A full-featured V1.0
Wave Launcher, the Android launcher inspired by the PlayStation-style XrossMediaBar design, has officially reached its V1.0 release. This milestone was announced by Retro Handhelds after months of dedicated development and community testing spearheaded by Ruby, the project’s lead.
The release build of Wave Launcher prioritizes controller-first functionality, ensuring seamless gamepad navigation with support for Xbox, PlayStation, and Nintendo controller prompts. Users can customize button layouts and utilize an on-screen virtual controller for setups without a physical pad. While touch support is included, it is still a work in progress.
In terms of game management, Wave Launcher offers a comprehensive set of features including collections, recently played tracking, favorites, and automatic playtime statistics. Users can effortlessly switch between multiple storage options and micro SD cards with hot swap support and deduplication. Emulator selection can be tailored on a per-platform and per-game basis, providing a personalized gaming experience.
Asset scraping capabilities of Wave Launcher are robust, drawing from various sources such as SteamGridDB, ScreenScraper, RetroAchievements, Google Play, and Hasheous. Users can directly scrape assets from real PSP, PS3, and PSP Minis sources, with extended support for NDS, 3DS, and DSi through donor contributions. The launcher also features a built-in image cropping tool and multi-language scraper support for added convenience.
Multimedia functionality is a standout feature of Wave Launcher, offering a full video player, music player, photo gallery with slideshow support, custom sound systems, and individual audio volume controls. Users can customize the UI with different wallpaper styles, fonts, interface scaling options, status bar preferences, and boot logos featuring themes like PS3, Wave, GammaOS, AYN, Retroid Pocket, and Anbernic.
Extras and availability
In addition to its core features, Wave Launcher includes built-in FTP support, a browser-based Wave Portal for managing wallpapers and scraped games, Discord Rich Presence integration with per-game icons, automatic app updates via Obtainium JSON import, and full compatibility with dual-screen devices including per-screen orientation adjustments and automatic single-screen mode when docked.
Achievement tracking is facilitated through RetroAchievements, with support for Dusklight (Twilitrealm) achievements as well. Future releases are expected to include migrations from Cocoon, XOrA, and ES-DE for enhanced functionality.
Wave Launcher is now available for download on its official page and GitHub. Retro Handhelds has conducted extensive testing across various devices, with the Retroid Pocket 6 receiving particular praise for its performance with the launcher.
