Upgrade to .Net 8 and single file executable

Hello there!
This is another update to attempt to fix the errors on Windows 11 24H2
Changes and new features of this version:

• Upgrade to .Net 8 PR #153 by @dos-ise)
• Update dependencies to latest versions
• Move the executable to a single file, as this should eliminate the missing dependencies when MS often disappears with one

If you face bugs or have questions, head over to our subreddit at http://reddit.com/r/UWPHook or ping me at our issues or my Twitter. Please, also send the contents of the log file located in %appdata%/briano/uwphook/

This software is open-source under the MIT License.

If you like what i did with it and want to support me, you can cheer me up at my Twitter or pay me a coffee via Paypal, it will help me to continue to build amazing open source tools for you!

Thanks for your support, and game on!

Windows 11 24H2

Hello there!
This is a quick fix to Windows 11 24H2 made by a community member. Because of the problems with dependencies at the latest releases of Windows, many things are prone to break, but i haven't had the time to investigate further. Just as a heads up, technical previews and new releases of Windows might break things, and often they do, and Windows dev is very hard because of this (and Microsoft pushes updates very awkwardly, i am still on 23H2...), so i can't guarantee the function of the software in newer releases as soon as they come out, and the software is provided AS-IS.

Changes and new features of this version:

- Fix crashes on Windows 11 24H2 (Use nuget version of System.Security.Principal and add a binding redirect to fix version conflict PR #152 by @dos-ise)
- Update dependencies to latest versions (.net to 4.8.1 etc...)

If you face bugs or have questions, head over to our subreddit at http://reddit.com/r/UWPHook or ping me at our issues or my Twitter. Please, also send the contents of the log file located in %appdata%/briano/uwphook/

This software is open-source under the MIT License.

If you like what i did with it and want to support me, you can cheer me up at my Twitter or pay me a coffee via Paypal, it will help me to continue to build amazing open source tools for you!

Thanks for your support, and game on!

2.14.1

Hello there!
Just a quick fix because of issue #138 because of an oversight on my part.
Additionally, there seems to be some problems with some dependencies of the project on some Windows technical preview, so, if you have an error while loading the program or while trying to export games, also report your windows version, so that i can attempt to reproduce it.

Changes and new features of this version:

• Check if the user has a shortcuts.vdf before attempting to back-it-up

If you face bugs or have questions, head over to our subreddit at http://reddit.com/r/UWPHook or ping me at our issues or my Twitter. Please, also send the contents of the log file located in %appdata%/briano/uwphook/

This software is open-source under the MIT License.

If you like what i did with it and want to support me, you can cheer me up at my Twitter or pay me a coffee via Paypal, it will help me to continue to build amazing open source tools for you!

Thanks for your support, and game on!

Updates to prepare for some refactoring

Hello there!
I'm refactoring the project a bit in the coming days, in order to both improve the reliability of the project, since it has been quite a few long years since i created it, and while it does work, it does not represent the quality of the code i'm able to produce these days and to make it easier to extend the project with better functionality. So this is a small preparation for the probable V3 of the project, it may take a while, but it will be worth it. I'll be closing most most PR's while i refactor the code and add tests to guarantee the quality of the project.

Changes and new features of this version:

• Added a message confirmation if the user tries to "empty" their VDF using the button added in the last version
• Backup the user's VDF file to %appdata% before meddling with it, so if something goes wrong, you have some course of action
• Attempt to improve the handling of the temp_grid directory #121 #114 etc (It has been too long with this error, please report if it still happens, maybe i merged some code and forgot to update the release)
• Fix Grid images not being properly set because we forgot to set the appid for each game in the VDF file
• Add support for JPG's and JPEG'S because Steam never told us it could read these (thanks @DragRedSim for the tips)
• Improved tests on some of the internal libraries
• Updated dependencies to latest version

If you face bugs or have questions, head over to our subreddit at http://reddit.com/r/UWPHook or ping me at our issues or my Twitter. Please, also send the contents of the log file located in %appdata%/briano/uwphook/

This software is open-source under the MIT License.

If you like what i did with it and want to support me, you can cheer me up at my Twitter or pay me a coffee via Paypal, it will help me to continue to build amazing open source tools for you!

Thanks for your support, and game on!

2.13.0

Hey people, a few fixes for today:

• Fix the persistent icons for games with encrypted icons that could not be copied
• Fix some games missing from the app list
• Properly handle apps that weren't being handled well in version 2.12
• Add the ability to generate a log file
• Change the default installation from %PROGRAMFILES% to %APPDATA%, to avoid admin issues on launching games

Thanks @stevealexandre for the recent contributions 🎉

If you face bugs or have questions, head over to our subreddit at http://reddit.com/r/UWPHook or ping me at our issues or my Twitter.

This software is open-source under the MIT License.

If you like what i did with it and want to support me, you can cheer me up at my Twitter or pay me a coffee via Paypal, it will help me to continue to build amazing open source tools for you!

Thanks for your support, and game on!

Better handling of newer XGP games

Hello again!

Thanks to the contribution of @stevealexandre we have a great fix:

• Improve handling of launched apps by checking the spawned process for an known executable for the app launched
  • Essentially, when apps used the newer application launcher for Windows Store apps, they may spawn indirectly spawn sub-processes that would confuse UWPHook and would not be handled well by tracking just the PID of processes, so, by checking the current alive processes against what the app informs that it is his executable name, we can guarantee that we can keep track of it's running status.
  • THIS WILL BREAK OLDER INSTALLATIONS, YOU SHOULD RE-IMPORT YOUR GAMES INTO STEAM WITH THE NEW VERSION
• Also fixed the known aumids for Astroneer and for Taiko no Tatsujin

If you face bugs or have questions, head over to our subreddit at http://reddit.com/r/UWPHook or ping me at our issues or my Twitter.

This software is open-source under the MIT License.

If you like what i did with it and want to support me, you can cheer me up at my Twitter or pay me a coffee via Paypal, it will help me to continue to build amazing open source tools for you!

Thanks for your support, and game on!

Support apps with launchers, do not lose icons and more

Hi people, hope you all are well
Sorry for delaying this new release for so long, had a lot going on this past year, and could not get up to all these issues, but i finally bring good news:

• Added support to apps that use launchers (EG: Forza Horizon 5, Halo...), thanks @novemberdobby for the contribution
  • Some apps would not "stay open" on the Steam profile status, this fixes most games in this case, i have not tested ALL games, but the most recurring ones seems to be working fine and dandy.

• Fix shortcuts icons disappearing, by moving them to a transient directory at %APPDATA%
  • As pointed by some of our users, when apps updated, their icons would disappear from Steam and from desktop shortcuts, to fix this, we now will copy the icon to a folder for UWPHook at %AppData%, which will prevent the icons from disapearing. YOU MUST RE-IMPORT YOUR GAMES WITH THE NEW VERSION FOR THIS TO WORK!
• Automatically restart Steam when finishing the import process
  • KNOWN ISSUE: Sometimes Steam will refuse to start with an error Failed to load SteamUI.dll, just click ok and manually relaunch Steam.
• Improve error handling when getting non-positive responses from SteamGridDB
• Updated to .NET 4.8 and a lot of dependencies of the project
• Improved the installer/uninstaller

If you face bugs or have questions, head over to our subreddit at http://reddit.com/r/UWPHook or ping me at our issues or my Twitter.

This software is open-source under the MIT License.

If you like what i did with it and want to support me, you can cheer me up at my Twitter or pay me a coffee via Paypal, it will help me to continue to build amazing open source tools for you!

Thanks for your support, and game on!

QOL improvements and fixes to reported bugs

I never thought we would get so many contributions 🥲

We have a fix to a critical bug that was bothering some users for some time, as described in #72

• Fix UWPHook 'deleting' custom grid artwork added by other apps

And thanks to the contributions of @EnumC, we have a few features

• The app will no longer create duplicated entries, will update existing shortcuts if trying to export an identical app

• Properly handle error responses from SteamGridDB and display a nice message before exiting

• Properly fit the SteamGridDB key in the settings page

• (Only for devs/contributions) A debug option to clean shortcuts during development

  When UWPHook as re-serializing pre-existing shortcuts, it changed some properties read by Steam, changing the value of the appid Steam uses to track the link between games and the custom grid artwork, this update will no longer tamper with these shortcuts and will keep your library tidy and clean 😄
  Also, since some people reported that some anti-viruses are mistakenly reporting the attached zip as "malware", i'll be naming the zipped version of releases as UWPHook.zip from now on, since Release.zip seems to be used by some malwares, causing this false-positive.

If you face bugs or have questions, head over to our subreddit at http://reddit.com/r/UWPHook or ping me at our issues or my Twitter.

This software is open-source under the MIT License.

If you like what i did with it and want to support me, you can cheer me up at my Twitter or pay me a coffee via Paypal, it will help me to continue to build amazing open source tools for you!

Thanks for your support, and game on!

Launch args and fixes! Episode Two

Hey guys!

Thanks to the contributions of @Camology we have a very important bug fix this patch:

• Add support to long executable paths
• Update to .net framework version 4.6.2

This should fix the problems that some people have when trying to export Yakuza games and some others to Steam. Since i can't reproduce the problem, i'm looking forward for some feedback. Additionally, you can download new .net framework versions here at Microsoft

If you face bugs or have questions, head over to our subreddit at http://reddit.com/r/UWPHook or ping me at our issues or my Twitter.

This software is open-source under the MIT License.

If you like what i did with it and want to support me, you can cheer me up at my Twitter or pay me a coffee via Paypal, it will help me to continue to build amazing open source tools for you!

Thanks for your support, and game on!

Launch args and fixes! Episode One

Hey guys!

In version 2.9 i bring to you two features and a bug fix to an overlook i had in the last release

UWPHook can now send additional launch options to apps, just add the options needed to the end of the launch options box in the settings of the game inside Steam, like you would normally do to any other game, the options will be read and given to the respective app upon launch, confirmed working with Endless Space 2 and --enablemoddingtools, not working with Tetris Effect and --vr

In addition, 2.9.1 fixes a bug reported by a few users on our subreddit:

• Fixed a bug when exporting FFXII The Zodiac Age #56

If you face bugs or have questions, head over to our subreddit at http://reddit.com/r/UWPHook or ping me at our issues or my Twitter.

This software is open-source under the MIT License.

If you like what i did with it and want to support me, you can cheer me up at my Twitter or pay me a coffee via Paypal, it will help me to continue to build amazing open source tools for you!

Thanks for your support, and game on!