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.
As you may know, Handheld Companion (HC) relies on 2025-06-21 15:02:51 +0000 UTC View Post
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.
In an attempt to reduce Handheld Companion (HC) memory footprint, 0.24.0.15 introduced a regression when managing...
2025-06-15 13:28:55 +0000 UTC View Post
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 the HC application, we have decided to devote our time to refining this version, improving the overall user...
Dear patreons, we've come a long way since August 6, 2024, when Casper first suggested we implement a library manager into Handheld Companion. In today's post, I'll be disclosing some of the recent additions to the application and efforts we've put in the overall user interface (UI) and user experience (UX). I'm also happy to report that we're now supporting a few more devices, including the MSI C...
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, summary, artworks and covers.
Dear patrons, in this new version of Handheld Companion (HC), we've improved the overall user experience, corrected a large number of reported bugs and issues, improved stability and finally added support for the MSI Claw 8.
In addition to the complexity of acquiring an MSI Claw 8 AI+ A2VM, or simply of reading its name without stuttering, we had to make H...
2025-04-04 13:58:37 +0000 UTC View Post
The title says it all, we've officially started working on MSI Claw 8 support over Handheld Companion. With support from beta testers and Antheas from Bazzite project, we're undergoing code/protocol analysis on the Claw 8 to figure out how it works. I'll be sharing some of our progresses below.
WMI is the protocol used by MSI to manage some of the device features like TDP (power control) and FAN control. I'm happy to report we've already reverse ...
Dear patreons, it has only been a few days since we released our last build which means no major features were implemented but instead we've been working on improving the overall quality of life and fixed as many bugs as we could.
Dear patreons, while we were already at work on the next build, we unveiled a series of issues and crashes and decided to publish this hotfix release which also comes with one new feature which should mostly be of interest for our Intel CPU users out there, Heterogeneous CPU support. Sorry for the inconvenience.
We've implemented a ne...
Dear patreons, patreon build is out! This update brings significant improvements, including faster AutoTDP responsiveness, an enhanced Layout Manager with new input translation features, smarter gyroscope calibration, and optimized performance across Legion Go, Rog Ally, and MSI Claw devices. We've also addressed several bugs to ensure smoother stability and reduced CPU usage. Thanks for your continued sup...
Dear patreons, we're back with another update, two weeks outside our usual Patreon rhythm—but for good reason! This release brings major improvements to performance, stability, and overall user experience.
This update brings a major breakthrough in CPU and memory usage—an area we’ve been working hard to optimize. With the help of the ...
2025-02-22 15:05:10 +0000 UTC View Post
Dear all, while we're on deck trying to fix the last major known issue, memory leak, I'd like to share some details on the update our input manager just received.
As you may know, multiple actions per button have been around for quite sometimes. With forthcoming early access, we're finally adding multiple actions per axis (joysticks, triggers and touchpads), drastically improving the customisation ca...
2025-02-12 18:34:30 +0000 UTC View Post
Dear patreons, on popular demand, we've added several new settings to the joysticks layout settings.
Output shape will let you define the circularity output of the controller.
Default, will leave the joystick output unaltered.
Circle, will make sure the circularity is perfect.
Square, will allow the joystick output to reach each edges as it's expected by some games, result...
2025-02-01 09:15:29 +0000 UTC View Post
Handheld Companion (HC) has been in development for over 4 years, totaling more than 2834 commits and 36 contributors. At the dawn of 2025, we'd like to hear from you.
Are you using HC every time you use your device ?
What's your most used feature ?
Which feature would you like to see added to HC ?
As we work on the 0.22.0.6 build, which will feature a few more bug fixes, we'd like to showcase the revamped Desktop Layout hotkey which has became Controller Mode.
Controller Mode has three modes: Gamepad, Desktop and Auto, similarly to how Asus and MSI have been implementing this functionality. Auto will try to guess what typ...
2025-01-11 14:00:20 +0000 UTC View Post
Dear patreons, being only three days late, we're finally releasing our 2025 new year build which implements a lot of bug fixes and greatly improved controller management. Please take a moment to read the below.
Resuming from system sleep and hibernation has been an absolute pain since we started working on Handheld Companion. Especially because of th...
2025-01-04 14:11:07 +0000 UTC View Post
Dear patreons, once again, today is release day. With 0.22.0.3 we're implementing a few Quality of Life (QoL) improvements and bug fixes.
We've been reading reports from Steam Deck users across both Github and Reddit complaining about a controller latency issue affecting F...
2024-12-08 10:18:42 +0000 UTC View Post
Dear patreons, today is release day and it's a big one. As you may have noticed, the build number jumped from 0.21 to 0.22 because of major additions and code overhauls across the platform.
Released early November, .NET9 is the successor to .NET8 and has a special focus on cloud-native apps and performance. We've de...
2024-11-30 10:44:54 +0000 UTC View Post
Introducing a new feature of the upcoming early access version 0.22.0.0, Mode Shift also known as Input Shift. This new feature will let you define several input shift modes and specific actions for each of your buttons, multiplying the number of potential outputs by a lot.
In the above exemple, A button will return A when pressed but return X when Shift A is triggered and short pressed and Y if long pressed while Shift A is triggered.
2024-11-15 13:19:34 +0000 UTC
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Teasing another element of the forthcoming early access build, bringing the ability to reorder pinned hotkeys on Quicktools window through drag & drop.
2024-11-12 13:26:59 +0000 UTC View Post
As we're about to jump into the weekend, I'd like to share a bit of details on what we're currently working on. While we've been adding new features and bugfixes with each new releases, ressource usage and loading time might also have slightly increased.
With the forthcoming 0.21.7.1 build, we've started rewriting the managers startup process to make them asynchronous, meaning they'd start in parallel, reducing the overall startup time and make them less prone to startup errors.
GPD Win Max2 8840U Model (by DevLord).
Lenovo Legion Go: Now has proper touchpad support.
GameSir Tatantula Pro (Gyro, 9 customizable buttons and LED).
Adding Multi DSU support, for devices with detachable controllers (should allow you to use movements from both c...
2024-10-26 17:36:31 +0000 UTC View Post
Dear all, thanks to community effort, we're finally bringing you the long-awaited compatibility with the Asus ROG Ally X with patreon build 0.21.6.1.
Dear all, I know many of you are eagerly waiting for Handheld Companion to be compatible with the ASUS ROG Ally X. Good news, it appears we're now almost there.
As I'm writing those lines, patreons are testing an internal build and reported near perfect compatibility. We're sorting a few remaining details like background services and default power profiles before releasing the build to all early access patreons.
Stay tuned!
Dear patreons, another release, another milestone. Hopefully you'll enjoy the fact this release lands on a Friday to help you unleash your gaming skills through the weekend, whether it's to kill xenos and heretics or to save Hyrule kingdom one more time.
This new release jumps straight to 0.21.6.0 and brings several updates to our main libraries: ADLX and JoyShockLibray for extended AMD featur...
2024-09-27 12:54:59 +0000 UTC View PostDear all, it's been a bit more than a month since we released 0.21.4.1. We've been hard at work to implementing a few major functionalities, among which a totally revamped Hotkey manager, offering a lot more flexibility and capabilities to customize your handheld experience. We've also improved the support for a few devices, including the AYANEO Flip DS and it's exotic dual-screen format, allowing users to instantly swap/resize/maximize/make borderless any window across the screens.
We...
While we've released the 0.21.4.1 build two days ago, we wanted to share some visibility on two parallel workstreams we're working on.
Casper and Xirdneth have been working really hard in what might finally be our actual embedded software launcher. It's still fairly early in the development stage and we still need to manage most of the game launchers to simplify library migration.
In par...
2024-07-08 08:28:43 +0000 UTC View Post
Release notes
This release should bring joy to many users as we're finally delivering a total overhaul of our Quicktools interface. We've brought back the highly requested navigation buttons for an improved user experience. The overlay page was updated to display some overlay information without requiring an actual OSD like RTSS. Finally we've also overhauled the suspender page, rena...
2024-07-05 13:46:12 +0000 UTC View Post
Release notesThis release brings stability and performance improvements across all devices with a slight focus on the Lenovo Legion Go, drastically reducing CPU usage on controller pulling also fixing gyro latency. New devices are also supported. A huge kodu to @joshuatam and 2024-06-08 09:33:02 +0000 UTC View Post
With 0.21.2.0 made available two days ago, this build is focusing on hotfixing a few issues and regressions. This release should provide a fairly stable experience across all devices as we've also fixed a few crash issues. Let's move on to the changelog, shall we ?
AYANEO Flip KB and Flip DS (missing OEM buttons, community help welcome!), thanks to @0Skil...
2024-05-29 13:42:44 +0000 UTC View Post