Handheld Companion

This update addresses several long-standing issues in the virtual controller stack, improves application shutdown so devices and managers can close cleanly, and includes fixes for library names, controller recovery, AYANEO devices and navigation state. We know many of you support Handheld Companion

We’re aware of the numerous issues currently affecting USBIP and VIIPER, the virtual controller stack used by Handheld Companion, and we’re actively working on them. USBIP A new USBIP update is planned by the end of September and will finally address a long-standing issue where, once a virtual contr

A quick hotfix following the 1.2.0.0 and 1.2.0.1 releases, bringing several fixes and small improvements to controller handling and streaming, trackpad haptics and layout management, and profiles. What Changed Controller streaming Added display dimming and apply the on-battery power profile during c

Since the release of 1.0.0.0, we've continued expanding Handheld Companion's hardware support while improving controller handling, input customization, performance and the overall user experience. This release also brings a number of improvements to virtual controller handling, keyboard input, devic

The journey began in 2021 with AyaGyroAiming, a small project created to enable gyroscope aiming on AYANEO handhelds. At the time, AYANEO was among the first handheld manufacturers to expose its built-in IMU to Windows, making motion controls possible but leaving users without a practical way to use

Dear all, shortly after releasing 0.32.1.3, several users reported a regression affecting custom HID communication on a number of devices. In addition to resolving the regression, we've taken the opportunity to introduce a long-requested feature: customizable axis and joystick response curves, allow

Dear Patreons, thank you as always for your testing, reports, and continued support. Before diving into this release, I'd like to share a broader reflection. The handheld PC ecosystem has evolved tremendously over the past few years. What many users don't always see, however, is the amount of revers

Hey everyone, we’ve got a small thank-you for all our Early Access and Founders patrons. Droix, a 12+ years tech retailers with a large catalog of handheld hardware and accessories, has kindly provided us a unique 5% discount for their store at https://droix.net/. How you receive the code New or upg

If you plan to buy a new handheld gaming PC within the next 6 months, which device are you most likely to purchase? Feel free to tell us why in the comments: CPU vendor (Intel Arc G3 Extreme, AMD Ryzen AI Max+ 388), performance, battery life, SteamOS support, ergonomics, software, display quality, r

Dear Patreons, thank you as always for your testing, reports, and continued support. Version 0.31.3.1 might look modest on paper, but it's one of the more foundational builds we've shipped in a while. The headline is a brand new Welcome Window that walks new users through device detection, OEM softw

Dear Patreons, thank you as always for your testing, reports, and continued support. Version 0.30.0.1 is a significant release. The biggest change under the hood is the replacement of ViGEm with VIIPER for virtual controller emulation, a move that resolves a whole class of resume, slot, and input lo

Dear Patreons, thank you as always for your testing and reports. Today's version 0.29.3.0 continues the stability work from 0.29.0.3, with a focus on memory management, resume reliability, and a handful of targeted fixes for issues reported since the last build and GPD Win5 specific fixes. What Chan

Another day, another release. Hopefully 0.29.2.0 should be the latest hotfix build of the week as we've fixed a few reported issues and regressions while also implementing proper UI elements to manage the DSU server hosted by HC. The DSU protocol is used by many popular emulators to read motion valu

Dear Patreons, what was meant to be a quick hotfix a few hours after 0.29.0.3 turned into something a little more than that — as these things tend to do. The original intent was to patch two layout issues that slipped through. While in there, a few extras made it in: custom framerate limit values, m

Dear Patreons, thank you as always for your testing, reports, and continued support. With this build, we're bringing several meaningful improvements: Intel TDP support is back across the board, HC's internal managers are now individually toggleable, the Library has received its most substantial upda

Dear Patreons, thank you as always for your continued support, testing, and feedback. A large part of this build is about removing overhead in places that constantly run in the background, while also modernizing how we identify and manage XInput controllers thanks to OpenXInput. While the Windows up

Dear all, we've been made aware of a compatibility issue between HC and the Windows Update KB5086672. When installed, this update will likely break the controller support. We're investigating the issue and recommend anyone using HC not to install this update yet. EDIT (08/04/2026): Issue was fixed w

Dear Patreons, thank you as always for your continued support, testing, and feedback. This new update brings a noticeable step forward in two areas that have been on the list for a while: how fast Handheld Companion loads and responds, and how comfortable the UI feels to navigate day to day. A good

Dear Patreons, I'm glad to report that today marks an end to the WinRing0 saga as version 0.28.4.5 finally replaces the old WinRing0/RyzenAdj power path with PawnIO on AMD-based devices while also tightening TDP handling across all platforms. If you want more background on the WinRing0 story, you ca

Dear Patreons, thank you again for all your testing and support. Version 0.28.3.3 is primarily a UI/UX-focused build. We’ve redesigned the Profiles and Layout pages to simplify navigation and make controller-first interaction feel more natural. This update also introduces a long-requested master upd

Dear Patreons, thank you again for all your testing and support since 0.28.2.3. Version 0.28.3.1 focuses on better power features, major Layout Editor upgrades (shared toggle state, delayed actions, triggers), new hotkey commands (including PowerShell), and a substantial round of device fixes and im

Dear all, with next Early Access build we will be adding built-in undervolting for both AMD and Intel handhelds. What’s new? Intel devices New controls for per-rail voltage offsets in millivolts (Core, iGPU, SoC), where values are mV offsets. AMD devices New controls for All Core Curve and GPU Curve

Dear Patreons, thank you again for all your testing and support since 0.28.1.4. Version 0.28.2.3 moves Handheld Companion to .NET 10, drops Window 10 support, adds first-pass support for the GPD Win 5, introduces an AMD Curve Optimizer, and brings a long list of quality-of-life improvements and stab

Did you know that each early access members of this Patreon has access to nightly builds (super early releases) usually pushed once or twice a week on our Discord channel? Nightly builds are usually safe to install, unless stated otherwise, and allow the most impatient of you to try new features but

Dear Patreons, thanks for all the testing across the last nightly builds. This build rolls up 0.28.0.1 to 0.28.1.1 into a polished drop. With 0.28.1.4, a lot of efforts went into reducing our CPU footprint and ensuring faster resume when system wakes up. We’ve also begun replacing WinRing0 with Pawn

Dear all, as I write those lines, a few of you might have already installed Windows 11 25H2 through the Insider Program in order to enable the Xbox Fullscreen Experience (FSE) and enhanced Microsoft Game Bar. While we believe both features are welcome additions to the handheld gaming experience on W

Dear patreons, it has now been 16 days since we released our first nightly build on the dedicated Discord channel (read more). Thanks to our audacious members, we have been able to accelerate the cycle of detecting and resolving issues, allowing us to devote time to improving performance and reducin

Dear all, Microsoft Defender has started quarantining/alerting on WinRing0. WinRing0 is a tiny helper that lets apps talk to hardware at a very low level (ring-0) to read/write things like MSRs, I/O ports, and PCI. HC uses it to reliably read hardware telemetry and toggle certain controls on devices

Dear all, as we work on early access releases, it appears our review protocol still commonly lead to last minute bugs and issues discovery and hotfix builds. Therefore, we're introducing the concept of nightly builds. Nightly builds will be made available to early access and founders patrons willing

Dear all, while 0.27.02 was released just two days ago, it appears a series of bugs slipped through our review cycle. 0.27.0.6 brings a few hotfixes but also a series of miscellaneous improvements. We've also created a new beta-test channel on patreon where we'll be sharing nightly builds to the mos

Today’s release is a big milestone for Handheld Companion. Version 0.27.0.2 introduces a brand-new game library system, better support for n Today’s release is a big milestone for Handheld Companion. Version 0.27.0.2 introduces a brand-new game library system, better support for new handhelds, and a

We've been hard at work since 0.26.0.2 was released a couple of days ago, implementing support over a few more devices. Special thanks to @antheas from hhd for his support on the Legion Go S and MSI Claw A8 compatibility as well as @Vei from our community for providing access to his ZOTAC Gaming Zon

Dear patreons, today's release should be your summer companion as you avoid direct contact with the sun to focus on gaming instead. 0.26.02 introduces major changes to controller management with the introduction of SDL3, but also extended compatibility over devices with support for new firmware and

Lenovo and MSI recently released firmware updates for both their devices which partially broke compatibility over Handheld Companion. We're actively working on bringing back full compatibility over both devices as we prepare the new early access release. In the meantime, we encourage you to avoid up

Dear all, as we enter the second half of the year, we will be seeing a series of new devices from Asus, MSI and Lenovo over the coming months. Although we are all very excited about them, our budget is not unlimited, and we will have to prioritise the purchase and support of one of them. Which devic

Dear patrons, today's release once again focuses on improving the overall user experience, bringing some love to the freshly released MSI Claw 7, 8 and younger sister the MSI Claw 1. We've also fixed a few remaining crashes and addressed one of the biggest issue we had: sleep, hibernate and resume.

Dear patrons, today's release is a minor update aiming at fixing a regression from build 0.24.0.15 but it also brings support over AMD latest CPU architectures: Krackan Point, Strix Halo and tentatively fixes the virtual controller sleep and resume issues. Regression hotfix In an attempt to reduce H

Dear patrons, our latest version 0.24.0.9 has truly marked an important milestone for us, paving the way for what's to come for HC in terms of user experience and library management. Although there is still much to do before we can consolidate and offer both a true game and application launcher with

Dear all, with our latest early access build out there and on Casper's request, we'll now begin our journey towards embedded launcher and library management. What you're seeing here is an early prototype of the IGDB API integration which we'll be using to recover details from games including name, s