PS5 package is never sent to
  a PS4, an update whose game is not on that console is stopped before it uses your Wi-Fi, a game
  already installed at that version is skipped, and a package that was cut short is caught.
• Everything lands where it belongs: packages are installed one at a time, base game first; PS5
  backups go to the drive their backup service watches; payloads go into Payload Manager on a PS5
  or the payload folder on a PS4; cheat files go into the console's cheat inbox; a homebrew app's
  .zip is unpacked by the PS5 itself; and game files for an emulator go to that emulator's folder
  when it is installed. You can pick a whole folder too.
• The console is asked first whether it has the room and the drive, and a transfer that breaks
  carries on from where it stopped instead of starting again.

Payloads & Homebrews

• PS4Mount for the PS4 (Vld439/PS4Mount-PS4): play PS4 game packages from a USB drive or the
  console's own storage without installing them. Download it and send it from the PS4 tab.

Fixed

• Updates are offered as updates. Projects that used to say "open its page" - PSFlyCast, Vita3K,
  PS4SX2, Resonance and others - now offer the new release itself. The app compares against the
  version each console actually runs, and when it cannot be sure it still offers the release as
  Update to … instead of hiding it. Waiting updates that were never shown, such as Resonance
  v01.41, PSFlyCast v1.3.0, OnionHEN's final release, PS4Mount 0.6.1 on the PS5 and Y2JB v1.0.3, now
  appear.
• The library no longer flickers while you scroll on a phone.
• The library on a console with no PC opens faster: it shows the last list at once and refreshes
  it in the background, and covers load as small thumbnails.
• Saving a setting from a console's own page can no longer remove the PS4 from the PC's
  settings, and the number of installs at once applies straight away.
• Some dialogs in Russian, Chinese, Hindi, Italian, Korean, Turkish, Polish and Dutch showed \n
  and \" instead of a line break and a quote mark.
• A payload updated through the Windows app keeps its version, so its next update is offered.
• Sending files is safer: a broken and resumed transfer can no longer damage the finished file,
  and the consoles are much stricter about which pages may send them files or ask them for data.
• The game panel's ⋯ menu shows proper icons on the PS4.

Tested on

• PS5 13.60 and PS4 13.52, with a PC running the app and with each console on its own.
• Settings at every screen size from 1280x720 up, in all twenty-five languages; phones from 320px
  wide up, in portrait and landscape.

Download

PKG-MUTANT-SHOP.exe	Windows companion
PKG-MUTANT-SHOP.elf	PS5 — firmware up to 13.60, load from Payload Manager
PKG-MUTANT-SHOP-PS4.elf	PS4 — FW 13.52, load through GoldHEN
PKG-MUTANT-SHOP-3.99.4.zip	all three, with checksums

Update the Windows app first, then load the new .elf on your consoles — an older Windows app
loads its own, older PS4 build back whenever the PS4's shop restarts.

PKG MUTANT SHOP 3.99.3

RetroArch on the PS4 now installs together with its cores, PS5-ECAM and Crema update properly
again, three new entries join the catalogue, every game in the library has a quick menu, and the
phone layout has been rebuilt as an app — including sending files from your phone straight to a
console.

The full list, with the technical detail behind each change, is in the
changelog.

Fixed

• RArch installs together with its cores. The RetroArch front end (BGEN00070) and its 116
  cores (BGEN00071) are two packages in one release, and installing RArch used to leave the cores
  behind. Installing RArch now installs the cores right after it — from your PC, from a copy the
  console already holds, or by downloading them first — one at a time, so the PS4's single install
  slot is never asked for twice. Sending RArch again does not re-send the 511 MB of cores unless the
  installed cores are a different size. The cores package appears on the console as RArch Core Installer:
  open it once from the home screen to put the cores where RArch reads them.
• RArch is recognised as up to date. It no longer offers the release you already have, on a PC
  or on a console with no PC.
• PS5-ECAM (formerly PS5CEMU-HAR) updates instead of pointing you to its page. The project now
  links its build in the release notes rather than attaching it. The app reads that link — on a PC,
  and on the PS5 by itself — and checks the download against the checksum published beside it.
• Crema downloads and installs. Crema moved from tags to real releases, and the app kept its old
  "no file attached" answer for hours afterwards. That answer now expires within the hour on every
  device, so a new release is offered as soon as it is published.
• An update is only hidden when your file really is that release. A file of the same size is no
  longer taken as proof — some projects publish several releases of exactly the same size. The
  checksum decides whenever the project publishes one; the size only counts when there is none.
• A package the console already holds has a tile of its own and installs from where it is, with
  no second download.
• The PS4 records which release each package is — one it downloads itself, or one a PC
  installs — so its own update check is right with no PC on the network.
• Actions taken with the game panel closed no longer use the last opened game's console or drive.

Added

In the library

• A quick menu on every game. Right-click a game, press and hold it on a phone, or use the
  ⋯ on its tile, and the game panel's actions are one press away without opening it: Install
  (or Install the update / Mount backup), Add to the queue — or take it back out if it is already
  queued — the console (for a game either console can take) and the drive (for a PS5 backup) as one-press choices, move, verify, reinstall, clean
  reinstall and delete, Mods and patches, and Open the game panel. Its console and drive choices
  and its actions are the panel's own. Prefer the browser's own menu? Turn it off in Settings › Your games ›
  Quick menu on game tiles.
• Payloads & Homebrews sits right under the install queue and follows the queue when the header
  changes. On a phone it is the Payloads tab.

On your phone

• The phone layout is an app now. One slim bar at the top, the library scrolling as one page so
  your browser's own bars fold away, and a tab bar at the bottom: Library, Queue,
  Payloads, Send and Settings. Each section opens as a full page with the tabs still
  under it, the install queue is a sheet with all of its buttons, and the less-used header buttons
  are behind ⋯. It fits phones from the smallest iPhone to the largest Android phone, in
  portrait and landscape, around notches and the home indicator.
• Add it to your home screen and it opens full-screen with its own icon, like an app.
• Send from your phone. Pick files on the phone — a game or app package, a PS5 backup, a
  payload, or your own files for an emulator — and send them straight to a console over your Wi-Fi,
  with a progress bar. Packages are installed once they arrive, PS5 backups go to the drive's backup
  folder where they mount by themselves, payloads go into Payload Manager's list on a PS5 or the
  payload folder on a PS4, and anything else goes to the folder you choose. Each transfer shows in
  the install queue and can be stopped there. On a tablet or a PC it is in Settings › Your
  consoles › Send files….

For the PS4

• M33 (March33) — PSP games, built on PPSSPP.

For the PS5

• PS5 Linux loader — boots Linux from a prepared USB drive. It patches the hypervisor and
  puts the console into rest mode about five seconds after it is sent, so the app asks twice, and
  its note lists everything that has to be ready first: a fresh restart with nothing else loaded, a
  USB drive flashed with a ps5-linux image, rest-mode USB power set to Always, and HDMI Device Link
  off. PS5 13.60 only.
• MihawkOS — a Windows-style desktop that runs your own Windows programs through Wine and
  Proton. An early alpha: it needs websrv on port 8080, kstuff, elfldr and ShadowMountPlus running, never OnionHEN,
  and the Windows runtime from the same release, which you install from MihawkOS's own Settings —
  the note on its tile walks you through it.

Updated

• The PS5 payload carries PS4Mount 0.6.1 and ShadowMountPlus 1.7beta6-fix2, the current
  releases when this build was made. ShadowMountPlus 1.7beta7 came out as it was finished — the app
  offers it as an update in Payloads & Homebrews.

Known issues

• The RArch cores only appear in RArch after RArch Core Installer has been opened once on the
  PS4. The app cannot start an app on the console for you.
• MihawkOS's 530 MB Windows runtime is not delivered by the app: MihawkOS has to create its own data
  folder before it is given the access it needs. Install the runtime from MihawkOS's own Settings.
• MihawkOS's author lists PS5 13.60 as "accepted but untested", and there is an open report of it
  failing there.

Tested on

• PS5 13.60 and PS4 13.52, with a PC running the app and with each console on its own.
• Phones from 320px wide up, in portrait and landscape.

Download

PKG-MUTANT-SHOP.exe	Windows companion
PKG-MUTANT-SHOP.elf	PS5 — firmware up to 13.60, load from Payload Manager
PKG-MUTANT-SHOP-PS4.elf	PS4 — FW 13.52, load through GoldHEN
PKG-MUTANT-SHOP-3.99.3.zip	all three, with checksums

Update the Windows app first, then load the new .elf on your consoles — an older Windows app
loads its own, older PS4 build back whenever the PS4's shop restarts.

---

PKG MUTANT SHOP 3.99.2

Two things the owner marked on screenshots, and seven items for the catalogue: five new ones for
the PS4, one for the PS5, and two existing entries brought up to date.

Below is what changed, by area. Every change with the measurements behind it is in the
full changelog.

Added

For the PS4

• Resonance — Dreamcast games, based on Flycast, with NAOMI and Atomiswave arcade too.
• PS4SX2 — PlayStation 2 games, derived from PCSX2. Published as a pre-release, so expect early
  work.
• RPCS3 for PS4 — an unofficial port of the PlayStation 3 emulator. It needs the PS3's own
  firmware, which only Sony hands out: the entry says so and points you at Sony's page.
• RArch (RetroArch) and RArch cores — the RetroArch front end and its 116 cores, published
  as two packages in one release, so they are two tiles.
• (The link you sent for RetroArch, libretro/RetroArch, has never published a PS4 build: all 82
  of its releases are source archives or desktop builds. The working PS4 port is gen04177/rarch-ps4,
  which is what the catalogue follows.)

For the PS5

• PSFlyCast — Dreamcast, NAOMI, NAOMI 2 and Atomiswave, a port of Flycast. It arrives as an app
  folder, so an update merges into it and your games, BIOS, covers and saves are left alone.

Fixed

• Payloads & Homebrews now sits in the middle of the page. It was centred in the gap between
  the byline and the library summary, which is not the same thing when those two are different
  widths: measured 100px left of centre on a 1920 window. It is exact now, and it stays exact when the
  summary is not on screen at all.
• In Get more, the download button is at the right-hand end of its tile, so the three columns
  line up instead of each button sitting wherever its name happened to stop.
• The tooltip now belongs to whatever you are pointing at. Hovering the download button showed
  the tile's description, because the button had no tip of its own. The icon says which press it is
  ("Download", "Download again", "open its page"); the rest of the tile still says what the program
  is. On a controller, focusing the button still gives you the description, which is the only way a
  D-pad can read it.
• A project that publishes two programs in one release no longer loses one of them. The panel
  recognised a program by its title id or its project, and RArch is the first here to ship two
  packages from one project: the second was folded into the first and disappeared. Two entries that
  both know their id and name different ones are two programs now, in the panel and on the PC.

Changed

• Crema, re-checked: still no release of any kind and still the two tags, so the row goes on
  naming the version it is at and saying there is no file attached. The builds the author hands out
  on file-sharing links have no address this app or a console could fetch from twice.
• PS4-Xplorer: pkg-zone is the author's own channel and currently has the newest copy, 2.07, so
  the old warning that it might be a version behind has been removed. Its GitHub copies stop at the
  1.x line and must not be followed.

Known at the time

• The new entries were catalogued and read from their projects, and each one's download was
  resolved to the right file - none of them was installed here.
• RArch's cores package is 511 MB, and its author never writes down that it is required; a 21 MB
  front end cannot be carrying 116 cores, so the entry says as much and leaves the choice to you.

Checked on hardware

• PS5 13.60 and PS4 13.52, both panels, with a PC answering.
• Each of the six new entries resolved live against its project: the right asset in every case,
  including the two different packages in RArch's single release and the one .zip among PSFlyCast's
  eleven files.

Download

PKG-MUTANT-SHOP.exe	Windows companion
PKG-MUTANT-SHOP.elf	PS5 — firmware up to 13.60, load from Payload Manager
PKG-MUTANT-SHOP-PS4.elf	PS4 — FW 13.52, load through GoldHEN
PKG-MUTANT-SHOP-3.99.2.zip	all three, with checksums

Load the new .elf on your consoles as well, and restart the PS4 once afterwards.

---

More detail: the full changelog
has every change with the measurement behind it, and the
features list
describes everything the app does.
New here? Start with Setup.

PKG MUTANT SHOP 3.99.0

This release is about one situation: a PC that has never held any of the files. The app was
installed fresh on such a PC, with a PS4, and almost nothing in Payloads & Homebrews worked — while
it all worked on the one machine that already had everything. Every item below came out of that.

Below is what changed, by area. Every change with the measurements behind it is in the
full changelog.

Fixed

Downloading, from a PC that starts with nothing

• A fresh PC can reach GitHub. Windows only knows the certificate authorities it has already
  met, so on a new machine every GitHub address failed — and the app could only say "could not
  reach GitHub". The app now carries its own list as well, falls back to Windows' own network
  stack, and then to curl.
• A failure says what failed. No name lookup, no connection, a timeout, an untrusted
  certificate, a wrong clock, a rate limit or an error from the site: each has its own sentence,
  names the host, and is translated.
• "Working…" ends. A download used to run inside one long request with nothing on screen. It is
  a job now: a percentage, a Cancel, and it carries on from where it stopped if the connection
  drops. The button you pressed always comes back.
• A tile for something this PC does not hold can still be pressed. Install and Send fetch
  the file from the project first and then carry on — one press, as it should have been.
• A download is checked before it is used — its length, the checksum the project published,
  and that it really is a package, a payload or an archive and not an error page.
• A download never replaces a newer copy you already have with an older one.

Update checks

• Checks through a PC stop using up GitHub's hourly limit. The PC reads releases from each
  project's own page instead of the rate-limited API, which three devices behind one address were
  sharing. A console checking on its own, with no PC answering, still uses the API.
• A check takes seconds. Every project is asked at once: twenty-four of them in about five
  seconds, where one slow site used to hold the panel for a minute.
• One bad moment does not wipe what was known. If a project cannot be asked right now, its row
  keeps showing its last answer. The answers also survive restarting the app.
• A check that reached no project no longer says "Everything matches". The drawer says it
  could not check, once, with the reason.

Installing

• A newer build of an installed homebrew installs. DolphinPS4 was answered "already installed"
  because the new package was almost the same size as the old one. Versions are compared now.
• Updating an emulator on the PC keeps what you put inside it — games, saves and settings
  stored in the app's own folder were being deleted with the old copy.
• The right file is picked for the right console, including for a project whose name
  contains a console's name.

The PS4

• The PS4 can download on its own after all. 3.98.4 said it could not. The real cause: the
  console allows eight secure connections' worth of setup per boot, and the app was using one for
  every request. It now sets up one, keeps it, and hands it on each time the app is loaded —
  checked on a freshly restarted PS4, which made exactly one across ten release checks and a
  download.
  Restart the PS4 once after loading this build — a boot that has already used its eight on
  an older version cannot get them back, and until then it will keep saying a PC is needed.

Payload Manager 0.6.0

• Works with Payload Manager 0.6.0. It came out while this release was being tested and
  changed how payloads are started and where they are kept — on 0.6.0 the previous build of this
  app could not start its installer, so nothing could be installed on a PS5. Installing, Run,
  Send and updating the app all work with it now, and still work with 0.5.x. A new build of the
  app goes into the slot Payload Manager itself lists and autoloads.

Finding each other

• A console on another network adapter is found. Only the network with the default route was
  searched, which is the wrong one whenever a VPN is up or Wi-Fi and Ethernet are both connected.
• "PC found at but it is not answering this console" replaces a green "works with the PC off"
  when that is what is really happening — usually Windows Firewall.

Added

• Connection check, in Settings. Every link, worst first, each with the one thing to do: this
  PC to the internet, this PC to each console, each console back to this PC, Windows Firewall,
  and whether a console can download by itself.
• FPKGi gets its list. A GAMES.json kept beside the package in your folder is put on the
  console when FPKGi is installed; an empty one is created if you have none. A list already on the
  console is not overwritten unless you send again.
• New in the catalogue. PS5: PS4Mount, Y2JB Autoloader, PSP5, PSBox Cloud
  Gaming, Vita3K. PS4: Crema (nothing published yet — its row says so).
• When a PC installs an app, whatever it needs beside it goes too — helper files, a line in
  a helper's allowlist, a file that has to sit at one exact path. A console installing on its own
  does not do this yet; the tile says what to do by hand.
• The PS5 payload carries PS4Mount with the other payloads it can start by itself, and
  Payload Manager 0.6.0.
• "PC NEEDED." When something needs a PC, that is what the page says.

Known at the time

• FPKGi on a PS5 needs etaHEN, with its Direct PKG Installer switched on. It is the same
  package as the PS4's — there is only one — and on a PS5 without those services it installs and
  then does nothing. The tile says so.
• The new PS5 entries were fetched and checked, not installed, on the consoles this was
  tested with. Crema has nothing to fetch yet.

Checked on hardware

• PS5 13.60 and PS4 13.52. From a PC with an empty folder: a payload and two packages fetched with
  progress, and DolphinPS4 taken from 04.04 to 04.06 on the PS4 in one press.
• The owner's GAMES.json delivered to both consoles and read back byte for byte.
• Payload Manager 0.6.0 on the PS5: an install, FTP starting at boot, and the app deployed into
  Payload Manager's own slot.
• On a freshly restarted PS4, with nothing but the console: ten release checks and a download
  (checked against the checksum its project published) through one secure-connection setup.
  Before that, one kept setup answering twelve checks and a download on a PS5 built the PS4's
  way, and the hand-over between two loads of the app on the PS4.

Download

PKG-MUTANT-SHOP.exe	Windows companion
PKG-MUTANT-SHOP.elf	PS5 — firmware up to 13.60, load from Payload Manager
PKG-MUTANT-SHOP-PS4.elf	PS4 — FW 13.52, load through GoldHEN
PKG-MUTANT-SHOP-3.99.0.zip	all three, with checksums

Load the new .elf on your consoles as well, and restart the PS4 once afterwards.

---

More detail: the full changelog
has every change with the measurement behind it, and the
features list
describes everything the app does.
New here? Start with Setup.

PKG MUTANT SHOP 3.98.4

The first public build since 3.97.2, so it carries everything from 3.98.0 to 3.98.4.

Below is what changed, by area. Every change with the measurements behind it is in the
full changelog.

Fixed

Performance and artwork

• The library paints straight away on a console with no PC. It was asking each title for its
  full-size original instead of the card-sized cover the console had already made. Measured over a
  68-title library: 2.2 MB where 23 MB was being used, and roughly a megabyte of memory per
  image to decode on top of that.
• The game panel was doing it a second time, fetching a full-size image to fill a box 160
  pixels tall — about 340 KB per open, and 25 MB against 2.4 across the titles that have artwork.
  It now uses the cover you already have, so the panel opens with no download at all.
• Covers that never started now start. Artwork is loaded as it comes near the screen, which is
  right — but when that decision never arrives the cover simply never appears. Anything that has
  not begun a few seconds after the library settles is now asked for outright.
• A third of the library stops asking for artwork that is not there. Titles whose pictures live
  on a PC you have switched off were each firing three requests that could not succeed before
  falling back to initials. The console now says whether it has the picture.

GitHub connectivity and update checks

• The newest release is picked correctly. The release list is not in date order, and the app was
  taking the first entry — so it offered the wrong release as the update, and sometimes reported
  everything current while a newer build sat on the project's own page.
• A release check and a download no longer get in each other's way. Each was building its own
  network stack, and two at once fails on every address — which is exactly what happens when you
  open the Payloads panel and then press Update, the commonest thing anyone does with that drawer.
• Anything that could not be checked now says why. The drawer used to read "2 could not be
  checked" and throw the reason away, including the one sentence that tells you what to do about it.
  Each one is now named, in the console's own words, with a link to the project's page.
• kstuff and FPKGi can be checked at all, and two more projects had no file pattern recorded.

Sources outside GitHub

• FPKGi comes from pkg-zone now, which is where it is actually published — with a separate
  build for the PS4 and the PS5, so each console asks for its own. The console reads that page
  itself, so this works with no PC on.
• A package whose internal version never changes stops looping. FPKGi has reported 01.00 through
  ten releases, so every check read it as out of date: you took the update, the same 85 MB arrived,
  and the row came straight back. The file's own name is read instead — but only where the internal
  number is demonstrably stale, so the version shown for every other homebrew is unchanged.

Path corrections

• A payload you update with no PC now replaces the copy inside Payload Manager. It was landing
  only in the app's own folder, where Payload Manager never looks — so ShadowMountPlus, kstuff, FTP,
  nanoDNS, OnionHEN, the WebKit installer and this app's own ELF were updated everywhere except the
  place you start them from. It is written under the name already there, so your list keeps one
  entry per payload instead of gaining a second.
• A new build of the app taken on the console survives a restart. It used to be cleaned out of
  the app's own payload folder on the next start and offered to you again.
• The PS4 stops overwriting your own files in GoldHEN's folder, and a folder app is never sent
  to a path that cannot exist.

Storage and duplicates

• A game that is on the console twice is finally visible. One title was there as a compressed
  backup in one watched folder and an installed app folder in another, and every part of this app
  was written to show one card per game — so there was nothing to act on. The card now says how many
  copies there are and where the other one is.
• ⧉ Clear the duplicate, in the ⋯ menu, removes the extra copy and keeps the one the console
  actually mounts. It is deliberately not the Delete button: that one removes every copy, which is
  right for deleting a game and wrong here.
• Folder apps report their real size, instead of 64 KB — the folder's own entry rather than its
  contents, one of them 109.5 MB across 67 files — and no longer describe themselves as compressed
  containers.
• Deleting a backup removes every copy of it, and 97 MB of leftovers were cleared off the PS5
  with the cause fixed so they do not build up again.

Working with no PC at all

• Every emulator installs and updates from a PS5 with no PC on. Most of them ship as an
  archive and neither payload could read one, so the Updates drawer turned into a link to somebody's
  release page. Both consoles carry their own decompressor now: one job fetches, opens and places
  the app folder, with one progress bar — and it merges into an existing install, so your saves
  and roms are left alone. (A PS4 can open an archive too; what it cannot do is fetch one — see
  below.)
• The PS4 stops inventing seven USB drives.

Clearer and safer

• Anything that changes the jailbreak layer asks twice, every time.
• Run says which file it started, so "I took the update and it is still offered" can be told
  apart from a problem with the check.
• The PS4 tells you before you press that it cannot download on its own. It cannot — that one is
  the console and not the app, and it was chased as far as it goes: the certificates, the system
  modules, the memory given to the security layer, and even having the console's browser fetch the
  file and hand it over. Instead of a tile reading "Working…" for twenty seconds and then a code,
  the row says a PC has to fetch it. The updates themselves still appear, because the page reads
  the projects' releases itself.

Translations

• New strings, in all fifteen languages, for everything above that says something new.

Download

PKG-MUTANT-SHOP.exe	Windows companion
PKG-MUTANT-SHOP.elf	PS5 — firmware up to 13.60, load from Payload Manager
PKG-MUTANT-SHOP-PS4.elf	PS4 — FW 13.52, load through GoldHEN
PKG-MUTANT-SHOP-3.98.4.zip	all three, with checksums

Load the new .elf on your consoles as well — most of this release is the console's own half,
and the PC alone will not give you it.

---

More detail: the full changelog
has every change with the measurement behind it, and the
features list
describes everything the app does.
New here? Start with Setup.

PKG MUTANT SHOP 3.97.2

Fixed

• Two buttons again, and a press that does something. Pressing anything in Payloads &
  Homebrews opened a row of choices, said "Working…" with a percentage beside it, and then sat
  there — sometimes for the rest of the session, sometimes until a message arrived saying GitHub
  could not be reached. The row had quietly grown extra verbs, and every tile that picked one up
  took two presses instead of one. It is back to what it was: a payload offers Run, a package
  offers Send again from a PC and Install on the console, and something that has not been
  done yet simply happens on the first press. Nothing else is on a tile.
• Nothing is left saying "Working…". A download had four hours before anything gave up on it,
  and three separate things could go wrong inside that window without the button ever coming back:
  the transfer stopped moving, the console stopped answering, or it reported a state the app did
  not recognise. Each of those now ends the wait, puts the button back and says which one it was.
• "Get more" counted things it could not get. With no PC on the network it read "Get more 5" on
  the PS5 and "Get more 1" on the PS4, and the extras were this app itself and four helper files
  that have no project of their own to download from. The drawer lists only what pressing Download
  would really fetch, so the number beside it is now the number of things you can have.
• Emulators were being installed twice, into two different folders. The console was putting app
  folders on the system partition while a PC put them on the main drive — the backup service
  watches both, so the same emulator appeared twice and the newer copy sat beside the older one
  instead of replacing it. The console now says which drive its apps belong on and the app uses
  that answer, and the console refuses to unpack an app anywhere else.
• A patch or add-on on a USB stick can be installed on the PS4 again. A package with no base
  game of its own was sorted correctly and then had nothing to press: the button read "Install
  update", was enabled, and answered "No installable base for …". It installs what is actually in
  the package.
• On the PS4, Run starts the update you just took. It started the copy built into the app
  instead, left the new one beside it, and the panel credited the new version to the old file — so
  an update looked taken and changed nothing.
• An update that was not an update. Itemzflow was offered as 01.08 → 1.08 on the PS4 — the
  same version written two ways — and as 1.14 → 1.08 on the PS5, which is a downgrade with an
  arrow pointing the wrong way. Neither is reported any more.
• The emulators' helper files are out of the Payloads list altogether. Four files that live
  inside an emulator's folder and do nothing on their own were listed as payloads named after
  other people's projects, and as rows in the Download drawer that nothing could ever fetch. They
  are still sent with their emulator, exactly as before; they are simply not things you are now
  asked about.
• "Could not reach GitHub" is in your language, and arrives in eight seconds. It was raw
  English in all fifteen translations, and it came after a twenty-second wait on a button that said
  "Working…" throughout.
• A refusal no longer kills a button for the rest of the session. If something went wrong
  while the console was fetching, the Download drawer would refuse every press afterwards and the
  Update button on a row stayed dead — with no way back but reloading the page.
• "Check for updates" says when it is busy. It ignored every press while a check was running —
  which on a console that has not checked before takes tens of seconds — and looked exactly as
  pressable as ever, so it got pressed again and again.
• One cover no longer stalls the whole console. Both consoles answer every request in turn, and
  making a card-sized cover was being done in that queue: opening the library stopped everything
  else, once per cover, including the progress of a download you were watching. The covers are made
  in the background now and the full-size art is shown until one is ready.
• The panel could be emptied by a long version number. A project that publishes a wordy release
  tag could overflow the console's reply and cut it mid-sentence, and the panel then had nothing to
  show and no reason to give.
• The PS4 app no longer touches the system's network libraries while it is starting. It was
  doing so before it had opened its own port, which is the one place in this app where something
  that does not return leaves no shop, no status and no way to see why. It measurably did not help
  with anything, so it is gone from startup.

Notes

The Payloads & Homebrews panel is the whole of this release. The work that moved it onto the
consoles had changed how it behaved as well, and this puts that back: the two buttons, the single
press, and the honest counts are what the panel did before any of it, now done by the console
itself with no PC on the network.

Both consoles were read live while this was written — the buttons, the badges, the drawers and the
install folders — and the panel's own decisions are now checked by the test suite against the
readings taken off them, rather than against the shape of the code that makes them.

Download

PKG-MUTANT-SHOP.exe	Windows companion
PKG-MUTANT-SHOP.elf	PS5 — firmware up to 13.60, load from Payload Manager
PKG-MUTANT-SHOP-PS4.elf	PS4 — FW 13.52, load through GoldHEN
PKG-MUTANT-SHOP-3.97.2.zip	all three, with checksums

Load the new .elf on your consoles as well — the panel is served and decided by the console
payload, so the PC alone will not give you any of this.

Setup · Full changelog

PKG MUTANT SHOP 3.97.1

Added

• Both consoles open archives on their own now — no PC anywhere. Seven of the ten PS5
  homebrews ship as a .zip, and with every PC switched off the app could not download, install
  or update any of them: the Updates drawer counted the update and then offered a link to the
  project's GitHub release page instead of a button. The console now carries its own
  decompressor, reads the archive, puts the app folder on the drive under its own title id, puts
  the emulator's own data folder where its project documents, and deletes the archive — all in
  the same job as the download, so you watch one progress bar and end up with an installed
  emulator.
• The console makes its own cover art, from the games' own files. The library's covers were
  each title's full-size icon0.png: 81 of them weigh 25.2 MB on the PS5 and 23 weigh 7.1 MB on
  the PS4, and the only thing that had ever made small copies was the PC. The console now reads
  the PNG out of the game's own folder and writes a card-sized cover itself — the same library,
  2.2 MB instead of 25. Nothing is asked of anything: no PC, no network, no cache to fill first.
  It happens once per title, in the background, and a title installed five minutes ago gets its
  cover the moment you look at it.
• The PS4 can check for updates again. Its running build predated the route that reads a
  project's releases, so every request fell into the "unknown address" stub, came back as an empty
  reply, and the drawer read that as "Everything matches the newest release" — about a check that
  had not happened. It lists exactly what the PS5 does now, and reads GitHub itself: two projects
  it had never been asked about, fresh, in nine seconds, with every PC switched off.
• And a console that still cannot check now says so. The page reads the releases itself when
  the console's answer is an empty one — it runs in the console's own browser, which has its own
  network — so "could not check" can no longer be mistaken for "nothing to report". That is the
  one answer an update check must never give.
• A PS4 payload the console downloaded itself can be started. It arrived, was tidied up
  correctly, and then had no Run button, because the console's own payload list only ever
  reported the copies built into the app.

Fixed

• "Send again" overwrites, which is what it is for. Pressing it on something the console
  already has was refused with "… is already mounted on …" — and painted green, as a success.
  The panel was not passing the flag that means "yes, over the top": the games grid has sent it
  since it was written.
• The emulators' helper files are no longer in the Payloads list. Four ELFs that live inside
  an emulator's folder — PS5SX2's installer and helper, XPSemu's helper, PS5X360's log collector —
  were appearing as Payloads of their own, named after somebody else's project and doing nothing
  on their own. They are on their emulator's tile now, where what they are for is obvious, and the
  two that have to be running before their emulator starts can still be started from there.
• "Keep on the console" is gone. It copied a package into the console's own folder so it could
  be installed again with no PC — the only road to a self-sufficient console back when the console
  could not reach the internet. It can now, so pressing Download on the console does the same job;
  and four words on a button were the only explanation of it anywhere in the app.
• A first download is one press again. A tile whose only possible action was Download still
  opened the "what do you want to do" row first. Anything that can replace something still asks.
• "That did not work" says what did not work. One blanket catch sat over the whole
  download-and-install chain and turned every refusal, from any cause, into those five words. A
  refusal now carries the reason the server gave it.
• Taking one update no longer re-reads every project. It fired a forced check of all ten,
  one after another, on the console's single worker — half a minute of "Working…" in the drawer
  you were looking at — to learn something it already knew.
• "Update all" takes the rows the drawer actually shows. It was filtering its own list
  differently, so on a console whose updates were all emulators the button did nothing at all.
• The library does not rebuild itself three times for one page open. Asking for the drives
  built the entire library document and threw the games away — twice when the page opens, and
  again every minute. One document is built and shared, and it is rebuilt when the console's
  content actually changes rather than on a timer.
• The grid refreshes itself with no PC on the network. Its only refresh signal came from the
  PC companion, so a game installed on the console stayed invisible until the page was reloaded by
  hand. Both consoles already publish a content signature; the page reads it now.
• Cover art can be revalidated. Every reload re-downloaded up to 540 KB of PNG per card
  because the request's own cache headers were being discarded.
• A patch on a USB stick is a patch. It was becoming a full-game card on the PS4, under the
  game's name and size, so one game showed twice and pressing the wrong one installed a patch as
  if it were the game.
• Nothing in the app opens GoldHEN's payload port any more. The release gate and the network
  sweep both connected to it and closed again — 254 times, in the sweep's case — which is exactly
  what stops that loader listening, and it is the only lane by which a new PS4 build is loaded. A
  jailbroken PS4 with no payload running is found by GoldHEN's FTP greeting instead, which is the
  signal that was measured to be reliable in the first place.
• PS5CEMU-HAR can be downloaded. It was marked as source-only, which was true until the
  project published its first build.
• RetroArch's entry said its cores are published separately. They are not, and never were:
  the release is one archive and the cores are inside it.
• Three emulators keep your games and saves outside their app folder — XPSemu, ProsperoEden
  and Porpoise — and nothing in the app said so. Each one's entry now does.
• Installing an archive checks for room to unpack it, not just to download it. RetroArch's is
  752 MB compressed and these archives expand two to three times.

Notes

• An emulator update merges into the folder that is already there: every file the new release
  carries is replaced and everything else is left alone. Several of these emulators keep your own
  files inside their app folder — PS5X360 reads games from assets/roms/ and RetroArch keeps its
  whole configuration in there — and an update that replaced the folder would take them with it.
• A folder inside an archive that the app has no recorded place for is named and left alone
  rather than put somewhere chosen for it.
• The decompressor and the cover-art maker are both this project's own, because neither console's
  SDK has either. They are tested against Python's zlib and zipfile and against Pillow: 434
  generated streams, six corrupt ones that must be refused rather than crash, every real release
  archive extracted and compared file by file, and all 104 covers on both consoles decoded to the
  exact same pixels.

Download

PKG-MUTANT-SHOP.exe	Windows companion
PKG-MUTANT-SHOP.elf	PS5 — firmware up to 13.60, load from Payload Manager
PKG-MUTANT-SHOP-PS4.elf	PS4 — FW 13.52, load through GoldHEN
PKG-MUTANT-SHOP-3.97.1.zip	all three, with checksums

Load the new .elf on your consoles as well — everything above happens on the console side,
so the PC alone will not give you any of it.

Setup · Full changelog

PKG MUTANT SHOP 3.97.0

Added

• Eight emulators in Payloads & Homebrews. DolphinPS4 (GameCube · Wii on the PS4), and on the
  PS5: RetroArch, PS5SX2 (PlayStation 2), PS5X360 (Xbox 360), XPSemu (original Xbox),
  ProsperoEden (Nintendo Switch), Porpoise (GameCube · Wii) and PS5CEMU-HAR (Wii U · 3DS). Each
  one says what it emulates and which firmware it was built for.

• A Download drawer, beside the Updates one. It lists everything the catalogue knows about for
  the console you are looking at — what you have and what you do not — and downloads any of it
  straight from the project's own latest release. Press it on something you already have and it
  asks first instead of fetching 200 MB again.

• The files an emulator does not work without come with it. PS5SX2's installer and helper,
  XPSemu's helper, PS5X360's log collector: all fetched in the same press, and a download where one
  of them did not arrive says so rather than reporting success.

• Archives are opened for you. Most of these ship as a .zip, which neither console can be
  handed — the projects tell you to extract it and copy a folder over FTP. The app now reads the
  archive, puts the app folder where the console takes it, and installs it from there. No FTP
  client, no manual step.

• Emulator data goes to the right place on the console. PS5SX2's PCSX2 folder — its patches,
  shaders, renderer flags and game database — is placed in /data/PCSX2, with the empty bios/
  and games/ folders created so the emulator can find your own dumps. Nothing you have already
  changed is overwritten.

• Each row says whether the console has it, not only whether this PC does.

• A build we cannot line up against its upstream can still be taken. Those rows said "could not
  tell" and offered nothing; now they offer it, clearly labelled as your decision.

• The Download drawer is two columns, in alphabetical order, one line an item. It was two
  rows each, and for every emulator the second row repeated the first in different words -
  "PS5CEMU-HAR Wii U · Nintendo 3DS" above "Wii U (Cemu) and Nintendo 3DS (Azahar) on the
  PS5." Eighteen items used to make thirty-six rows and 1,519 px of scrolling; they now make
  eighteen rows and 451 px, which fits without scrolling at all. A green dot marks what the
  console already has, and the full description, the firmware and the setup note are on the
  row's tooltip.

• The Updates drawer had the same treatment. It was listing both consoles at once - on a PS5
  tab, five of the rows were PS4 payloads - and writing "PS5" beside the other fourteen on a
  panel whose header already says PS5. It shows the console you are looking at, so the label has
  nothing left to say. The app's own update row printed the new version twice, forty pixels
  apart. The "could not be compared" entries were paragraphs that pushed their own button onto a
  second line; they are now the same three slots as every other row.

• The app installs itself where each console's payload manager looks. Downloading it,
  updating it or sending it now also places the ELF in /data/pldmgr/payloads/PKG-MUTANT-SHOP
  on the PS5 and /data/payloads on the PS4 — so after a reboot you can start the shop from
  Payload Manager or GoldHEN's own menu, with no PC awake. Only this app's own payloads are
  placed; every other payload goes exactly where it always did.

• Six ways in, all of them covered: both Send buttons, the Download and Update rows, the
  "it was already there" shortcut on the PS4, and the automatic hand-over when a PS4 comes up
  with no shop running. A console that is asleep is simply reported — a download still works
  with everything switched off, exactly as before.

• The Download drawer shows one row an item, in two columns. The name is in the accent
  colour so it reads apart from the description, and it stays that colour on something you
  already have. Hovering a row gives the full description, the firmware it was built for and
  any setup note.

• Every payload and homebrew offers what it can actually do. Press a tile and it names the
  next step rather than guessing at one: a payload offers Run and Send again, a homebrew offers
  Install or Send again, and something no machine has yet offers Download. A first install still
  happens on one press — it is only when there is more than one thing a press could mean, or
  when the app cannot tell what state the console is in, that it asks.

• The helper payloads two of the emulators need are now in the panel. PS5SX2 and XPSemu do not
  start unless their helper is running — their own notes say so — and the app had been
  downloading those files into the folder beside the emulator where nothing could launch them.
  They appear as payloads of their own now, named after the app they belong to, with Run and Send
  where every other payload has them. PS5SX2's installer and PS5X360's log collector come too.

• A tile's tooltip says what it takes to make the thing work, and which machine is holding the
  file. The setup note and the firmware were on the Download drawer's rows and vanished the moment
  you owned the item; and a press that was about to pull a quarter of a gigabyte across from your
  other PC looked exactly like one reading a local file.

• A package the console is already holding is installed from the console's own copy. Nothing
  is transferred. The app had been working this out and then throwing the answer away: the tile
  said the console had it and the only button answered "not on this PC".

• "Keep on the console". A package copied into the console's own folder can be installed again
  with every PC switched off, which is the only way a console can be self-sufficient — the
  packages are far too large to live inside the app. Offered on a tile you have already installed,
  beside Send again.

• The choice row works with a controller. Those two buttons were reachable only with the
  stick cursor; they take D-pad focus and Enter now.

• The shop puts its own listening socket back when it stops working. Both consoles now notice
  that they have stopped accepting connections, throw the dead socket away and bind a new one. This
  is what turns "the app is gone and the only way back is a reboot" into a few seconds of silence.

• A new copy waits thirty seconds for the old one to let go, instead of five, and says what is
  actually wrong if it cannot have the port — the old message was "already running, no need to
  load it again", which was the one thing the owner saw from a console that was serving nothing.

• The consoles serve card-sized covers of their own. A companion leaves a small copy of each
  cover on the console while it is connected, and the console serves those from then on — with
  every PC switched off. The PS5's library went from 23 MB of artwork to 4 MB. A title with no
  small copy yet is served the original, so nothing is ever missing while the cache fills.

• Both consoles download and update on their own, with every PC switched off. Payloads &
  Homebrews used to answer "a PC running this app has to fetch it" on a console with no companion,
  because neither console had ever spoken to a project's release page. Now each one reads what a
  project has published, picks the file that matches that console, downloads it, checks it against
  the SHA-256 the project stated, and installs it when it is a package. Get more, Update and Update
  all are all real buttons there now — including the app's own new build, which the console
  fetches for itself.

• Updates are compared for everything installed, not only for files on the console. An emulator
  is a folder app with no package left behind, so every one of them was skipped: the drawer read
  "1 update" on a PS5 that had five. They are all compared now, and a row the app cannot line up
  — a folder app's own 01.00 against a release called v1.0.0-beta.1 — says so instead
  of staying silent.

• A download is checked before it is kept. The release states a SHA-256 for every file; the app
  hashes what arrived and refuses anything that does not match, so a truncated or substituted
  download never reaches the name something would run. The two numbers come from two different
  servers, which is what makes the check worth making.

• One version of a payload in a folder, never two. A new release usually has a new file name,
  so the previous copy used to sit beside it and both looked like the same project. The old one is
  removed as the new one lands.

• The console remembers which release it took. Update a payload or homebrew from the console
  and the app writes the release down beside the file, so the panel compares against what your
  console is actually holding instead of against the version recorded when the app was built.
  That is what stops a row offering an update you have already taken.

• Run starts the copy you downloaded. Taking an update used to leave the new file beside the
  one the app ships and then start the shipped one.

• A Cancel while a download is running. An Update pressed by mistake is 46 MB for the app's
  own build and up to 268 MB for a package, and while one runs the console will not start another
  — so both drawers were stuck for the duration with no way to stop it.

• "Update all" carries on and tells you how many it took. It used to stop at the first row it
  could not take, leaving every payload behind it untouched and saying nothing about it.

Fixed

• A just-downloaded emulator reported an update to itself. An app folder's own version number
  (01.00, for ever) was being compared against a release tag like v2.5 or Alpha-2, so all
  three read as permanently out of date. Downloads now record which release they came from, and a
  folder installed by hand is honestly reported as not comparable.
• Things already downloaded went on being offered. An emulator is identified by the title id
  ...

PKG MUTANT SHOP 3.96.0

Fixed

• Sending a game to a console is about six times faster. A game that lived on the PC you pressed
  Install from was being pushed to the console instead of the console fetching it — the fast
  route existed but could never be reached. Measured on real hardware: 16.9 MB/s before,
  111.7 MB/s now. A 35 GB game arrives in a little over two minutes; a 112 GB one goes from
  about 1 hour 50 minutes to roughly 17.
• Both consoles now move data in 1 MB blocks and ask for a proper network buffer. On its own
  that took a PS5 write from 42.7 MB/s to 108.7 — the speed of the cable. Internal storage went from
  16.1 to 74.3 MB/s, so it was never the drive.
• A large install could be cut off part-way. While the console was busy filing away what it had
  already received, the PC gave up sending after 30 seconds — and the install failed with nothing on
  screen to say why.
• PS4: a transfer could throw itself away near the end over a perfectly normal condition.
• The Payloads & Homebrews panel was missing updates that were really there. It only ever asked
  GitHub for the latest stable release, and most of these projects publish test builds — so an
  update you could see on the project's own page was invisible here. It now finds them, and marks a
  row clearly when it is a pre-release so the choice is yours.
• Six payloads could never be offered an update at all, because the file that records their
  versions was not being included in the app.
• The panel now tells you when it cannot tell. Previously an item it could not compare looked
  identical to one that was up to date. Each is now listed with the reason and a link to the
  project's page.

Download

PKG-MUTANT-SHOP.exe	Windows companion
PKG-MUTANT-SHOP.elf	PS5 — firmware up to 13.60, load from Payload Manager
PKG-MUTANT-SHOP-PS4.elf	PS4 — FW 13.52, load through GoldHEN
PKG-MUTANT-SHOP-3.96.0.zip	all three, with checksums

Load the new .elf on your consoles as well — most of the speed is in the console payload.

Setup · Full changelog