Release notes

Pixel Port 0.4.11

- Faster browsing: less repeated work when moving between Home, Library, Discover, and game pages. Quick Play search also keeps game names and keyboard selection in sync. - Discord activity: choose Always, While playing, or Off. Always is the new default when you have not saved a choice; an existing Off choice stays Off. Activity can reconnect after Discord restarts. - Better artwork handling: supported games can pick up available catalogue covers and hero images while retaining their tested launch settings. - Prism repair: detect missing or damaged engine files and repair the runtime while preserving installed games. Unsupported storage locations receive a clear error before a download starts.

Pixel Port 0.4.10

Pixel Port 0.4.10 Your play time now counts, for every game. Pixel Port watches a game while it runs to record play time and to report "this works on my Mac". Two kinds of game slipped through that watch: games that start through a second launcher (Trackmania hands off to Ubisoft Connect, for example), and games whose main program is not the largest file in their folder. Both were logged as "never started" even while you were playing, so your hours never appeared and your Mac never showed on the compatibility map. Pixel Port now also listens to Steam's own account of what is running, which does not depend on process names at all. Discord Rich Presence. Turn it on in Settings and your friends see "Playing Pixel Port", with the game you are in while you play and a Pixel Port card while you browse. It is off until you switch it on, it only ever talks to the Discord app on your own Mac, and it publishes exactly one thing: the title of the game that is running. Discover is one list now. The "Installable Now" tab is gone. Discover shows all of Steam, with games ready for your Mac first, and your Library already has the view of your own Steam purchases. Every game page now ends with a "Games like this" rail. Cover art stays put. Closing a game could leave every new cover blank for the rest of the session. Pixel Port now notices when it has stopped watching a game that is no longer running and lets artwork load again. Also in this release: - Unreal games that default to DirectX 12 now start in DirectX 11 automatically, so more of them simply open instead of showing a "DirectX 12 is not supported" message. - Home shows your verified picks above your Steam library, and paints its rails instantly on launch instead of after a pause. - Crash reports for Unreal games now include the game's own log, so we can act on them. - Crackling audio: if a game crackles, the report you send now carries your Mac's output rate, so we can find the pattern. Changing the output Format in Audio MIDI Setup remains the workaround. - The compatibility map now counts every current version of Pixel Port. Until now only installs from before 0.4.5 fed it, which is why a fresh Mac could play a game for a week and never appear on its page.

Pixel Port 0.4.9

Pixel Port 0.4.9 "The developer cannot be verified" should never have happened. Every build we ship is signed and notarized by Apple, but the approval was attached to the disk image and not to the app itself. Once you dragged Pixel Port to your Applications folder, that copy had to check in with Apple over the internet the first time you opened it. If that check could not get through, on a hotel or cafe network, behind a VPN or a company firewall, or during an outage at Apple's end, macOS refused to open a perfectly legitimate app. The approval now travels with the app, so a first launch works even with no connection at all. If you already worked around this, nothing more is needed. Steam disconnections now tell you the truth. The banner always blamed a second copy of Steam running on your desktop. That is often not what happened: your account can be signed in on another device, or one of Pixel Port's own download steps can take the session. When no desktop Steam is running, the message now names the real possibilities instead of pointing at an app you can plainly see is closed. Your game data survives a confused Application Support folder. Pixel Port now checks its storage locations on launch and repairs them, and merges the case where two folders had both been used, so installs and saves stop hiding from each other. Crash reports you can read before you send them. When a game crashes, you can now review the exact report, in full, and then decide whether to send it. Nothing is uploaded unless you look at it and separately confirm. This replaces asking people to copy text out of Terminal. Also in this release: - Connecting Steam is now QR-only. The QR flow was already the recommended path; your password never touches Pixel Port at all. Anyone already connected stays connected, with nothing to redo. - Pinball FX now launches, and right Shift works for the right flipper. - A playability fix for Dishonored. - Setup recovers correctly when Steam updates itself partway through first-time setup. - Groundwork for much smaller engine updates in future: when a new engine is published, Pixel Port will be able to fetch only the parts that changed rather than the whole thing.

Pixel Port 0.4.8

Pixel Port 0.4.8 Your library is a library of games again. Search used to return a game and then several identical-looking rows beside it: searching "Skyrim" gave you three real titles followed by five more all reading "The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim", which were actually the texture pack, three expansions and the soundtrack. Pixel Port now knows the difference between a game and its add-ons, and lists only what you can actually launch. Around 4,900 entries that were never playable on their own have been folded away. Demos stay, because a demo is a real build and a cheap way to test a port before buying. Missing audio and video components now install themselves. Games installed through Steam were skipping a setup step, so titles that needed extra audio components could launch with silent dialogue. Those components are now delivered on the next launch, with no reinstall and no lost saves. A clearer, one-time privacy review. Every setting is explained in plain language and is independently switchable, and you can change any of it later in Settings. Marketing email is a separate, unticked choice of its own. A better first run on newer Macs. Pixel Port now checks for Rosetta before setup and offers to install it, rather than failing partway through. A first Steam launch is no longer misreported as a crash, and a retried setup starts its progress from the beginning instead of resuming at 99%. Also in this release: - Day-one support for How to Fish. - New installs now fetch the current Prism runtime (0.6.10) when the update service is unreachable, instead of an older one. Prism 0.6.10 adds MP4 cutscene playback.

Pixel Port 0.4.7

Pixel Port 0.4.7 Cutscenes and in-game videos now play. Pixel Port's engine ships a media decoder for the first time (video via Apple VideoToolbox, audio via AudioToolbox): games that showed a black screen with audio during intros and cutscenes now render them. Pairs with Prism runtime 0.6.8 (installed automatically). Also in this release: - Graphics-stage correction for the DXVK lane (correct dxgi pairing for D3D9 titles).

Pixel Port 0.4.6

A real D3D9 fast lane. DXVK (d9vk) routes now reach every game on the Automatic graphics setting: including curated D3D9 titles like Team Fortress 2, which previously died silently at launch. Pairs with Prism runtime 0.6.7. No action needed: games pick up their fixed routes on next launch.

Pixel Port 0.4.5

Pixel Port 0.4.4

Voice chat fix. - Games can now use your microphone for in-game voice chat: Pixel Port asks for mic permission the first time you launch a game (fixes silent mics in PEAK and other voice-chat games). If you previously denied it, enable Pixel Port under System Settings → Privacy & Security → Microphone.

Pixel Port 0.4.3

Reliability and self-repair. - Fixes 'Play does nothing': a stuck launch state could silently swallow every later Play click, with no error and no explanation. This was the cause behind most recent launch complaints. - Games set themselves up: Pixel Port can now write a game's config before first launch, at your display's actual resolution. Command & Conquer: Generals and Zero Hour now start correctly the first time instead of failing with a misleading 'DirectX' error. - Check and repair your game setup: Settings → Help & Recovery can now find Windows system files missing from a game setup and restore them from Pixel Port's own runtime. It only ever copies files back; it never deletes or replaces anything, and never touches your games or saves. - Honest crash reporting: quitting a game is no longer recorded as a crash, so compatibility ratings reflect reality. - Per-game fixes delivered over the air now apply reliably, and stale settings from an old fix are cleaned up properly.

Pixel Port 0.4.2

The fast-lane release. Classic DirectX 8/9 games can now run on the new high-speed graphics path (measured up to 9x faster on supported titles): the per-game graphics picker now offers DXVK for 32-bit games on Prism 0.6.5+. Also: game fixes delivered over-the-air apply more reliably, and launch shortcuts now queue through sign-in instead of being dropped.

Pixel Port 0.4.1

Consolidation release: fixes and polish from three contributors' workstreams. - Voice chat works: games with in-game voice (PEAK, R.E.P.O., WEBFISHING and others) can now use your microphone; macOS will ask permission once. - Meccha Chameleon false 'VC++ required' error fixed: a launch-configuration race, root-caused and closed; the fix also hardens launching for every game with a nested main executable. - Game fixes now reach every game: an internal delivery gap meant some per-game fixes silently never applied; all recipe-carried fixes now deliver. - Redesign polish: Back button, launch progress on Play, refined banners, cards, and theming.

Pixel Port 0.4.0: The Redesign

Pixel Port has a new face. The whole product experience has been rebuilt: - Home, Library, Discover: a clean three-part structure. Library unifies your installed games and Steam purchases in one place with tabs; Discover replaces Browse with playable-first filtering. - Redesigned game pages: every game leads with its readiness for *your* Mac, a clear confidence rating, and one obvious next action. Technical details tuck into an accordion. - Compatibility reports, per Mac: a new report matrix shows how each game runs across Apple Silicon generations and macOS versions, highlighting your machine. - Refreshed visual style: the Deep Amethyst design language across every surface, including a faster command palette (⌘K). Under the hood, 0.4.0 carries everything the 0.3 series built: reliable Steam launching (client-update resilience, teardown-race fixes), per-game graphics backends, honest DX9 routing, texture-flicker controls, and cleaner shutdowns. *New in the catalogue this week: Command & Conquer Remastered Collection, Red Alert 2 + Yuri's Revenge, and the Guns 'n Goblins demo.*

Pixel Port 0.3.41

Play via Steam fix for 'Reduce texture flickering' users. - Fixes Play via Steam doing nothing / 'Steam launch failed' when the Reduce texture flickering setting is on. The launch command was sent with a Wine sync mode that didn't match the running Steam session, so it silently never arrived: while 'Open Steam' + clicking Play inside Steam worked. All launch, install, and settings helpers now use the session's sync mode from one source, and a source-level test guards against regressions. - Generated game launchers now resolve the sync mode at run time, so flipping the setting applies without reinstalling.

Pixel Port 0.3.40

Launch reliability hotfix. - Fixes 'Play via Steam does nothing' after updating the app or right after launching it. Pixel Port's cleanup sweeps (which remove leftover Wine processes) could mistake a freshly starting Steam session for leftovers and stop it mid-boot. Sweeps now never touch processes that started after the sweep began, and game launches wait for any in-flight cleanup before starting Steam. - Follow-up to 0.3.39's Steam client-update resilience.

Pixel Port 0.3.39

Steam reliability wave. - Survives Steam client updates: when Valve ships a Steam client update (like the July 22 one), Play via Steam kept spinning on 'Launching' and could log you out. Pixel Port now detects the pending update and restarts the in-prefix Steam once so the update applies cleanly, and waits out the update cycle instead of giving up mid-install. - Faster, more reliable game detection: the 'is the game running' probe is now case-insensitive (some games, like Grim Dawn, register their executable with different casing than expected, causing false 'game never appeared' errors while the game was actually running). - Per-game graphics backend picker: choose Automatic / DXMT / DXVK (experimental) per game from its Details card. - Honest DX9 routing at install time: newly installed DirectX 9 games route to the renderer that actually runs them. - Housekeeping: launch helper processes are now cleaned up immediately after use.

Pixel Port 0.3.38

Stability + library wave. - Reliable shutdown: Pixel Port now cleanly stops every Wine/Steam process it owns when you quit, with a native progress panel during cleanup. Fixes orphaned `wine` processes lingering after quit. Your native Steam / CrossOver / Whisky installs are never touched (exact runtime-tree ownership via kernel executable path). - Full Steam library: a dedicated Steam Library view now shows every owned catalogue title, manually-confirmed purchases survive inexact local syncs, and stylized-punctuation titles (e.g. R.E.P.O., PEAK) are searchable. - Open Steam from the account menu: quick access to the in-prefix Steam client. - Honest DX9 labelling: DirectX 9 games are labelled with the renderer that actually runs them (wined3d), not the impossible dxmt. - Reduce texture flickering toggle (Settings → Troubleshooting) for games like Grim Dawn. - Fullscreen scale-to-fit (experimental, opt-in) + engine patch-version visibility.

Pixel Port 0.3.37

Pixel Port 0.3.37: stability wave 1 The biggest reliability release of the beta. Nine fixes from the fleet-report triage (PR #41, community-reviewed and adversarially verified) plus the install-robustness batch. Steam & installs - Real Steam first-launch detection: readiness now gates on Steam's own bootstrap log instead of a 4-minute process poll. Slow one-time self-updates no longer get declared broken ("first launch did not finish"), genuine crashes fail fast with an honest message, and a hard ceiling guarantees the wait can never spin forever. - Data-loss-safe "Reset & rebuild Steam": preserves installed games, login, and saves; kills orphans; reports honest errors. - Per-verb winetricks verification: no more "installed fine" with broken audio; each verb is adjudicated with artifact probes. - Install disk-space preflight and reasoned install-failure diagnostics; UE shader-compile no longer false-times-out on first launch. Runtime & launches - Prism runtime fallback pinned to 0.6.3 (fixes DXMT games aborting at device creation on macOS 14/15) with a CI gate so the pin can never silently drift again. - Runtime download hardening: retry with backoff, real byte-level progress, disk preflight (kills the "stuck at 8%" class). - DXVK provisioned into the actual launch prefix (fixes silent no-launch on DXVK titles), with automatic DXMT fallback. - Quit-time Wine/Steam teardown: no more orphaned wine processes after quitting the app. App - Recipe catalogue now survives a single bad recipe file. - Retry-loop detection: three failed launches of the same game in 10 minutes surfaces targeted advice instead of letting you spin. Huge thanks to everyone filing reports on Discord: most of this release traces directly to your bundles.

Pixel Port 0.3.36

Your Pixel Porter number. Sign in and the Account pane now shows your join rank: "Pixel Porter #N, one of the first Mac gamers here." A small thank-you to everyone who showed up early. Under the hood: fixed account sync so your sign-in providers and roles hydrate correctly from the server (a decode mismatch had been silently dropping them). Server-side fix applies to existing installs too.

Pixel Port 0.3.35

Smarter help when a game won't start: if the same failure keeps happening, Pixel Port now tells you why and what actually fixes it: instead of letting you retry forever. Plus internal reliability improvements.

Pixel Port 0.3.34

Safety + reliability: Pixel Port now prevents launching games known to crash entire Macs on macOS 14 (update to macOS 15+ to play those), fixes an installer regression affecting games needing extra components, stops a crash loop when removing games, and adds ~20 new game recipes.

Pixel Port 0.3.33

Smoother gameplay (Pixel Port now steps out of the way of the GPU while you play), a fix for games that looked stuck at 0% when Steam had only queued the download, and cleaner desktop-shortcut handling. Thanks to community contributor vitaliy-blprnt.

Pixel Port 0.3.32

Reliability + security hardening: installs cancel cleanly, quit is snappier, the runtime updater is safer, plus behind-the-scenes robustness across the board.

Pixel Port 0.3.31

Important: this update fixes automatic updates themselves: some earlier versions had them silently switched off, so you may have been stuck on an old build. After this one, Pixel Port keeps itself current in the background. Also includes clearer install error messages and reliability fixes.

Pixel Port 0.3.30

What's new in 0.3.30 More games render correctly. Extends the engine fix from 0.3.27 to 64-bit games built on a mobile-style graphics path: more titles now display properly instead of a blank screen. Delivered automatically via the engine update. Fewer stuck Steam processes. New Force-quit all Windows processes button (Settings → Troubleshooting): one click cleans up when Steam won't come up or Steam icons pile up in the menu bar. Plus quieter cold-starts (no more accidental multiple Steam instances) and an automatic "Reset & rebuild Steam" when its setup gets wedged. Optional: GPU-accelerated Steam UI. An experimental toggle (Settings → Troubleshooting) that renders the Steam client on the GPU: lighter on your Mac, less fan noise. Off by default; if the Steam window ever looks wrong, just turn it back off. Runs on the free Prism engine: no CrossOver required.

Pixel Port 0.3.29

Steam stability: Pixel Port now starts exactly one Steam client at a time (no more multiplying Steam icons or wedged sessions from rapid retries), waits out Steam's connection throttle instead of tripping it, and if the Prism engine is missing or mid-update it says so plainly and reopens setup instead of failing cryptically.

Pixel Port 0.3.28

Safety: games can now warn you up front when your macOS version is known to be risky for them (starting with Meccha Chameleon on macOS 14), and if a game ever crashes your Mac, Pixel Port now tells you what happened on next launch instead of leaving you to retry blind.

Pixel Port 0.3.27

What's new in 0.3.27 Automatic engine updates. Pixel Port now keeps its game engine up to date on its own: when we ship a compatibility fix, your app fetches it automatically (with a manual "Check for updates" in Settings too). No reinstalls. More games render correctly. Fixed a class of games that launched to a blank/white screen on Apple Silicon (games built on a mobile-style graphics path). The fix lives in the engine and reaches everyone via the update above. My Singing Monsters and similar titles now display properly. Under the hood. More reliable success/failure detection when a game launches, so the catalogue's compatibility labels stay honest. Runs on the free Prism engine: no CrossOver required.

Pixel Port 0.3.26

Crash reporting accuracy: crash reports are now attributed only to Pixel Port's own processes, crash excerpts always carry the actual cause, and game sessions keep a runtime log so mid-game crashes can be diagnosed.

Pixel Port 0.3.25

Installs are smoother when Steam is signed in elsewhere: Pixel Port now explains the conflict and gets you unstuck in one tap (no more dead-end loops), instead of needing a restart.

Pixel Port 0.3.24

Cleaner navigation: Installed (your games, one click to play), Playable (everything that runs on Mac), and Request a Game. Plus library and ownership accuracy fixes.

Pixel Port 0.3.23

Updates now happen automatically in the background: no more update prompts. From here, Pixel Port just quietly keeps itself current. Plus reliability improvements to crash reporting.

Pixel Port 0.3.22

Request a game and we'll tell you the moment it works: you'll get a heads-up right in the app when a game you asked for is ready to play. Plus a cleaner Home layout.

Pixel Port 0.3.21

Your library, personalized: connect Steam and Pixel Port now shows the games YOU own that run on Mac: front and center, sorted by what runs best. Recommendations lead with your own games too.

Pixel Port 0.3.20

A stability + safety improvement: if a game ever causes a hard crash, Pixel Port now helps us understand why so we can prevent it. Behind-the-scenes reliability work.

Pixel Port 0.3.19

More accurate under the hood: Pixel Port no longer mistakes a running game for a crashed one, so what you see reflects what's actually happening. Plus tidier in-app messages you can expand to read, with updates handled right inside the app.

Pixel Port 0.3.18

A reliability fix for game installs: smoother setup of the pieces some games need, with fewer spurious failures. If an install stumbled before, it should be steadier now.

Pixel Port 0.3.17

Connecting Steam and installing games is smoother now. Pixel Port tells you up front what it needs: like quitting the desktop Steam app if it's open, or connecting your Steam account: instead of letting an install fail. Update and it's easier.

Pixel Port 0.3.16

We found the install bug: and fixed it. If a game wouldn't install before, that was on us (a missing piece that only affected some Macs); it's fixed now, so give it another try. Also: help is one tap away in the app now, and you'll see a friendly heads-up when we ship fixes.

Pixel Port 0.3.15

Installing a game is clearer now: if you haven't connected Steam yet, Pixel Port tells you up front instead of failing silently: and when something does go wrong, it captures what happened so we can fix it fast.