Hi!
Doesn’t Blender internal solution works for you?
Since many request I will try to check what can be done in this area, but no promises for now.
For Linux I use xdg-open, so it might be configured in a different way on your OS (what distribution by the way?).
Glad that BL improves your experience! No much time to work on it unfortunately 
Blender Launcher 1.5.0 released!
P.S. Did internally some steps towards automatic file scanning which eventually should be a part of blender configs feature. Hope will work on it asap.
Fixed:
- “Reload Library Folder Content” doesn’t clean up custom builds information [#16]
- Blender Launcher process not killed if user refused to select library folder on fresh start [#17]
New:
- Sorting by build version
- Stable builds now shows explicit versions (i.e. 2.79 (sub 0) -> 2.79b)
Other:
- Add .blinfo file versioning (will reload all existing builds information at first start - may take a while)
Known Issues:
- Downloads not take into account If build information was not loaded until next update cycle
2 Likes
Hey Oleg, I just bought the addon from Gumroad, but to be honest I am getting confused by what I need to do to set the whole thing up. I created a random folder called Library and then created subfolders…you know the ones called stable, custom etc… I then unzipped a portable version and placed it in the Custom build. I tried refreshing to see if it catches the blender.exe, and I do not see it in the startup. For the record I am using the Ecycles versions of blender. What am I missing?
This is what it looks like
Hi!
As far as I understand it is a paid build so I don’t have access to test it.
The blender.exe should be placed directly under “E_cycles_2.90_ v20201006_win”.
You can send a screenshot of that directory contents, however it is probably the same as official builds.
Blender Launcher 1.6.0 released!
Follow Installation instructions and notes on Wiki page.
Please, read about how to report a bug before creating an issue.
Fixed:
- Sorting fails when locale is not set (introduced in #21)
- Bring window to front fails in some situations on Windows
New:
- Automatic update of Blender Launcher binary instead of redirecting to GitHub releases page
- New setting for choosing default library page shown at startup (Default Downloads Page)
- New settings for toggling notifications (When New Builds Are Available, When Downloading Is Finished)
- New setting for automatic marking of newly downloaded build as favorite (Mark New Build As Favorite)
Other:
- File structure and scripts refactor for easy use with pipenv (check Development page on Wiki)
- PyInstaller version updated to 4.0
- Minimum GLIBC version raised to 2.27
P.S. Automatic update feature took too much time, hope it will work at least…
3 Likes
Greetings folks!
I came into some bad issue cause by Linux distribution differences - even Ubuntu 18 and 20 not compatible for some reason (issue #24).
Basically, the perfect way is to build BL exclusively under all available distros, however it is time consuming as well as I don’t think there is too many users of BL with wide range of Linux version.
If someone have a good solution or I can simply use latest Linux to builds BL, please let me know 
Also, I simplified building process so follow instruction on Development page of Wiki.
For those, who have issues with launching blender, please download this build:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/189cJvBSHxg8c9_lXtpuj2ZAwoYmDKLY4/view?usp=sharing
Thanks and have a good day!
Ok, it seems it was kind of false alert 
I discovered what was the problem and can continue build under Ubuntu 18 without breaking most of the other distros!
The build with fix can be checked out here:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Qc7-b2PffBngiRdySLPs_su7AxhYB-fo/view?usp=sharing
Blender Launcher 1.7.1 released! 
Happy Halloween everyone! 
Info about 1.7.0 was suddenly skipped, so here is the full log for you!
Follow Installation instructions and notes on Wiki page.
Please, read about how to report a bug before creating an issue.
Version 1.7.1
Fixed:
- Automatic update feature fails in some cases
- Symlink fails on Windows almost always
- Symlink shown gray out in context menu even when available
Version 1.7.0
Fixed:
- Linux compatibility issue - fail to launch Blender or open containing folder (#21, #24)
Note: the issue may cause failing of automatic update feature on 1.6.0!
New:
- Added ability to create symlink for selected build via context menu (points to “%Library Folder%/bl_symlink”)
- Added support for deleting multiple builds at once
Other:
- Added missing styles for file dialog
- Cleanup & Refactor
Known Issues:
- Removing builds causes list scroll to top (QT5 internal bug)
- There is still some stability fixes might to be done for Linux, further investigation needed
2 Likes
Just bought the Launcher and I love it.
I do have a few feature requests tho. I hope they are feasible…
Maybe I got carried away a bit with the mockup 
But I think something like that would improve usability a lot.
Custom icons
We need a way to assign custom icons. This makes having and running multiple versions of Blender a nicer experience. It’s important that the icons show in the Taskbar:
This can already be done manually in Windows if you just create a shortcut and give it a custom icon. Actually, if you use the Create Shortcut function of the Launcher and then assign a custom icon to the new shortcut, then the taskbar will display the custom icon. So there is a workaround already but it would be cool to have it officially supported.
Quick launch bar
Instead of having just one Favourite, it would be nice to have a launch bar where we can place multiple versions that we use often. Combined with custom icons this will allow you to have very quick access to your builds without going through the Library.
Notifications per type
Currently, you can turn notifications for new builds on or off. On is very noisy because new versions are updated many times daily. I would personally want to only be notified about new stable releases.
Or if possible notifications could be set by build. So I could choose to only be notified for new Geometry Nodes builds or whatever.
I know I am asking for quite a lot. I hope you’ll consider it for future releases.
3 Likes
Amazing software. Very needed for any Blender head.
Please add option to add custom paths to blender Builds. I’m using E-Cycle different builds and it would be amazing to have them in the launcher too.
Keep up the great work!
1 Like
Bought the launcher to support the development.
It DOES remove a lot of pain manually juggling many versions.
To my previous comment I’d like to request some more features:
- Make it possible to have more than one favorite.
- In the library make Favorites category at the top and add there only builds marked as favorite.
- Make it possible to chose the Favorites category as default in the settings.
- Display all the favorite builds in the drop down menu for Blender Launcher tray:
- Make it possible to add custom names that will be displayed in the tray right click menu to distinguish different builds and custom versions.
Thanks for making such a useful tool!
2 Likes
Hello Oleg,
Nice software thanks, I’ve done a similar downloader with autoit but not as good as yours so I won’t continue the development 
For me there’s at least three things to improve:
- the path of installation should be the real path without let say “daily” added after or a possibility to remove the daily as I don’t find it usefull; I searched a little bit in the code but didn’t find anything
- clicking on one title of a section, let say “Daily Builds”, makes the list open but not close. What could be nice would be to clic to open then clic to close and then the below section would open. Don’t know if it’s easy to implement or not ? an alternative would be to use tabs instead of stacked sections
- add a way to control the time interval of checking for new versions in preferences and / or a button to force manual refresh
Keep up the good job !
2 Likes
@ToshiCG @AlexeyAdamitsky @cscholl thanks for support and feedback! 
I will check your proposals and answer as soon as I can!
1 Like
@ToshiCG @AlexeyAdamitsky
Your proposal a very similar and mostly doable.
Want to mention that it is very important to implement this features in a way that BL stays as minimalistic as possible and not crowded with too many fancy unpractical stuff.
This one is way too complicated. Changing icons of executables as well as storing/differentiating them is not an easy task. Better solution might be using BL interface for switching Blender instances/filter by running/use separate tab/add color tags etc.
Apart from that the “quick launch bar” and other favorite improvements sounds quite nice.
I can start to work on this after 1.8.0 release.
Hi!
1 - I’m not quite sure about what you expect, seems like you want to hide specific columns. Anyway, the layout need some improvements for sure.
2 - I thought of adding a shortcuts like 1-4 to quickly switch between tabs while BL is in focus. I’m not sure if there is any actual ux problem behind current “pages” solution right now.
3 - However it sounds like a good idea, I do not see practical reasons for exposing this. First, user should not have to care about updating - that is what software is aiming for. Second, the builds on site updates 2-3 times a day, so even checking once an hour will not make much of a difference.
Thanks for feedback!
Blender Launcher 1.8.0 released! 
Follow Installation and Update instructions on Wiki.
Please, read about how to report a bug before creating an issue.
Fixed:
- “Create Symlink” doesn’t work on Windows #28
- Combo boxes not showing selected item color
- Thread conflicts caused crashes on Linux in some cases
New:
- Custom page of Library tab now has a dedicated button for reloading builds from disk
- Stable page of Library tab now shows “LTS” branch tag instead of “Stable” for long-term support releases
- Downloads now shows build upload date and time to server instead of commit one so it is the same as on blender.org
- Double clicking on download build item starts downloading
- Custom templates (check wiki template for details)
- Startup arguments for launching Blender #29 (check wiki Startup Arguments for details)
- Bash arguments for launching Blender [Linux only] #30 (check wiki Bash Arguments for details)
Other:
- Massive refactor of scraping reduces time of checking for new builds up to 3x (from 10 to 3-4 seconds)
- UI polishing
- Wiki updates
Thanks everyone for support and feedback!
4 Likes
Can it support a transfer of activated addons between stable builds? (I dont install Blender with the exe version, I run it from the unpacked zip)
The process of copypasting then activating the addons to use them on updated builds can be really tedious and error prone at some point.
Thanks for the update and for considering our feedback. Keep up the good work! 
Blender Launcher 1.8.1 Hotfix Follow Installation and Update instructions on Wiki.
Please, read about how to report a bug before creating an issue.
Fixed:
1 Like
The launcher auto update always gets stuck on Extracting 100% for me (Windows 10, current version 1.7.1, updating to 1.8.1)