Bottles

Easily manage wineprefix using environments

Read more about the next big Bottles release!.

📚 Documentation

Before opening a new issue, check if the topic has already been covered in our documentation.

Please note that some pages of the documentation are still being written.

🗣 Help Bottles speak your language

Read here how to translate Bottles in your language or how to help improve existing ones.

🦾 Features

• Create bottles based on environments (a set of rules and dependencies)
• Access to a customizable environment for all your experiments
• Run every executable (.exe/.msi/.bat) in your bottles, using the context menu in your file manager
• Integrated management and storage for executable file arguments
• Support for custom environment variables
• Simplified DLL overrides
• Manage and install multiple wine/proton/dxvk versions and on-the-fly change
• Various optimizations for better gaming performance (esync, fsync, dxvk, cache, shader compiler, offload .. and much more.)
• Tweak different wine prefix settings, without leaving Bottles
• Automated dxvk installation
• System for checking runner updates for the bottle and automatic repair in case of breakage
• Integrated Dependencies installer with compatibility check based on a community-driver repository
• Detection of installed programs
• Integrated Task manager for wine processes
• Easy access to ProtonDB and WineHQ for support
• Configurations update system across Bottles versions
• Backup and Import bottles from older version and from other managers (Lutris, POL, ..)
• Bottles versioning (experimental)
• .. and much more that you can find by installing Bottles!

🚧 Work in progress

• Installer manager #55
• Import backup from configuration file
• Optional sandboxed bottles

↗️ Install

Choose your preferred installation method.

🚀 AppImage

Bottles' AppImage is released on two channels (Stable and Unstable), the second one is not recommended in a production environment.

Download, then:

chmod +x Bottles-devel-x86_64.AppImage
./Bottles-devel-x86_64.AppImage

..or using zap⚡!

zap install bottles

And you're done!

AUR

There is the official package of Bottles on AUR for ArchLinux and derivatives.

Snap

Bottles can also be installed as a snap from the Snapcraft repository. Click the button below.

Flatpak

Bottles can also be installed as a flatpak from the Flathub repository. Click the button below.

Platform specific packages

We also offer Bottles as platform-specific installation packages.

Distro	Package Name/Link
Debian/Ubuntu	com.usebottles.bottles.deb

Unofficial packages

These packages are maitained by our community but not officialy supported.

Distro	Package Name/Link	Maintainer	Status
Flatpak (Beta)	com.usebottles.bottles	LeandroStanger	Active
Arch Linux	bottles-git (AUR)	Talebian	Active
Fedora	bottles	tim77	Active
Void linux	bottles	andry-dev	Active
NixOS	bottles	bloomvdomino	Active
Tumbleweed	bottles	WhiXard	Not maintained

Notices for package maintainers

We are happy to see packaged Bottles but we ask you to respect some small rules:

• The package must be bottles, in other distributions it is possible to use suffixes (e.g. bottles-git on Arch Linux for the git based package) while on others the RDNN format is required (e.g. com.usebottles.bottles on elementary OS and Flathub repository). All other nomenclatures are discouraged.
• In the current development phase, the version corresponds to the formula (2.commit, e.g. 2.a005f01), where possible use this formula throughout the development phase. For stable and 'stable development' release you can use the version in the VERSION file and its release. Please don't travel into the future with releases. It might confuse users.
• Do not package external files and do not make changes to the code, no hard script. Obviously with the exception of files essential for packaging. Once the package is published, you can open a Pull Request to add it to the packages table above! Thanks ❤️!

🛠️ Build with meson

Instead of use the Appimage you can choose to build your own Bottles from source.

Requirements

• meson
• ninja
• python3
• glib
  • glib2-devel on Fedora
  • libglib2.0-dev on Debian/Ubuntu

Build

mkdir build
meson build && cd build
ninja -j$(nproc)
sudo ninja install

Uninstall

sudo ninja uninstall

🛠️ Snap (build)

We also provide an initial Snap support. This is a package not fully tested.

Build

snapcraft
snap install bottles*.snap --dangerous
snap run bottles

Shortcuts

Shortcut	Action
Ctrl+Q	Close Bottles
Ctrl+R	Reload the Bottles list
F1	Go to the documentation
Esc	Go back

Why a new application? 👶

Bottles was born in 2017 as a personal need. I needed a practical way to manage my wineprefixes. I hate the idea of using applications that install me a version of wine for each application and I decided to create this application, based on the concept of using one or more wine prefixes as a "container" for all my applications.

In 2020 thanks to Valve, we have access to Proton. An optimized version of Wine for gaming. Thanks also to other projects like DXVK/VKD3D/Esync/Fsync/Shader compiler and others, we can run a large set of video games designed for Windows, on Linux.

The idea of creating an environment-based wineprefix manager comes from the standardization of dependencies and parameters necessary to run a game. On the other hand, we have software (often not up to date) that require environments and configurations different from those used in gaming. Hence the idea of managing separate environments.

Why not just POL or Lutris? 🤓

Because they are similar but different applications. I want to create environments that contain more applications and games and where the wine version can be updated.

I also want to be able to export my bottles allowing easy sharing, with or without applications. In POL/Lutris we have the concept of "with this version of wine and these changes it works". In Bottles the concept is "this is my wine bottle, I want to install this software".

The goal with this version is also to integrate with the system in the best possible way. Being able to decide in a few bottles to run an .exe/.msi file and have control over it without having to open Bottles for each operation.

Bottles is close to what wineprefix means, since v.2 it provides a simplified method to generate environment-based bottles and thanks to other tools it simplifies the management but nothing more.

Why Appimage? 🎈

On December 3, 2020 we announced our intentions to migrate to Appimage as the official format for Bottles distribution. Read more.

Where is Winetricks?!

There is not. There will never be. Read here our reasons and how we want to revolutionize the way we install dependencies in Bottles.

Older versions will be deprecated? 😎

Maybe in the future, not now. I will keep both branches updated for a long time.

Backward compatibility 😤

Thanks to a common model and an internal update system, you can update Bottles without worrying about anything. You can import Bottles v1 prefixes via the built-in importer.