OmniEmu v0.2.0 fith prereleases
Pre-release
🎮 OmniEmu v0.3.0
✨ All your games. One place. ✨
Hey everyone! We're super excited to bring you v0.3.0 — this is a big one. We've been working hard on a bunch of features you've been asking for, squashed a ton of bugs, and made the whole experience feel a lot more polished. Let's dive in! 🚀
🗂️ Save Manager
Ever lost a save file because you forgot which folder it was in? Yeah, us too. That's why we built the Save Manager!
Open the new 💾 Saves tab in the top bar and you'll see all of your emulator save files and save states, neatly organised by game. Here's what you can do:
- Browse — saves are automatically scanned from your RetroArch, Dolphin, RPCS3, PCSX2, DuckStation, Flycast, PPSSPP, and Eden directories
- Fuzzy matching — OmniEmu intelligently matches save files to the games in your library, even if the filenames don't line up perfectly
- Back up — one-click backup of any save file so you never lose progress
- Delete — clean up old or unwanted saves right from the app
- Custom directories — point each emulator at a custom save folder if your setup is a little different
It's like a file manager, but actually enjoyable to use. 😄
🖥️ Frontend Options
OmniEmu now supports four emulation frontends! Whether you want a plug-and-play experience or full customisation, there's something for you.
EmuBuddy
Available on all platforms — no toggles needed. EmuBuddy gives you one-click setup, built-in game downloading, and full controller support. Just install and go!
ES-DE (Beta)
The beloved EmulationStation Desktop Edition is here. It's a gorgeous multi-system launcher with tons of community themes. Enable Beta Features in Settings to unlock it.
🍎 macOS note: ES-DE requires a manual install via DMG because of license acceptance requirements — we'll show you exactly what to do!
NeoStation (Beta)
A modern Flutter-based frontend with built-in ScreenScraper integration for automatic game art and metadata. Also behind the Beta Features toggle.
🍎 macOS note: Same deal as ES-DE — manual DMG install, but we walk you through it.
Pegasus Frontend (Beta)
Love customisation? Pegasus is a fully themeable launcher that puts you in control. And the best part? OmniEmu automatically generates collection files for Pegasus — just scan your ROMs and everything shows up. We write metadata.pegasus.txt files into each ROM subdirectory and a central settings.txt so Pegasus knows exactly where to look.
🎨 SteamGridDB Cover Art
Your game library deserves to look good! 🖼️
OmniEmu now integrates with SteamGridDB for high-quality cover art. Here's how it works:
- Grab a free API key from steamgriddb.com and pop it into Settings
- When viewing a game, hit "Change Cover" and search SteamGridDB right from inside the app
- Pick the cover you like and it's saved locally — works offline too!
- Don't like it? Hit "Reset Cover" to clear it and fall back to free art sources
All images are downloaded through the main process, cached locally as file:// paths, and rate-limit retries are built in so we don't get blocked. No more broken cover art! 🎉
🎨 Four Brand-New Themes
We've gone from 3 themes to 7! 🌈
| Theme | Vibe |
|---|---|
| Midnight | Deep dark blues and purples — easy on the eyes for those late-night gaming sessions |
| Ember | Warm oranges and reds — cozy and inviting |
| Lavender | Soft purples and pastels — calm and elegant |
| Jade | Cool greens and teals — fresh and modern |
| Dark | Classic dark mode |
| Light | Clean and bright |
| System | Follows your OS preference |
You'll find them all in Settings → Appearance → Theme.
🕹️ Horizontal Navigation & Gamepad Support
The old sidebar is gone — say hello to the new top bar navigation! 🎉
- Tabs run horizontally across the top: Home, Emulators, Library, Saves, Controller, Utilities, Settings
- Full gamepad navigation — D-pad left/right switches tabs, A selects, B closes modals
- Smart auto-focus — when you switch tabs, the first interactive element lights up automatically
- The "Launch Game" button in the game detail modal auto-focuses so you can hit A and start playing immediately
The whole UI feels snappier and more controller-friendly than ever. 🎯
⬆️ Improvements
Here's everything else we've improved since v0.2.0:
- 🗂️ BIOS folder skip — the ROM scanner now automatically skips folders named "bios" so your BIOS files don't get mixed in with your games
- Controller auto-focus — the game detail modal now auto-focuses the "Launch Game" button for controller users
- Reset Cover — clear a downloaded cover and fall back to the free art sources (libretro thumbnails, MobyGames)
- macOS RetroArch — removed the broken cores download (it was 404). Cores must be downloaded from within RetroArch's Online Updater after installation
- Gamepad resilience — improved error handling in the controller navigation polling loop so one bad frame doesn't break your whole session
🐛 Bug Fixes
We squashed quite a few bugs this release:
- SteamGridDB 404 fixed — the search API endpoint was wrong (
/search/game/→/search/autocomplete/). Cover art search works again! - Cover images not loading — Electron's renderer can't load remote images due to CORS. We now download thumbnails through the main process and serve them as local
file://paths - Theme colours broken — hardcoded accent colours (
rgba(0, 212, 255, ...)andrgba(124, 58, 237, ...)) were causing glow effects to look wrong on non-default themes. All glow effects now use CSScolor-mix()withvar(--accent)so they adapt to every theme - Duplicate
.platform-tagCSS — the muted tag style on emulator cards was being overridden by the accent variant in the game detail modal. Renamed the accent variant to.platform-tag-accent - Stale
types.d.ts— removed an outdated type declaration file that could shadow the realtypes.tsdefinitions - Inline
require()calls — replaced 7 instances ofrequire('fs')andrequire('os')in the emulator registry with proper ES module imports - Duplicate
require('electron')— removed a redundant inline require in the save manager IPC handler (it was already imported at the top) - Unused imports — cleaned up
isLinuxfrom emulators.ts andEmulatorConfigfrom SettingsPage
📋 Supported Emulators
We now support 14 emulators and 4 frontends! 🎉
🎮 Emulators
| Emulator | What it plays | Windows | macOS | Linux |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| RetroArch | NES, SNES, N64, GB, GBC, GBA, PS1, PCE, Sega MD, Sega Saturn, and more | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Dolphin | GameCube & Wii | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| RPCS3 | PlayStation 3 | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| PCSX2 | PlayStation 2 | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| DuckStation | PlayStation 1 | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| PPSSPP | PlayStation Portable | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| melonDS | Nintendo DS | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Flycast | Dreamcast & NAOMI | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| MAME | Arcade | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Eden | Nintendo Switch | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Cemu | Wii U | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| xemu | Original Xbox | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Vita3K | PlayStation Vita | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Azahar | Nintendo 3DS | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
🖥️ Frontends
| Frontend | What it does | Availability |
|---|---|---|
| EmuBuddy | One-click launcher with game downloading | All platforms |
| ES-DE | Multi-system launcher with community themes | All platforms (macOS: manual install) — Beta |
| NeoStation | Modern launcher with ScreenScraper integration | All platforms (macOS: manual install) — Beta |
| Pegasus | Fully customisable themeable launcher | All platforms — Beta |
💻 System Requirements
| Requirement | Minimum | Recommended |
|---|---|---|
| OS | Windows 10+ | Windows 11 |
| macOS | macOS 13 Ventura+ | Latest |
| Linux | Ubuntu 20.04+ | Latest LTS |
| RAM | 4 GB | 8 GB+ |
| Storage | 500 MB (OmniEmu only) | Depends on your ROM & save collection |
| Display | 1280×720 | 1920×1080+ |
📝 Good to Know
A few handy tips for this release:
- Beta Features — ES-DE, NeoStation, and Pegasus are in beta. Head to Settings → Experimental → Beta Features to enable them.
- SteamGridDB — Cover art search needs a free API key. Sign up at steamgriddb.com and enter it in Settings.
- macOS frontends — ES-DE and NeoStation require a manual DMG install because of license acceptance requirements. We'll show you a handy guide right in the app!
- RetroArch cores on macOS — After installing RetroArch, open it and use the Online Updater to download cores. OmniEmu handles everything else.
- Azahar — This is the successor to Lime3DS (which was itself the successor to Citra). If you used Citra before, this is the one you want.
🙏 Thank You!
Thanks for using OmniEmu! Every star on GitHub, every bug report, and every feature request helps us make this app better for everyone. If you run into any issues, please open an issue on GitHub — we're always happy to help.
Happy gaming! 🎮✨