2.0 alpha 3

• Update all mods at once. The home screen now shows how many installed mods have an update waiting and lets you update multiple mods at once. Previously, mods could only be updated one at a time from each mod's details page.
• Mod settings improvements.
  • Defaults and unsaved edits are marked. A setting that holds something other than the mod's default is marked in the row's gutter and offers a revert to that default. Unsaved edits are marked in a distinct color. A "revert everything" button was added as well.
  • Folding. Arrays and grouped settings can be folded away to their name and description, so a mod with many settings can be read as an outline.
  • Compact density. The visual mode can be made more compact with tighter gaps, smaller controls, and descriptions moved behind a hover badge.
  • Array rows can be reordered by dragging. A row of an array can be dragged to another place in the array by a grip. The row menu also offers Move up, Move down, and a button to remove all array items.
  • Textual mode improvements. Booleans are rendered as true/false (instead of 1/0), and a word-wrap toggle was added.
• Startup and window improvements. The window now opens immediately instead of staying hidden until the UI is fully loaded. Error handling was improved, and errors are now reported instead of the process silently hanging or exiting.
• The Windhawk window no longer runs elevated. The privileged work is done by a separate elevated helper process.
• Installing or updating a mod can now be cancelled.
• Added a Bangla translation.
• Other minor improvements and bug fixes.

Notes:

• Upgrading from version 1.x will preserve all of your settings and mods.
• You can set the environment variable WINDHAWK_USE_VSCODIUM_UI=1 to temporarily revert to the old VSCodium-based UI. This variable will be removed in the future. After changing it, a reboot might be required.

2.0 alpha 2

• Backup & restore. This has probably been the most requested Windhawk feature for a long time. You can now easily back up your Windhawk mods and settings, and restore them later. This is especially useful if you want to transfer your mods to another computer or if you need to reinstall Windhawk.
• Light theme. Since the first public release, Windhawk has only had a dark theme. A light theme is now available for users who prefer a brighter interface. In the settings, you can switch between the dark and light themes, or have Windhawk follow your system theme.
• Mod settings expand/collapse. The mod settings tab now has an expand button that expands the settings to fill the window. This provides more room for mods with many settings, and makes them easier to read and edit.
• Textual settings formatting is preserved. Formatting such as comments and blank lines is now preserved in the textual settings editor.
• Ctrl+S on the Advanced tab saves the focused field. Applies to mod settings, custom process inclusion, and custom process exclusion.
• The mod list refreshes when the main window regains focus. This is especially useful when a new mod is compiled in the development environment. Previously, you had to manually refresh the mod list to see the new mod.
• Tray notification icon for mod updates. The tray icon now shows a badge when mod updates are available.
• The Windhawk service is now a 64-bit process. Windhawk no longer supports 32-bit Windows, so the service is built as a 64-bit process. In practice, nothing changes aside from the architecture shown in Task Manager. Windhawk is still compatible with 32-bit processes.
• Command-line interface improvements. Added backup and restore commands (data export, data inspect, data import). mod settings set now takes one or more key=value pairs, replacing the old mod settings set <id> <key> <value> form. Other minor improvements.
• Added a Norwegian translation.
• Other minor improvements and bug fixes.

Notes:

• Upgrading from version 1.x will preserve all of your settings and mods.
• You can set the environment variable WINDHAWK_USE_VSCODIUM_UI=1 to temporarily revert to the old VSCodium-based UI. This variable will be removed in the future. After changing it, a reboot might be required.

2.0 alpha 1

This is the first alpha release of Windhawk 2.0. Please help test it and report any issues you encounter. More features are planned for the final 2.0 release.

Main changes:

• Optional Development Tools: Development tools are now excluded by default. With this change, a fresh Windhawk installation takes up only around 40 MB instead of 820 MB. Development tools can still be added during or after installation for compiling mods locally.

• New Lightweight UI: The main UI no longer relies on VSCodium, resulting in faster startup times and lower resource usage. Additionally, the development environment (if installed) now opens in a separate window and is no longer limited to a single instance, allowing multiple mods to be developed simultaneously.

• Command Line Interface: Windhawk now includes windhawk-cli.exe, which allows you to control Windhawk via the command line. You can install, update, remove, enable, and disable mods, query the online mod repository, view and change global or per-mod settings, compile local mod source files, and check for or install Windhawk updates.

• Support for Older Windows versions: Starting with version 2.0, Windhawk is dropping support for older Windows versions and 32-bit operating systems. Windhawk now exclusively supports Windows 10 and newer (64-bit x64 and ARM64).

Notes:

• Upgrading from version 1.x will preserve all of your settings and mods.
• You can set the environment variable WINDHAWK_USE_VSCODIUM_UI=1 to temporarily revert to the old VSCodium-based UI. This variable will be removed in the future. After changing it, a reboot might be required.

v1.7.3

• Fixed Windhawk loading and then unloading right away for sandboxed processes. This was fixed in v1.7.1, but became broken again in v1.7.2 due to the excessive CPU usage fix.

v1.7.2

• Fixed excessive CPU usage in some processes when Windhawk is running.
• Improved handling for a profile.json file which is corrupted or out of sync, which could break update checking.

v1.7.1

• Fixed Windhawk loading and then unloading right away for sandboxed processes. This usually had no visible impact, but could cause a crash with the "Dark mode context menus" mod due to the way it's being unloaded.
• Fixed a possible crash for mods which hook multiple functions using the same original pointer address.
• Fixed mod description images loading for mods which are edited locally.
• Minor UI bug fixes.

v1.7

• Windhawk now downloads pre-compiled mods by default instead of compiling them locally, significantly speeding up installations and updates. This can be disabled in the settings.
• Added support for viewing and installing older mod versions.
• Settings editor improvements:
  • Added a textual mode for editing settings in YAML format.
  • Settings can now be saved with Enter or Ctrl+S.
  • A warning is shown when leaving the settings tab with unsaved changes.
• Multiple user interface improvements, including:
  • Added search, filtering, and list view for installed mods.
  • Added additional filtering options in the Explore view.
  • Mod cards in the Explore view now show additional metadata, and display a rating breakdown on hover.
  • Added back/forward navigation via Alt+Left/Right and mouse back/forward buttons.
  • Added zooming support with Ctrl+Plus/Minus, and reset zoom with Ctrl+0.
  • Custom process inclusion/exclusion lists for mods are now shown in the target processes tooltip.
• Windhawk can now be updated with a single click from the About tab. (This becomes active starting with the next update.)
• Mod description images now load from GitHub. Previously, some images loaded from Imgur, which is now blocked in the United Kingdom.
• Mod development: Added support for the @license and @donateUrl metadata fields.
• Added the following translations: Arabic, Hindi, and Thai.

Engine improvements and fixes

• Added limited support for multiple concurrent users. Multiple users can now run separate portable Windhawk instances on the same machine, provided no instance is running with administrator privileges.
• If internet connection is unavailable at launch, Windhawk now retries downloading debug symbols several times. This helps in cases where the connection becomes available only after a short delay following system startup.
• Improved error handling for missing debug symbols. The operation is now retried after a long interval instead of repeatedly for each newly launched program.
• Windhawk now uses the SlimDetours library for function hooking, improving compatibility with certain programs. Notably fixes an incompatibility with MacType that could cause a BSOD when exiting Windhawk (issue #527).
• Improved handling of protected processes. Previously, loading or unloading mods in such processes could cause a crash. The list of loaded mods is now kept unchanged until the process restarts. Changes to mod enable/disable state take effect only after restarting the protected process. Fixes an incompatibility with simplewall (discussions #2084).
• Fixed a possible crash when unloading mods.
• Fixed an incompatibility that caused certain applications to fail to launch when Windhawk was running. Affected programs include SideFX Houdini (issue #525), Autodesk MotionBuilder 2020 (issue #687), Movavi Screen Recorder, and other programs by Movavi (issue #533).
• Fixed an issue where some processes failed to shut down and were kept running indefinitely. Affected programs include MTool by AdventCirno (issue #558).
• Fixed a rare crash on systems using certain non-English locales.

v1.6.1

• Fixed context menus in the Windhawk UI causing a blank screen.
• Improved the error message when loading the Windhawk engine library fails.
• Updated Portuguese translation.

v1.6

• ARM64 support. Windhawk can now be installed on ARM64 versions of Windows, and customization of native ARM64 programs is fully supported. Customization of x86 and x64 programs on ARM64 Windows has some limitations, which might be improved in the future. Some mods may need to be adjusted by their authors to work correctly on ARM64 Windows.
• Updated the default process exclusion rules to exclude known incompatible programs and some well-known games. Additionally, the special handling of pattern inclusion rules for critical system processes is now configurable per mod. For details, please refer to the documentation.
• When exploring mods, the selected language is now used for the names and descriptions of localized mods. Previously, English was always used on the "Explore" page.
• The toolkit dialog is no longer shown automatically when a fullscreen program or game is running.
• The Windhawk UI no longer restarts when advanced settings are changed — only the background processes are.
• Added the -safe-mode command-line switch.
• Improved debug symbol iteration speed, especially noticeable with very large symbol files.
• Improved mod unloading. Windhawk now attempts to wait for mods to finish running before unloading them, which could otherwise cause a crash.
• Added support for non-ASCII text in debug logs.
• Fixed an error caused by Windhawk in some cases: "Not enough space for thread data." To apply the fix, install or update at least one mod after the Windhawk update, then restart Windhawk.
• Fixed an incompatibility error that could occur in some programs when certain mods were used: "The procedure entry point ... could not be located." To apply the fix, reinstall or update all affected mods.
• Fixed an issue where Windhawk attempted to load winhttp.dll from the current directory, causing incompatibility problems in some cases.
• Fixed an issue where Windhawk caused console programs to fail to launch in rare Windows configurations.
• Added the following translations: Croatian, Czech, Danish, Greek, Hungarian, Indonesian, Tamil, and Vietnamese.
• Other minor bug fixes and improvements.

For developers

• Added the Wh_GetModStoragePath API that returns a directory path that can be used by the mod to store any necessary files.
• Added an option to the Wh_GetUrlContent API to download to a given file path.
• The compiler was updated from Clang 18.1.8 to Clang 20.1.3. Several mods require minor adjustments before they can be compiled with the new Windhawk version. When installed from the repository, the mods are compiled in a compatibility mode, and all existing mods can be installed.
• Updated the WinRT headers to include WinUI 2 and WinUI 3 definitions.

v1.5.1

• Fixed a system crash (BSOD of type REFERENCE BY POINTER) in Windows 10 which could occur under heavy system load.