v0.7.2-alpha

What's new in 0.7.2-alpha

• Fixed: updating any module failed with "the catalogue and the release disagree" on 0.7.1-alpha.

Which file to download

These files are the server, for the computer that holds your media. Most people want the installer for their system:

System	File
Windows	.msi
macOS	.pkg
Debian, Ubuntu and relatives	.deb
Fedora, RHEL and relatives	.rpm
FreeBSD	.pkg

amd64 is most computers, and arm64 is Apple silicon and many small boards. The install guide covers the rest, and Docker. A server already installed finds the new version by itself: Settings, About, Updates has the right file for it.

For phones, TVs and other computers, you don't need anything here. Open the server's address in a web browser, or use the app, WittyMediaClient, which has its own releases.

WittyMediaClient adds Android, Android TV, iOS, tvOS and Plasma Big Screen. Android has been run on emulators only, and iOS and tvOS have never been built. A web browser is the way to reach everything today. See Apps and devices.

Full Changelog: v0.7.1-alpha...v0.7.2-alpha

v0.7.1-alpha

What's new in 0.7.1-alpha

• Modules made for earlier 0.x servers (such as 0.6.x) now install and run on this server when their module API fits.

Which file to download

These files are the server, for the computer that holds your media. Most people want the installer for their system:

System	File
Windows	.msi
macOS	.pkg
Debian, Ubuntu and relatives	.deb
Fedora, RHEL and relatives	.rpm
FreeBSD	.pkg

amd64 is most computers, and arm64 is Apple silicon and many small boards. The install guide covers the rest, and Docker. A server already installed finds the new version by itself: Settings, About, Updates has the right file for it.

For phones, TVs and other computers, you don't need anything here. Open the server's address in a web browser, or use the app, WittyMediaClient, which has its own releases.

WittyMediaClient adds Android, Android TV, iOS, tvOS and Plasma Big Screen. Android has been run on emulators only, and iOS and tvOS have never been built. A web browser is the way to reach everything today. See Apps and devices.

Full Changelog: v0.7.0-alpha...v0.7.1-alpha

v0.7.0-alpha

What's new in 0.7.0-alpha

• Layouts follow you, per console and shape of device. PUT /consoles/{console}/controls keeps a layout for a phone upright or sideways, a tablet upright or sideways, a computer or a TV, and saved.layouts gives them all back. A layout places the on-screen controls, the menu button, the shortcuts bar and the picture, or each screen of a DS or 3DS apart, and null puts it back as it came. The server checks it itself. A two-screen console says where each screen sits in the frame (pad.screens, capabilities.screens.frame). WittyPlay's Edit layout uses all of this.

• A game's settings open where you press for them. "Settings for this game" on a game's page opened far down the page, away from its button, with nothing to take you there. It now opens in a sheet over the page: from the side on a wide screen, up from the bottom on a phone, with focus in it. It closes with ×, Esc, a controller's B, a tap outside, or Back (a phone's gesture or the browser's button, which no longer leaves the page), and focus goes back to its button. A console's Look and settings opens that console's settings, not every game's. Every menu over a game is easy to leave as well, from WittyPlay's next version: Back and × Back to the game stay in view, and a phone's Back gesture closes a menu instead of leaving the game.

• Films get posters without a TMDB key, where a free one exists. A film matched through Wikidata gets its poster from Wikimedia Commons: the film poster Wikidata names, or its picture when that's plainly a poster. That's mostly older and public-domain films, as most posters aren't free. They show in Fix matches, a title's match and Artwork tabs, and on films after a scan or Check for changes. Each one's licence and author are listed under Settings → Legal, Posters from Wikimedia Commons. A TMDB key, when set, still comes first. TV shows already get posters, backdrops and episode pictures from TVmaze without a key.

• Choosing a core is one picker. On a game's page, Change core beside the core that plays it; in Settings → Consoles & cores, Change core on each console. Each core says what it's good at (accuracy, speed or a balance of the two), where it runs and how it draws on your server, whether it needs a BIOS file of your own and whether it's installed. Choosing one that isn't installed installs it, with its progress, then uses it. It works on a phone, with a mouse, and with a TV remote or controller, and closes with ×, Escape, B or Back, or a tap outside. A game's own core is set the same way, or left to its console's. During a game, the player can open the same picker (chooseCore), which offers to restart on the new core: in-game saves stay, and save states stay with the core that made them.

• Nine more cores to choose from, each offered only where a build is published: QuickNES for NES; today's bsnes for Super Nintendo; Gearboy for Game Boy; VBA-M and gpSP for Game Boy Advance; Beetle PCE and Beetle SuperGrafx for PC Engine; Beetle Lynx for Lynx (which needs your own lynxboot.img); and RACE for Neo Geo Pocket. They come with the next WittyPlay. bsnes played 16 retail Super Nintendo games here, special chips included, with no firmware files.

• For apps: GET /gaming/consoles/{console}/core and GET /gaming/games/{id}/core give the picker's choices, and GET /gaming/cores/{id}/install how far an install has got. GET /games/consoles gives each core's coreAbout. See Choosing a core.

• WittyTV keeps playing in the background. Switching to another tab or minimising the window no longer stops a channel: the guide's preview carries on with its sound, and a player that goes quiet in the background tells the server it's still there, so the channel isn't stopped behind it. Keep playing when this tab is in the background, in WittyTV's look and in the player's settings, turns it off for one device; then a channel stops when you switch away, freeing a tuner, and starts again when you come back. Administrators choose what new devices start with under Options. Apps get the same default as backgroundPlay in the guide and tune answers.

• On a Mac whose WittyPlay can use the graphics card, PlayStation 2 plays on Play!, on the card. LRPS2 comes first for PlayStation 2, but can't use a Mac's card, so it would still have drawn on the processor, which can't keep a Gran Turismo 4 race at full speed. A game Play! can't open still goes on to LRPS2, and someone who chose LRPS2 keeps it.

• Comics whose pages are PNGs called .jpg get their cover. Several public-domain comics name their PNG pages 000.jpg, and the server's picture tool chose how to read a picture by its name, so their covers failed during scans ("bits 193 is invalid", "unsupported coding type") and the comics had none. It now reads what a picture really is from its first bytes, for every book and comic cover.

• A theme made with the theme maker shows again. The server's own security policy refused the stylesheet the page made for it, so the page fell back to the plain built-in look, in every browser. It's now applied in a way the policy allows.

• On a big screen, the account menu opens and the sign-in screen fits. At 2200 pixels wide and more the page was enlarged with CSS zoom, which Firefox and Chrome also apply to positions on the screen and to the window's height: the account menu opened off the right edge, so clicking your name seemed to do nothing, and the sign-in screen was a quarter taller than the window, so it scrolled and sat low. Big screens now grow their text, spacing and frame instead, and look much the same.

• Menus always open on screen, and stay open. A menu from a button, such as the account menu, is placed wholly on the screen even when its button can't be measured, and a list or row scrolling elsewhere on the page no longer closes it as it opens; the page scrolling its button away still does.

• WittyPlay's games home is shelves. Each console is a shelf, and its games stand on it as their console's own kind of case, covers showing (a box, a clamshell, a jewel case, a keep case), as cartridges, cards or discs, or as spines on a bookshelf: a switch above the shelves, kept on each device. Where you left off leads the page with the picture you stopped at; a console's page opens with its collection band; a game playing on another of your devices offers Continue here. A game's page says Moments for its save states.

• Rewind is on by default for the 8-bit, 16-bit and older handheld consoles, whose games take little memory to rewind. An administrator can still turn it off for everyone, and anyone for themselves.

• Play one game from several devices. The host of a game makes a four-letter code that lasts ten minutes, and anyone signed in to the server joins with it, if their profile may open that game. Saving, loading and stopping stay the host's.

• Apps learn what each console can do from GET /games/consoles: its era, its screens, its controls, discs and memory cards, its starting look and its case and cartridge, so they can build their menus from data. See Games: the API for clients.

• With a WittyPlay older than 0.3.5, version 2 of the game stream says it needs an update (needs-update), rather than failing with an error, and isn't offered. Version 1, which every app and the website use with that WittyPlay, plays as before.

• A game on several discs starts sooner. Its archived discs are unpacked side by side instead of one after another. Final Fantasy VII, with its first disc as .bin/.cue and two more as .7z, waited two minutes to start from a USB drive before its first disc could play.

• An encrypted 3DS game's page says so before Play is pressed, in the same words as Play: no server can play that copy, so it comes before anything this server lacks. A copy you decrypted yourself, from a console you own, will play.

• Ready for a Mac's graphics card. When WittyPlay's runner can draw on a Mac's card, PSP, PlayStation and PlayStation 2 games on Play! use it, at full speed on a fraction of a processor core. Nintendo 64 and LRPS2 stay drawn by the processor there, as their card renderers draw black pictures or nothing on a Mac, and the game page says why.

• On a phone, the website and the apps are one design. The row of sections at the top gains a frosted surface once the page scrolls under it, instead of floating over the cards, and the activity button no longer cuts off its last name. Pages below Home, a library or a tab have a round Back button in its place. A film's or show's page has one row of actions, Play, Save and "⋯" for the rest, and its picture fades into the page with no line under it. A library's tools (All films, Fix matches, Categories, Scan) are behind one "⋯" beside Filters instead of taking two rows. Search shows three posters across. The avatar in the bar opens You, as in the apps: your name and Switch profile, then everything about your account, this device and, for an owner, the server, as grouped lists that lead to each page, then this server and Sign out. Settings is a grouped list with coloured icons. Pages load as grey shapes of what's coming, and a title with no picture shows its name on its own colour. Wider screens are unchanged.

• Every core says which server platforms it runs on, and how it draws on yours. Settings → Consoles & cores shows it for each core, the core choices say how each draws here, and a game the server can't run says which servers would. Every device plays what the server can run, since the server streams it.

• No more broken core downloads. A core that isn't published for your server's platform isn't offered to install, and says what plays the same console instead: Beetle Supafaust has no macOS build, so a Mac suggests bsnes 2014 Performance. A we...

v0.6.2-alpha

Which file to download

These files are the server, for the computer that holds your media. Most people want the installer for their system:

System	File
Windows	.msi
macOS	.pkg
Debian, Ubuntu and relatives	.deb
Fedora, RHEL and relatives	.rpm
FreeBSD	.pkg

amd64 is most computers, and arm64 is Apple silicon and many small boards. The install guide covers the rest, and Docker.

For phones, TVs and other computers, you don't need anything here. Open the server's address in a web browser, or use the app, WittyMediaClient, which has its own releases.

WittyMediaClient adds Android, Android TV, iOS, tvOS and Plasma Big Screen. Android has been run on emulators only, and iOS and tvOS have never been built. A web browser is the way to reach everything today. See Apps and devices.

What's Changed

• Windows installer updates an installed copy again (0.6.2-alpha) by @wittywilla in #16

Full Changelog: v0.6.1-alpha...v0.6.2-alpha

v0.6.1-alpha

0.6.1-alpha fixes DVD and Blu-ray pictures in Firefox. Menus, intros, trailers and films no longer show shifted down or cut off, and a menu's buttons line up with its picture again, at any display scaling and in the mini player (#13). Edge, Chrome and the apps were not affected. It's a server update: no module needs updating, and every module that works with 0.6.0-alpha works with this.

Also: a stream link is accepted only exactly as it was given out. Both are in #14.

Which file to download

These files are the server, for the computer that holds your media. Most people want the installer for their system:

System	File
Windows	.msi
macOS	.pkg
Debian, Ubuntu and relatives	.deb
Fedora, RHEL and relatives	.rpm
FreeBSD	.pkg

amd64 is most computers, and arm64 is Apple silicon and many small boards. The install guide covers the rest, and Docker.

For phones, TVs and other computers, you don't need anything here. Open the server's address in a web browser, or use the app, WittyMediaClient, which has its own releases.

WittyMediaClient adds Android, Android TV, iOS, tvOS and Plasma Big Screen. Android has been run on emulators only, and iOS and tvOS have never been built. A web browser is the way to reach everything today. See Apps and devices.

What's Changed

• Firefox: disc picture stays in its box, menu buttons line up (0.6.1-alpha) by @wittywilla in #14

New Contributors

• @wittywilla made their first contribution in #14

Full Changelog: v0.6.0-alpha...v0.6.1-alpha

v0.6.0-alpha

Which file to download

These files are the server, for the computer that holds your media. Most people want the installer for their system:

System	File
Windows	.msi
macOS	.pkg
Debian, Ubuntu and relatives	.deb
Fedora, RHEL and relatives	.rpm
FreeBSD	.pkg

amd64 is most computers, and arm64 is Apple silicon and many small boards. The install guide covers the rest, and Docker.

For phones, TVs and other computers, you don't need anything here. Open the server's address in a web browser, or use the app, WittyMediaClient, which has its own releases.

WittyMediaClient adds Android, Android TV, iOS, tvOS and Plasma Big Screen. Android has been run on emulators only, and iOS and tvOS have never been built. A web browser is the way to reach everything today. See Apps and devices.

Full Changelog: v0.5.2-alpha...v0.6.0-alpha

v0.5.2-alpha

Warning

This is an alpha release. Expect bugs, and expect settings and APIs to change between versions. It hasn't had an independent security audit. Keep backups of anything you care about, and read the remote access guide before making your server reachable from outside your home. The software comes with no warranty: you run it, so what you host and who you let in are your responsibility.

0.5.0-alpha was never published, so this is the first public release with everything since 0.4.0-alpha.

What's new

• Games: console games streamed to your browser, with GPU cores, games inside archives, controller profiles with a picture-based mapper, display effects and overlays, core options, game details and ratings from several sources, and your own custom cores. You supply your own games and BIOS files, legally obtained.
• Game PCs: play on any PC running Sunshine, in your browser, with WittyCouch. WittyRigs is an advanced option for hosting demanding games on the server itself.
• Audio CDs: WittyCD plays CD images in an on-screen CD player, with the WittyVisualizer plugin for music.
• Internet radio: search a directory of stations, with logos, details and what's playing now.
• Modules: a new Modules page, with versions you can choose and updates that don't need a new server.
• WittyLog and WittyDiagnoser: logging that captures problems across everything, and a disk and disc checker with no command line.
• DVD and Blu-ray: chapter changes no longer skip, and playlist items join on their exact frames.
• Settings → Reset: start again from a new install, with a copy kept that you can bring back. Your media files aren't touched.
• A Legal page, with notices across the app.

This release also has the fixes from a full code and design audit, covering security, crashes, lost saves, phone layouts and error messages. The changelog has the details.

Which file do I download?

Your computer	File
Windows (most PCs)	wittymediaserver-0.5.2-alpha-windows-amd64-setup.exe
Windows on ARM	wittymediaserver-0.5.2-alpha-windows-arm64-setup.exe
Mac with Apple silicon	wittymediaserver-0.5.2-alpha-darwin-arm64.tar.gz
Mac with Intel	wittymediaserver-0.5.2-alpha-darwin-amd64.tar.gz
Linux (most PCs)	wittymediaserver-0.5.2-alpha-linux-amd64.tar.gz
Linux on ARM, older systems, FreeBSD	The matching linux-arm64, linux-armv7, linux-386 or freebsd file. Some don't include FFmpeg, so install it yourself if the server says it's missing
Docker	ghcr.io/wittywilla/wittymediaserver:alpha

Windows may warn about an unknown publisher, because the installer isn't code-signed with a Windows certificate yet. The SHA256SUMS.txt file lists each download's checksum, and its .sig file is what servers check before updating themselves.

Known limits

• Encrypted DVDs, Blu-rays, broadcasts and games are refused, and nothing here decrypts them.
• Game PC streaming has been tested against a real Sunshine, but not yet on a real gaming PC with a real game.
• Blu-ray Java menus are off by default, and haven't been proven on retail discs.
• The Docker image is about 800 MB, because game cores need Debian rather than Alpine.

WittyMediaServer is an independent open-source project under the Apache License 2.0. Third-party components keep their own licenses, listed in Settings → About.

v0.4.0-alpha

Full Changelog: v0.2.0-alpha...v0.4.0-alpha

v0.2.0-alpha

Full Changelog: https://github.com/wittywilla/WittyMediaServer/commits/v0.2.0-alpha