RetroArch 1.5.0 has just been released!

Where to get it?

You can get the latest version here.

On Android, you can expect version 1.5.0 to be downloadable on the Google Play Store later today. If you want to install the APK manually, you can do so by downloading it from the URL linked to above.

Changes since last version (1.4.1)

MOBILE: Single-tap for menu entry selection

MOBILE: Long-tap a setting to reset to default

ANDROID: Autoconf fallback

ANDROID: Mouse support / Emulated mouse support

AUTOCONF: Fix partial matches for pad name

CHEEVOS: Fix crashes in the cheevos description menu

CHEEVOS: WIP leaderboards support

COMMON: Threading fixes

COMMON: 9-slice texture drawing support

CORETEXT/APPLE: Ability to load menu display font drivers and loading of custom font.

DOS: Add keyboard driver

DOS: Improve color accuracy and scaling

GUI: Various settings are now only visible when advanced settings is enabled

GUI: Allow changing icon theme on the fly

GUI: Add a symbol page in the OSK (Onscreen Keyboard)

GUI: Better dialogs for XMB

LOCALIZATION: Add/update Korean translation

LOCALIZATION: Rewrite German translation

LOCALIZATION: Update several English sublabels

LOCALIZATION: Update several Japanese labels

NET: Allow manual netplay content loading

NET: Announcing network games to the public lobby is optional now

NET: Bake in miniupnpc

NET: Fix netplay join for contentless cores

NET: LAN games show next to lobbies with (LAN) and connect via the private IP address

NET: Use new lobby system with MITM (Man In The Middle) support

NET: Fix netplay rooms being pushed on the wrong tab

NUKLEAR: Update to current version

SCANNER: Always add 7z & zip to supported extensions

VULKAN: Find supported composite alpha in swapchain

VULKAN: Add snow/bokeh shader pipeline effects – at parity with GL now

WIIU: Keyboard support

WINDOWS: Logging to file no longer spawns an empty window

WINDOWS: Fix loading of core/content via file menu

We’ll go into some of the important features in more detail below.

UPNP support out of the box! (Windows/MacOS/Linux/Android/iOS)

Previously, in order for netplay to work, you as the hoster would need to manually port forward on your router. Starting with version 1.5.0, RetroArch now supports UPNP out of the box! If you have a home network router that supports UPNP, you should now be able to host netplay games without having to manually open ports on your router!

NOTE: The platforms that come with UPNP support out of the box as of this point includes: Android, MacOS, Linux, iOS, and Windows. If you have a version of RetroArch for any other platform, it’s likely it does not have UPNP support, and therefore you would still need to fallback on manual port forwarding if you want to host a game.

Menu improvements

An often-heard complaint was that touch navigation on mobile devices was not intuitive enough. You had to double tap in order to select an entry instead of being able to single tap which is the norm for most mobile programs out there.

We have changed this so that you now only have to single tap. Also, you can now ‘long-tap’ a setting in order to ‘reset’ it to default. This is useful in case you are tinkering with some setting using touch and you want to set it back to its default setting.

Other new features – changing the icon theme now works on-the-fly, so you no longer need to restart RetroArch for these changes to take effect.

Android controller detection improvements

If RetroArch cannot find a preconfigured entry for your gamepad on Android, it will now try to use the Android standard default controls for the gamepad instead. This should help with a bunch of gamepads that are lacking a current autoconfiguration file, and should prevent the user from having to manually setup the controls.

Vulkan improvements

Previously, the menu effects ‘Snow’ and ‘Bokeh’ were not available if you were running RetroArch with the Vulkan video driver enabled. Now you can use them with Vulkan as well!

In case you don’t know how to access these, go to Settings -> User Interface -> Menu -> Menu Shader Pipeline.