ES-DE 3.5.0-65 is now available for download
We're happy to announce that ES-DE 3.5.0-65 for Android is now available for download!
This release improves support for dual-screen devices by making it possible to configure per-system and per-game on which screen to launch games, instead of having only a global setting as was the case up until now. There is also a new setting named "Run browsing events as non-blocking" in the Other settings menu that greatly reduces latency and stuttering when using browsing custom events, which have been needed for integrating with dual-screen companion apps. It's enabled by default, but simply disabling it reverts to the old behavior in case it would cause any unforeseen issues on your device.
There is also a new experimental feature in this release that adds the ability to query RetroArch for installed cores on game launch. This eliminates the dreaded black screen problem when attempting to launch RetroArch with a core that has not been installed. With this setting enabled the Android release will behave just like ES-DE on desktop operating systems, i.e. a popup notification will be shown that the core is missing, and the game will not launch. We have tested this on a number of devices but we need your help to test it at scale, so please enable this option and let us know in our Discord server if you run into any problems. The setting is named "Query installed RetroArch cores (Experimental)" and it's located in the Other settings menu. If this works fine across a wide range of devices we'll likely enable it by default in the next release. Note that you need a recent RetroArch build for this to function as they introduced this functionality quite recently.
On the topic of RetroArch there is now also support for using their recent Google Play store release. This build is using the Android Storage Access Framework (SAF) since it does not have proper storage permissions due to restrictive Play store policies. This means that it requires a different set of launch commands than the regular RetroArch build. Although we strongly recommend to not use this release and instead download a build from the RetroArch website, it's now possible to use it if you really want to. Just enable the setting "Use RetroArch in SAF mode (Not recommended)" in the Other settings menu to make game launching work. Be aware that enabling this while not using RetroArch in SAF mode will completely break game launching. In other words never enable this option if you're using a build with proper storage access that you downloaded from the RetroArch website (or if you're using a tool such as Obtanium to install RetroArch).
Support has also been added for two new systems, those being Sony PlayStation 4 (ps4) and Atari Jaguar CD (atarijaguarcd).
Scraping videos is now supported when using TheGamesDB, and Czech (cs_CZ) translations have been added.
In addition to the above, more functionality has been added to the theme engine which opens up new creative possibilities for theme designers, and we'll make a new theme named NXE Menu available on the theme downloader to showcase some of this.
There is also support for a huge amount of new emulators as of this release and there are many other improvements, see the Changelog for all details.
Download link: ES-DE_3.5.0-65.apk
MD5 hash: 7243d0b1596d1fb6cc98a5eee9fcad8f
If you need support then please join our Discord server:
Enjoy the release!