VoidStation 2026.11 – VoidStation

Version 2026.11 is out in the Stable channel. What's new:

Text console: its own greeting with the VoidStation wordmark, the version and the way back to the interface, on the live stick too. Devices installed from an older ISO still showed the live stick's welcome text with sample credentials before login; that is gone now
Security: consoles ask for a password. The automatic login accidentally applied to all six text consoles: with a keyboard attached, Ctrl+Alt+F2 opened a session without a password. Now only tty1 logs in by itself for the interface, tty2 asks for user and password, tty3 to tty6 are off (saves a little memory). Takes effect after the next restart
Launcher starts faster and uses less memory: Python now uses ready-made bytecode instead of recompiling launcher.py on every start. Updates rebuild the bytecode with a checksum so an old version can never run
Settings: columns scroll all the way back to the top when moving up – text above the first button otherwise stayed cut off and out of reach. Network: the explanation of “Prefer for internet” now lives in the help
Wi-Fi: disconnect, switch, remember the password: Settings → Network → Wi-Fi now has a “Disconnect …” button (clicking the connected network in the list also disconnects); the device then stays disconnected until you pick a network or restart. Clicking another network switches right away. Known networks no longer ask for the password: it was saved, but the interface asked again for every encrypted network, and re-entering it deleted the saved profile. If the saved password no longer fits (e.g. changed on the phone), the prompt appears by itself. For the wired port, “Connection” offers “Disconnect cable” and “Connect cable”. Texts in all 15 languages
Programs start full screen and in the theme: every program started from a tile opens maximized and without a frame – including GTK 4 programs like Mission Center, which set their saved window size and used to undo Openbox's maximizing (dialogs and full-screen games stay as they are; can be switched off per tile with "maximize": false in tiles.json). libadwaita programs now also follow the light/dark VoidStation theme. Downloads in the AppCenter show a bar with “54 / 120 MB” instead of log lines
AppCenter without Flatpaks: Heroic, itch, Moonlight, Discord, Spotify, FreeTube, Brave, LibreWolf, Mission Center and LocalSend now come straight from their makers and are unpacked – just like the emulators already are: no sandbox, no Flathub runtimes (often saves several hundred MB), file dialogs see the shared folder normally, updates as usual via Settings → Updates (Discord fetches its client on first start and keeps it up to date by itself). If you have one of them as a Flatpak, it switches by itself with the next “Update”: settings, logins, subscriptions and game libraries are carried over (moved, not copied – a link stays in the old place), the tile is changed and the Flatpak removed. Steam Link and Plex HTPC only exist as Flatpaks and are therefore no longer in the AppCenter (alternatives: Moonlight, Jellyfin or Kodi); if you have them, you can keep using them or remove them there. Flatpak itself stays installed with Flathub set up – for anything you want to install yourself (flatpak install --user flathub …, then add a tile under Installed → On this device). 64-bit only
Network: choose cable or Wi-Fi for the internet: Settings → Network → “Prefer for internet” wired network or wireless network (Wi-Fi). If both are connected, the internet uses the chosen one – handy when the cable connection acts up (e.g. IPv6 only, GitHub needs IPv4) and a phone hotspot steps in. The share and remote access (SSH) stay reachable over both. Technically, Wi-Fi profiles get a lower route metric (50 instead of 600, cable 100), newly connected networks too. The switch only appears on devices with both wired and Wi-Fi
Network: “Connection” now lists every connection with its kind and name (cable, Wi-Fi “iPhone from …”) and address; ✓ marks the one the internet currently goes through. The Network tile names it as well. Fixed: the Wi-Fi list lacked the check mark on the connected network when it was found more than once (e.g. an iPhone hotspot on two bands) – after connecting it now shows without a new scan
Wi-Fi password: “Show password” shows it in plain text – right in the on-screen keyboard next to the input and in the row below; it is hidden again for the next network
Radio and TV by country instead of fixed presets: No more preset favorites and suggestions (they dated from the time VoidStation was a private project) – not on the live stick either. The country follows the language VoidStation was installed in; if a language is at home in several countries, the time zone decides (Deutsch + Vienna → Austria, Français + Brussels → Belgium, English + London → United Kingdom). Radio shows “Popular in: <country>” with the country's most-played stations (radio-browser.info), TV opens with the country's channels and offers its neighbours as quick picks (e.g. Česko: Czechia, Slovakia, Austria). Existing devices keep their favorites and own suggestions. The installer no longer asks about “Keep favorites” – stations saved in the live system are taken over automatically
Czech and Slovak: installer texts now use the formal form like the rest of the interface
Live stick and installer in all 15 languages: The stick's boot menu shows Deutsch, English, Français and “Other Languages” at the top – the latter holds every other interface language (Čeština, Español, Italiano, Latviešu, Magyar, Nederlands, Polski, Português (Brasil), Slovenčina, Ελληνικά, Русский, Українська), laid out like Settings → Language. The start entries are in the chosen language; interface, installer, keyboard and locale follow it (Greek, Russian and Ukrainian also get a US layout, Alt+Shift switches). In BIOS mode Greek, Russian and Ukrainian appear transliterated and their start entries in English (the BIOS font only has Latin letters). The installer is fully translated and has its own “Language and time zone” page with all languages and matching time zones; keyboard and time zone are preset per language (e.g. Čeština → Czech keyboard, Prague), further keyboards under “More …”. The installed system gets language, keyboard (in the console too) and time zone as chosen; the locales of all languages are included. Comes with the next live ISO
Installer: no more update channel details (new installations always run on Stable); “Interface” lists “Videos & music” instead of VLC
Boot splash now on installed devices too: Instead of the text messages (“Welcome to Void!”, “Starting udev …”) the screen shows the VoidStation logo with the three dots from power-on until the home screen – until now only the live stick had this. It comes with the update by itself; the initramfs is rebuilt once (about a minute) and splash is added to the kernel command line (EFISTUB entry and GRUB), visible from the next restart. The large graphics drivers still stay out, so the EFI partition barely fills up (NiPoGi: 75 MB initramfs): Plymouth catches the messages right away and shows the logo in full resolution as soon as the graphics driver has loaded. Turn it off in the terminal with sudo voidstation-splash off, back on with sudo voidstation-splash on, status with voidstation-splash status. New installations from the stick keep the splash. 64-bit only
Two new languages: Čeština and Slovenčina – Settings → Language. Machine-translated like the other languages (corrections welcome as a pull request), with date, time and numbers in the language's format and Czech or Slovak country names in the TV filter; Firefox and other programs follow the next time they start. For now the on-screen keyboard uses the US layout there, without háčky and čárky
Controller: button icons instead of letters, the mouse clicks with A/B: VoidStation recognises which controller is connected (Xbox, PlayStation, Nintendo; everything else like Xbox) and shows its buttons as icons in the hint lines – dark buttons, the face buttons in their colours (Xbox A green, B red, X blue, Y yellow; PlayStation ✕ ○ □ △), with several controllers those of the one used last. Keyboard names (“Enter”, “Esc”) are left out then; if you last used the keyboard or have no controller connected, the texts stay as before. On Nintendo pads “confirm” is the bottom button labelled B (the Linux driver maps buttons by position) – the hints now show exactly that. Set a controller’s style yourself in ~/.config/voidstation/pads.json ("style": "ps"). The controller mouse in apps now clicks with the bottom button (A / ✕, hold to drag) and the right one (B / ○ = right-click) instead of R2/L2; the button you started the app with only counts once released. In mGBA the mouse is therefore off by default (A and B belong to the game there, R3 turns it on). The emulator button mapping now labels Nintendo pads B/A/Y/X, L/R, ZL/ZR. Texts in all 15 languages
Full-screen updates instead of a log: “Update” now shows a calm screen like the one when a tile starts – “VoidStation 2026.10.1 → 2026.11” and three steps with check marks: programs updated (with the number of packages), new version downloaded and verified, set up. Esc / B lets the update continue in the background, with the current step shown at the bottom. Afterwards the restart question as before; if something goes wrong, VoidStation says at which step and shows the log on request. The full log is in ~/.local/share/voidstation/logs/update.log (the previous run in update.log.1). vsctl update shows the same three lines in the terminal, vsctl update -v the full log as before. Texts in all 15 languages
Dialogs with long text: ▲▼ and the mouse wheel now scroll the right way (▼ or wheel down = further down, it used to be the other way round)
Update channel: no more choice, every device on Stable: the installer and the settings no longer offer “Testing” – new installations always run on Stable. Testing is the development state (new versions right away and untested), meant for testers who report bugs; it can now only be turned on in the terminal: vsctl channel testing (asks for confirmation), back with vsctl channel stable. Devices that had picked Testing switch to Stable by themselves with this release – without losing anything, because this time Stable contains everything. If a device is on Testing, Settings → Updates says so, with a “Switch to Stable” button
AppCenter → Installed → On this device: AppImages you extracted yourself (program file AppRun) were missing from the list because VoidStation's own emulators have the same file name – now the full path counts. Guide for adding your own programs and AppImages as tiles in the help on the website
Emulators without a setup wizard: on the very first start, PCSX2 and DuckStation run once invisibly in the background until their basic settings are in place; VoidStation then fills in what the wizard would ask – game folder (share/ROMs/ps2 or psx), BIOS from the bios folder, controller – and turns the wizard off. Cemu gets its settings including the game folder share/ROMs/wiiu created right away, so “Getting started” is skipped. If the invisible start fails, the wizard appears as usual
PCSX2, xemu, Flycast, Azahar, Cemu and RMG as AppImage instead of Flatpak: the emulators now come straight from their developers (always the latest release on GitHub) and run without a Flatpak sandbox – file dialogs show the real folders, no more portal paths. The switch happens by itself on the next “Update”: settings, saves and save states from the Flatpak are taken over, tiles are switched, then the Flatpak is removed (its data under ~/.var/app stays as a fallback). The save backup knows both places.
Remaining Flatpaks: files and folders picked in a file dialog now actually reach the program – before, the settings held a document-portal path the Flatpak itself couldn't see (VoidStation uses its own runtime folder, which the Flatpak otherwise doesn't know)
Button mapping and game list for the remaining emulators: PCSX2 (PlayStation 2), Rosalie's Mupen GUI (Nintendo 64), Azahar (Nintendo 3DS), Cemu (Wii U), MAME (arcade), DOSBox Staging (DOS) and RetroArch get the game list with “Button mapping” – each with a sketch of its controller (N64 pad, DualShock 2, 3DS, Wii U GamePad, arcade panel, keyboard, RetroPad). VoidStation writes the mapping into the emulator's settings before every start (formats checked against the source of the Flathub or Void builds); as before, your own mapping always applies, the default only as long as nothing was changed in the emulator. In RMG this is what plugs the controller in at all; the C buttons start out on the right stick (which also counts when asking for buttons). Extras: save states and fast forward through the emulators' keys – where they have none, VoidStation sets them (PCSX2: hold turbo on Tab, Azahar: Shift+F1/F1, turbo F12). In RMG and Azahar fast forward turns on when pressed and off when released. DOS: the controller types on the keyboard (Space, Ctrl, Alt, Shift, Enter, Esc, Y/N, Tab, F1, arrows) – VoidStation presses the keys while DOSBox is in front. Cemu has no save states. Texts in all 15 languages
New in the AppCenter: xemu (original Xbox). Games from share/ROMs/xbox (XISO images) start from the game list, button mapping with an Xbox pad (White/Black on L1/R1 at first), save states via snapshots (Shift+F5 save, F5 load). Xenia (Xbox 360) doesn't run usefully on Linux and is therefore not included
BIOS in a folder per system: BIOS files go into share/ROMs/<system>/bios – each emulator only reads its own folder, so files of the same size from different consoles no longer get in each other's way. Required for PlayStation (psx), PlayStation 2 (ps2) and Xbox (xbox): the game list of DuckStation, PCSX2 and xemu tells you when something is missing – for xemu separately MCPX boot ROM, flash BIOS and hard disk image. Optional for Dreamcast (Flycast, file dc_boot.bin), Nintendo DS (melonDS, ARM9 and ARM7 BIOS plus firmware together), Game Boy Advance and Game Boy (Color) (mGBA, folders gba and gbc). Each of these folders holds a note “BIOS required – README.txt” or “BIOS optional – README.txt” in the interface language saying what belongs there and what it brings. Names don't matter (except for Flycast): VoidStation recognises the files the way the emulators do and points the emulator at them when a game starts, as long as it finds nothing in its own folder. Files from the previous folder share/BIOS (PlayStation 1/2, Xbox) are moved to their new place once. PCSX2: after setup, VoidStation also enters the BIOS file itself if none is selected (setup wizard finished without a BIOS); companion files of a dump (.rom1, .nvm …) don't count as a BIOS of their own. Note: in PCSX2's setup wizard the folder can't be picked with “Browse…” – just finish the wizard without a BIOS, everything is set on the next start. If you did pick a folder there, the settings hold a document-portal path (…/doc/…) that the Flatpak itself can't see – VoidStation now replaces such paths (PCSX2, DuckStation, xemu)
Covers in the music collection: the search now understands files from YouTube & co. – “Artist_-_Title_Lyrics.mp3”, additions such as “(Official Video)”, “Live at …”, “Remastered 1996” or “ft. …”, lost apostrophes (“Fat Larry s Band”) and title tags with the channel as artist (“Royals - Lorde (Lyrics)” by “Pillow”: both orders are tried). If MusicBrainz finds nothing or is overloaded, VoidStation searches iTunes – which also finds titles without an artist such as “Funkytown”. When MusicBrainz answers “503”, VoidStation waits and, after several failures, pauses it for 15 minutes instead of letting every track fail; such tracks don't count as “nothing found”. Embedded video stills (wider than tall) are replaced by the real cover in the display as soon as one is found – the picture in the file stays as it is. “Load all covers” now also counts the individual tracks of loose collections (before: “1 of 1 · 0 found”). Your own picture for a single track: put it next to it with the same name (Artist - Title.jpg or .png) – it beats everything else. “Search cover again” now only removes what is still in the file exactly as VoidStation wrote it – tags corrected by hand (e.g. with EasyTAG) and a picture you inserted yourself stay. Tiles and the “Up next” list show title and artist from the tags instead of the file name (before e.g. “Original Sin Junior s Earth Mix Edit”); without fitting tags the cleaned-up file name
Pictures in the game list now also for DOS, ScummVM and MAME: for DOS and ScummVM the games are folders – the picture search skipped anything that isn't a file and didn't know the collections for these systems. It searches by folder name (e.g. mad-tv → “Mad TV”), for MAME by game title instead of set name. Your own picture may also sit in the game folder (cover.jpg, folder.jpg, box.png …). The Cover folder no longer shows up as a game
DOSBox: starting a game matches the basic configuration: when starting from the game list, C: is also the whole share/ROMs/dos share (as without a game) – a game installed inside DOSBox (e.g. to C:\KQ5) finds its paths again. Only folders with a long name (copied from a PC, reachable in DOS only as NAME~1) become C: themselves. If an older basic configuration already mounts C: itself, the game still starts – before, mounting failed and DOSBox closed again right away. VoidStation now finds the start file in a game folder more reliably: helpers such as DOS4GW, intros, sound setup or packers don't count, and if there are several, the one matching the folder name wins (e.g. mad-tv → MTV.EXE, doom → DOOM.EXE). Where that isn't enough, a file start.txt in the game folder names the start file, optionally with arguments (e.g. SIERRA RESOURCE.CFG). Without a clear start file DOSBox stays at the prompt; start files with a long name are not called (DOS can't find them). Your own .conf files (e.g. from GOG) may mount relative to their folder. Slovak keyboard with the correct DOS code
Game lists: PCSX2, RMG, xemu, Azahar and Cemu read their folders share/ROMs/ps2, n64, xbox, 3ds and wiiu (created on install and update, plus mame), games start in fullscreen. MAME shows game titles instead of set names (e.g. “Street Fighter II” instead of sf2) and creates its basic settings itself on the first start. DOS and ScummVM: folders count as games – DOSBox makes the game folder drive C:, starts the game (if there's exactly one start file; installers don't count) and quits afterwards. RetroArch starts games from share/ROMs/retroarch with the matching installed core and lists every extension the cores read. VICE and Stella now show their games too (C64, Atari 2600). Game pictures now also for PlayStation 2, Xbox and 3DS
Flatpak emulators now see the share folder (RMG couldn't open games from there at all, xemu needs write access to the hard disk image); the save backup now also covers RMG, Cemu, MAME and Azahar save states
Button mapping now for every emulator with a game list: besides mGBA, Nestopia (NES), Snes9x (Super Nintendo), melonDS (Nintendo DS), DuckStation (PlayStation), PPSSPP (PSP), Dolphin (GameCube) and Flycast (Dreamcast) get the “Button mapping” button – each with a sketch of its console that asks for one button after another. Buttons are mapped by position (Nintendo: A right, B bottom; PlayStation: ✕ bottom …), the analog sticks always work too. VoidStation writes the mapping into the emulator's settings before every start – your own mapping from VoidStation always applies, the default only as long as you haven't changed it in the emulator itself. So controllers now work out of the box where the emulators didn't map them at all (DuckStation, Snes9x, Dolphin) or only partly (PPSSPP: L/R). Extras as in mGBA: save/load state (hold) and fast forward – free at first on consoles that need every button of the controller; Flycast fast forward only (save states via its menu on Select). Where the emulator has no keys for them, VoidStation sets them (Snes9x: Shift+F1/F1/Tab, PPSSPP: F2/F4, melonDS and Nestopia: fast forward on Tab). DuckStation picks up the mapping once it has been set up. The game list of these emulators now also opens without games (with “Start emulator without game” and “Button mapping”). Texts in all 15 languages
New under Settings → Display: “Match refresh rate to video” (off by default). While a video, TV, a DVD or YouTube Light is playing in front, the screen switches to its frame rate – 25/50 fps (European channels) to 50 Hz, 23.976 fps (films) to 23.98 Hz, 29.97 fps to 59.94 Hz. This removes the steady judder of, say, a 50 fps channel on 60 Hz. It only switches when the current resolution offers the rate and the current one doesn't fit anyway; the picture goes black for 1–3 seconds while switching. The home screen, music and leaving the player use the normal refresh rate again. The player's technical overlay (Select) shows when the rate was matched
Settings → Display: the refresh rate can now also be set to a fixed value (“Automatic” = ~60 Hz as before, or e.g. 50 Hz). The resolution list only shows modes with at least ~50 Hz (plus the current and the preferred one), up to eight instead of six – on 4K TVs that report only 30 Hz without “Input Signal Plus”, 1920×1080, for example, used to be missing
vsctl without arguments now lists all commands; new is vsctl version (version, build and update channel). In the terminal, Tab completes the commands and, after vsctl launch, the tile IDs
The text console (Ctrl+Alt+F2 …) greets with “VoidStation <version>” instead of “Void” – a custom text in /etc/issue is kept
Windows that Openbox frames itself – dialogs and helper windows, e.g. from emulators (such as “Load state” in mGBA) – now use the colours of the selected tile theme instead of Openbox's light grey default: title bar and border like the tiles, Noto Sans font, the close button turns red on hover. Switching the theme applies to open windows right away
More comfortable terminal: Tab now also completes commands, options and package names (e.g. xbps-install fire + Tab; new package bash-completion). ↑/↓ search the history for what you've already typed (ls + ↑ only shows earlier ls commands; on an empty line it works as before). The history keeps 10,000 commands without duplicates and no longer gets lost with several terminals open. New prompt paul@Wohnzimmer ~/share $ in petrol (red as root); after an error the exit code is shown in red before it. Plus ll, la, .. and coloured output for ls, grep, diff and ip. Applies to every terminal and over SSH; your own settings in ~/.bashrc take precedence – only Void's default prompt line there is commented out once
The terminal follows the theme (light/dark) with calmer colours, announces 256 colours (htop, nano & co. look better) and keeps 10,000 lines of scrollback; the cursor is now a blinking vertical bar instead of a block. Ctrl + / Ctrl − change the font size, Ctrl 0 resets it. The tile, Ctrl+Alt+T and terminal programs such as the system monitor now use the same font (DejaVu Sans Mono); the fixed colours in these tiles are dropped by the update
nano shows syntax colours and line numbers (your own settings in ~/.nanorc take precedence)
The system now identifies itself as VoidStation: fastfetch and other tools show “VoidStation <version>” instead of “Void Linux”, and fastfetch shows the VoidStation logo (four tiles with a V). This comes from a separate /etc/os-release (ID voidstation, based on void); Void's original stays in /usr/lib/os-release, and system updates don't overwrite the file. Your own fastfetch settings in ~/.config/fastfetch/config.jsonc take precedence
mGBA game list: new “Mute game” switch – the emulator stays silent, e.g. while a podcast is playing. It flips mGBA's own switch (Audio → Mute), so both always agree; applies from the next game start
Button mapping: picking a button in the list now offers “Remap”, “Leave free” or “Back”. Free buttons do nothing – e.g. fast forward, if it's too easy to hit by accident. “Default” brings them back
mGBA: save state (△) and load state (□) only trigger when you hold the button for half a second – an accidental tap does nothing. Triggers once per press
New: Button mapping for mGBA – in the game list (open the tile) via the “Button mapping” button. The page shows a sketch of the Game Boy Advance; “Map all, one by one” blinks one console button after another, and you press the button on your controller that should do it. Pressing nothing leaves a button as it is, the PS/Guide button cancels. Next to it is the whole mapping (e.g. “A → ○”); picking a button remaps just that one, and if the controller button is already used elsewhere, the two swap. Plus the extras VoidStation handles itself: save state (△) and load state (□), hold to rewind (L2) and fast forward (R2). “Default” restores the defaults. Applies from the next start of mGBA, per controller; the home screen works as before. More emulators will follow, each with its own controller (DuckStation: PlayStation pad etc.). Stored in ~/.config/voidstation/emu-pads.json
mGBA with a PS4 controller: ✕ (B) opened the “Load state” window and □ “Save state” – this came from mGBA’s built-in profile for “Wireless Controller”, which counts the buttons as on Windows. VoidStation now turns these two shortcuts off, even if mGBA has already saved the profile itself; your own shortcuts stay. Kept from the profile: hold L2 = rewind, hold R2 = fast forward
Terminal: pasting from the clipboard now works – with Ctrl+Shift+V, Shift+Insert or right-click (B / ○ on the controller). Until now the terminal only pasted selected text, not what was copied with Ctrl+C (e.g. from Firefox). Selecting text in the terminal also copies it to the clipboard, as does Ctrl+Shift+C
mGBA: controller mapping fixed – on PS4 controllers and clones A and B were off, and ✕ opened the load dialog (mGBA’s built-in profile for “Wireless Controller” counts the buttons as on Windows). VoidStation now asks SDL which button is where – the same library and controller database mGBA uses – and maps accordingly: ○ = A, ✕ = B, Share/Options = Select/Start. VoidStation’s old, wrong mapping is replaced automatically on the next start; anything you mapped in mGBA yourself stays. For controllers SDL doesn’t know, your own mapping from ~/.config/voidstation/pads.json (as for the start page) now also applies in mGBA
mGBA: △ saves a save state (slot 1), □ loads it – the message shows at the bottom of the screen
Games from the game list start in fullscreen (the emulator without a game stays windowed): mGBA and DuckStation with their own fullscreen option, Snes9x, Nestopia, melonDS, Stella, VICE and RetroArch through the window manager. Hold L3 (press the left stick for about a second) to leave fullscreen in the emulator in front and to go back – for example to reach mGBA’s menus (then R3 for controller as mouse). Only works when an emulator really is in front. Turn off with "emu_fullscreen": false in settings.json, per tile with "fullscreen": false in tiles.json. Newly installed: xdotool
mGBA with sensible defaults: controllers now work out of the box – until now mGBA only knew old Xbox 360 pads, on all others (Xbox Series, DualSense, DualShock 4, Switch Pro, 8BitDo …) A, B, Start and Select were not mapped. Buttons are mapped as arranged on the Game Boy (right button = A, bottom = B), plus L/R, d-pad and left stick. Also: the game state is saved automatically every 10 seconds and on exit and resumed on the next start, rewind is on, sharp pixels (integer scaling, no smoothing). VoidStation only touches what hasn’t been changed in mGBA itself – your own settings and your own controller mapping stay
Save backups: every 30 minutes and shortly after an emulator closes, the saves go to the share under Spielstand-Backups/<date_time> – only if something changed. Backed up: saves next to the games in ROMs (e.g. .sav, save states .ss0–.ss9) and the folders of DuckStation, PPSSPP, Dolphin, RetroArch, PCSX2, Flycast, Mednafen, Nestopia and ScummVM. Unchanged files take no space (hard links). All backups of the last 24 hours are kept, then one per day for 30 days. Restore from the PC: copy the file back to where it came from (LIESMICH.txt in the folder). Turn off with "save_backup": false in settings.json
Game list with pictures: VoidStation looks up the box art of every game online (libretro-thumbnails, the same pictures as in RetroArch) and keeps it under ROMs/<system>/Cover/<name of the game>.png. Works best with the usual file names like “Pokemon - Crystal Version (USA, Europe)”; ROM hacks and self-named files often find nothing – put your own picture named like the game into the Cover folder (.png, .jpg or .webp), it always wins. Games without a match are looked up again after 14 days. Turn off with "rom_covers": false in settings.json
Videos & Music plays DVDs: when a video DVD is in the drive, a “DVD” tile with the disc’s name appears on the library’s start page. It lists the DVD’s titles with length and chapters – on series DVDs usually one title per episode; short intros and warnings are hidden, “Play all titles” plays them in order. Playback continues automatically from the chosen title, X/Y jumps to the next/previous title. Audio tracks, subtitles and aspect ratio (4:3 stays 4:3) work as for videos; the menu can deinterlace (against comb artifacts on series DVDs, costs CPU time). DVD menus themselves don’t work (mpv can’t do them). The “Eject” tile opens the drive. Newly installed: lsdvd; the user is added to the drive’s group (takes effect after the next restart)
AppCenter on 32-bit computers (experimental): apps that don’t exist there are no longer offered – everything from Flathub (no longer builds 32-bit, e.g. FreeTube, Spotify, Discord, Heroic), Netflix, Prime Video, Disney+, Joyn and RTL+ (Widevine copy protection is 64-bit only), DuckStation, Steam and Prism Launcher. 36 apps remain, including Kodi, Jellyfin, VLC, RetroArch, the emulators from Void, the games and the on-demand services. Nothing changes on 64-bit
New: YouTube Light – YouTube without a browser and without a Google account, built into the VoidStation player and fully usable with the controller. Start page with continue watching, new videos from your own subscriptions, “Watch later” and your subscribed channels; search for videos, channels and playlists; channel pages (videos, live, playlists), playlists with “Play all”, history. Playback via yt-dlp and mpv (H.264 preferred, quality selectable up to 1080p, the video’s subtitles). Subscriptions, history and lists stay on the device; subscriptions can be imported from Google Takeout (also as ZIP), NewPipe and FreeTube – put the file into the share or onto a USB stick. Shorts are left out. On first start a notice appears (YouTube does not explicitly allow third-party players) that has to be confirmed. If a video fails because YouTube changed something, a button downloads the latest yt-dlp directly from the yt-dlp project (with checksum) and keeps it up to date weekly afterwards; “Find music” uses it too. In the AppCenter under Media; on 32-bit computers YouTube Light replaces the YouTube tile (Firefox), which would be too heavy there – on new installations and once on update, in the same place and size (also if YouTube Light was already installed from the AppCenter). On 64-bit the YouTube tile stays
TV and videos on 32-bit computers (experimental): the player shows the picture via Xv there – the graphics card does the scaling itself, even old chips without a 3D driver (e.g. Radeon 7500/9000 in the ThinkPad T41). VoidStation also installs the matching graphics driver on 32-bit (ATI, Intel, NVIDIA or VIA) and decodes with shortcuts that save noticeable CPU time on old processors. TV starts there with the quality set to “Data saver”
TV: the chosen quality (Best/Data saver) is now remembered. The technical overlay (Select / I) also names the video output next to the level (e.g. “Level 2 · xv”)
TV: many channels (e.g. 3sat, ZDF and other HLS streams) couldn't keep up since the new player – the buffer ran dry, the picture stuttered or didn't appear at all. The cause was an automatic-reconnect setting that applied to every single segment of these streams. It has been removed; the player still handles dropouts itself
Updates and the installation now write everything to disk before showing “Done”. If the computer was switched off hard right after an update (power button, power cut), VoidStation files could be left empty – the home screen then no longer came up
TV and videos on graphics cards without video acceleration (e.g. old notebooks; the player then shows the picture in a separate mpv window): the picture stayed behind the player and you only heard the sound until you picked the tile a second time. Now the picture comes to the front by itself
Sound: on slow computers and in the live system there was sometimes no sound – the radio connected but stayed silent, TV channels reported “not reachable” (timeout) and the volume showed “no audio service”. Cause: WirePlumber, which manages sound, ran twice, and one of them got stuck during startup. Now PipeWire starts it exactly once by itself; the home screen also still connects to the sound system if it only becomes ready later (reported by the community)
Live ISO: a 32-bit version can now be built experimentally (sudo bash build-iso.sh --arch i686) – for old computers such as ThinkPads with a Pentium M. It comes without the NVIDIA driver and boot splash and starts with the kernel parameter forcepae, which Pentium M processors need (they support PAE but don't report it); the installer carries it over to the installed system and accepts the 32-bit version with as little as 1 GB of memory (64-bit: still 4 GB). The live system creates its writable layer there with OverlayFS – the previous way (device mapper) made the 32-bit boot hang. Boots to the home screen in QEMU; the experimental 32-bit ISO is on the download page
AppCenter: the “YouTube TV interface” is gone. It pretended to be a smart TV so that youtube.com/tv would load at all – but Google now only allows that interface on real TVs and otherwise reports that the device is not recognized. If you had installed it, this update removes its tile and browser profile. The regular YouTube tile stays, and so does FreeTube in the AppCenter
Emulators: a game started from the game list (e.g. mGBA) could no longer be reached after Home/Guide – the tile opened the list again, every further game and “Launch emulator without game” started a new instance, and Y or “Close app” in the corner did nothing. The game now counts as the tile’s running program: the tile shows it as running and A brings it back, Y or the corner close it (the save prompt works like Alt+F4). Emulators also pause while the home screen or another program is in front – until now the game in the background reacted to every button press on the controller. Back in the game it continues exactly where it was. Applies to all emulators from the AppCenter (mGBA, DuckStation, PPSSPP, Dolphin, DOSBox …), not to Steam or online games; can be turned off per tile with "suspend": false in tiles.json
Sleep: with a Bluetooth controller connected, VoidStation woke up again right away – the controller loses its connection when the device goes to sleep, and the Bluetooth adapter reported that as a wake-up call. Bluetooth therefore no longer wakes the device (a controller's Home button can't wake a PC anyway); wake it with a USB keyboard, mouse or a remote with a USB receiver. The controller reconnects by itself after waking up. What woke the device, or why going to sleep was aborted, is now written to the log (launcher.log)
Videos & Music: the technical overlay (Select / I) shows format and bitrate for music (e.g. "MP3 · 320 kbit/s"), sample rate, channels and the audio output instead of resolution and dropped frames; videos get an extra "Audio" line
Settings → Sound now shows devices instead of PipeWire profiles: “TV · HDMI”, “MCHOSE X9 · USB”, “JBL … · Bluetooth” and so on at the top, the active one is marked – previously the profiles of all sound cards were in one long list without device names, with a checkmark per card. Below, only what the chosen device really offers: format (stereo, surround 5.1/7.1; for Bluetooth the codec, e.g. AAC) and microphone on/off. VoidStation remembers format and microphone per device. Bluetooth headphones run in full quality (A2DP) by themselves; the microphone switches to call quality and therefore stays off until you need it. New: “Use new devices automatically” (on by default) – a USB headset that is plugged in or a Bluetooth headset that is switched on takes over the sound; not controllers with a headphone jack (e.g. DualSense via USB) or webcams, and not during boot or right after standby. On first start, HDMI is set to stereo instead of 7.1 once if nobody has picked a format yet: TVs have two speakers, and with 7.1 dialogue easily got lost there. With an AV receiver or soundbar: Settings → Sound → Format
VLC is removed with this update, tile included – “Videos & Music” takes over. If you need VLC for DVD menus, converting or exotic formats, it is one click away: AppCenter → Media → VLC. If you installed VLC yourself from the AppCenter, you keep it
Videos & Music: the cover search by artist and title sometimes picked a compilation instead of the original album (e.g. "25 Jahre Spex" instead of "Mellow Gold" for Beck – Loser). Now all hits are ranked together: official studio album before single before EP, compilations, live albums and "Various Artists" last. New in the menu (Start → Playback → More): "Search cover again" – removes what VoidStation wrote into the file itself (cover and added tags, your own stay) and searches again. Also works for files the first version from today already wrote to. Data written by VoidStation is now marked in the file (tag VOIDSTATION). Also, a download or cover search could get stuck if it was started exactly as the previous one finished
Videos & Music: picking a track in a folder now really starts that track – playback used to begin with the folder's first track. Cover search for files with no tags and no "Artist - Title" in the name (e.g. "Beck loser.mp3"): VoidStation tries the possible splits into artist and title and only takes a hit where both match. Folders with tagged and untagged files side by side count as a loose collection
Videos & Music: new switch "Save covers in files" on the library start page (off by default). When on, VoidStation writes found covers and missing tags straight into the music files (MP3, M4A, FLAC), so other players and phones show them too. Existing tags are left alone; only missing ones are added – artist, title, album, year and track number from MusicBrainz, otherwise artist and title from the file name. Writing goes through a checked copy (audio and length must match), modification date and permissions are kept; files on read-only drives are skipped. "Load all covers" then goes through the whole collection
Videos & Music: every track shows its own cover, on its tile too – the one embedded in the file, otherwise the folder's. If a track has none (e.g. in a loose collection), VoidStation looks it up in the background by artist and album on MusicBrainz/Cover Art Archive, without an album tag by artist and title (if need be from the file name "Artist - Title"). It is stored in the cache, not in your files; each album is looked up only once. "Load all covers" now covers loose collections too. If a folder holds tracks from different albums – e.g. everything loose in share/Musik – VoidStation no longer looks for a shared folder cover; a wrong cover.jpg created that way is removed the next time the folder is opened (only if it is exactly the first track's picture, your own covers stay). The "Up next" list on the music screen shows only as many tracks as fit above the hint line instead of covering it
Videos & Music → "Find music": search for music and download it, similar to ytmdl. The first time you open it you tick the sources yourself – nothing is preselected: "Free music (Internet Archive)" (netlabels, live recordings and albums under Creative Commons or in the public domain, whole albums at once), YouTube and SoundCloud (with a note: only download what you are allowed to). Single tracks become MP3 and get artist, album, track number, year, genre and cover art (via the iTunes search), saved under share/Musik/Artist/Album/ or Artist/Singles/. Several downloads run one after another, progress is shown on each result. Change sources: X or "Sources". New packages: yt-dlp, Node.js (for YouTube), ffmpeg
Videos & Music: shuffle with X or in the menu (Start → Playback → Order). The current track keeps playing, then the rest of the folder follows in random order; with “Continue with next folder” every new folder is shuffled too. The setting is remembered
Videos & Music: album covers appear by themselves, similar to the scraper in Batocera. For folders without a picture, VoidStation first uses the cover embedded in the files, otherwise it looks up artist and album (from the tags or the folder names) on MusicBrainz and downloads the cover from the Cover Art Archive. It is saved as cover.jpg in the folder so other players see it too; for read-only folders (e.g. a USB stick) in the cache. Tiles update as soon as a cover arrives. On the library's start page: “Load covers automatically” (on/off) and “Load all covers” for the whole collection, with progress. Artist folders without their own picture show the cover of their first album
Videos & Music: repeat like on an MP3 player – “Continue with next folder” (when an album ends, the next one starts, across artist folders too), “Repeat folder”, “Folder, then stop” and “Repeat track”. Switch with Y or in the menu (Start); the choice is remembered. The music screen shows folder and mode, ▶ on the last track jumps straight to the next folder
Videos & Music and TV: go to the start page without quitting – with Guide/Win or via Start → “Go to start page” (also for controllers without a Guide button). Music and TV keep running, a video pauses; meanwhile you can open other apps, e.g. an emulator. The “Videos & Music” tile shows what's playing, and the hint line now mentions Start and Guide everywhere. Starting the radio pauses the music in the player
Built-in player for TV: switch channels with ▲▼ right in the picture, without going back to the start page. Switching shows the logo, channel name, position in the list and the current and next show (EPG). X opens the channel list at the edge of the screen (list, favorites, recent), Y marks the channel as a favorite, Start opens “Sound & picture” (audio track, subtitles, aspect ratio, quality), ◀▶ change the volume, LB/RB jump to the previous channel. Press B twice to quit TV. Works with controller, keyboard, remote or mouse – in the VoidStation look and in all languages
TV: a channel that can't be reached now says why (blocked, timeout, stream no longer exists, no internet) instead of simply doing nothing; ▲ jumps straight to the next one. In the channel list it is dimmed and marked with ⚠ for 24 hours. The player bridges short network dropouts instead of giving up
TV and videos are now decoded by the graphics card (VA-API, NVDEC on NVIDIA) instead of the processor – less load, less heat, quieter fans
New “Videos & Music” tile instead of VLC: a library for the shared folder (share/Videos, share/Musik) and USB drives, with thumbnails and “Continue watching” where you left off. Videos with audio track and subtitle choice (◀▶ 10 seconds, LB/RB 1 minute), music with cover and track list – play whole folders at once. VLC is still available in the AppCenter
The radio stops as soon as TV or a video starts
If the player's display doesn't work on a graphics card, VoidStation steps down by itself – for TV all the way to the previous mpv full screen. Select (or I) shows resolution, decoder and display level in the player for bug reports
Controller as mouse: in apps like Firefox/YouTube, FreeTube, Discord, VLC or mGBA the right stick moves the mouse pointer (the further, the faster), the bottom button (A / ✕) clicks (hold to drag), the right one (B / ○) right-clicks, the left stick scrolls. In games and emulators it is off by default because the right stick and shoulder buttons belong to the game – R3 (press the right stick) toggles it in any app, a short note in the bottom right shows the state. Turn it off completely: Settings → System → Controller as mouse. No extra program: the start page creates a virtual mouse for this
Bluetooth: paired devices can be renamed – “Rename” next to “Unpair”, e.g. “PS4 controller” instead of “Wireless Controller”. The name is kept until the device is unpaired; “Original name” (or an empty field) brings back the name the device reports itself
Game Boy Color: new share folder share/ROMs/gbc. The mGBA tile lists the games from gba and gbc together (Game Boy .gb games work in either folder)
DOSBox Staging starts ready to use: fullscreen, as a 386 with 4000 cycles (Ctrl+F11/F12 change the speed), drive C is the share share/ROMs/dos, language and keyboard as set in VoidStation. The base settings (~/.config/dosbox/dosbox-staging.conf) are only created if there are none yet – your own settings are kept
TV: the channel list stopped after 80 channels – in Germany around “F”, so ZDF and others could only be found via search. Now every channel is reachable: an A–Z bar next to the list jumps straight to a letter, and at the end of a letter “Next: …” moves on. Long lists come in pages of 200 channels (e.g. all countries under “T”: about 1,450) with “More channels” at the end and “Back” at the start. Search now also matches names without accents (reported by the community)
Sleep: ⏻ → Sleep (also under Settings → System). Programs stay open, the radio stops. Wake it with a USB keyboard, mouse or a remote with a USB receiver. Wi-Fi and Bluetooth reconnect on their own afterwards (a community request)
Back to the start screen with the mouse: push the pointer to the bottom right – it doesn’t have to hit the exact corner, the bottom or right edge just before it is enough (up to about a tenth of the screen height away). While a program is open, a small card in the colour of its tile floats there with “Start screen” (the program keeps running) and “Close app”. Works for every program started from a tile, fullscreen included (a community request)
Flatpak programs (e.g. FreeTube, Brave): if the program was already running, its tile didn't bring it back to the front, and the start screen kept treating it as “still starting”. Their windows are now recognised at start
Eleven new interface languages: Español, Français, Italiano, Latviešu, Magyar, Nederlands, Polski, Português (Brasil), Ελληνικά, Русский, Українська – Settings → Language. Date, time and numbers follow the language; programs like VLC and YouTube follow on their next start. The translations are machine-made – corrections are welcome as pull requests. The installer and the stick's boot menu follow with the next live ISO
Calendar version numbers: year and month of the release, e.g. 2026.11. Hotfixes to it are 2026.11.1, 2026.11.2 and so on; the live ISO carries the same number as the version it contains
The Testing channel shows its state as e.g. “2026.11+testing.20261120” (after 2026.11, last change on 20 Nov). Switching from Testing to Stable still never offers an older update
Button mapping and “Mute game” are now translated into the eleven other languages too (were English before)

Installed devices get the update via Settings → Updates → Update. Installing from scratch? Head to the download.