// reference

Versions

Every release, and what each one brought.

1.3.1 — Bug fixes from v1.3 2026-07-30

Targeted fixes for issues found in the field and during testing.

• Snapshot file naming — Visor now falls back to \EFI\visor\snapshot.conf (singular) when snapshots.conf is missing, and logs which name it found so users don't get confused when the V panel has nothing to show.
• Pre-connected USB detection — hotplug now scans volumes that are already present when the menu arms, not just future plugs. Combined with scan_existing, pre-plugged USB sticks appear in the menu without needing to unplug and reinsert.
• Log escape hatch — log=0 is honored before any ESP write, so firmware with a broken ESP write path can still reach the menu and be diagnosed (the boot.log is never created or modified).
• Log rotation — boot.log now preserves prior sessions (keeps the last 3, caps at 128 KiB) instead of deleting and recreating each boot, so early-hang diagnostics survive across reboots.
• Wrong passphrase handling — luks_confirm=1 asks for the passphrase twice and reprompts on mismatch instead of silently booting. luks_verbose=1 removes quiet splash so the initramfs retry prompt is visible when verification fails.
• Password prompt visibility — F2 at the passphrase prompt toggles showing what you typed, so you can verify your keyboard layout before submitting.
• Rescue console from the menu — Esc at the boot menu now opens the options / rescue console (same console as after a failed boot), even when no entry has failed. Esc there returns to the menu.
• Icon auto-detection — auto-detected raw kernels now derive icons from their name (restored v1.2.1 behavior), so entries like vmlinuz-linux show the Linux icon instead of unknown.
• Volume-pinned loading — entries detected on a volume now load their kernel and initrd from that volume's handle, fixing multi-disk setups where the ESP's fallback loader would be found instead of the correct one on the target volume.
• cmdline defaulting — the global cmdline= now only applies to entries that accept a default cmdline (raw kernels). Chainloads and foreign volumes no longer inherit it, so Ventoy-style stick booting works correctly without unwanted root= parameters.
• Secure Boot driver connect — firmware block devices that already expose a filesystem are skipped in the driver connect pass, reducing the delay when Secure Boot is enabled and the unsigned EfiFs driver is refused.

1.3 — Cross-platform, snapshots, hotplug latest release 2026-07-26

The big one: ARM64, wallpaper accent colors, snapshot booting, live USB hotplug, and a pile of real-hardware fixes.

• AArch64 build — make ARCH=aarch64, architecture-neutral GUI core, arch layer for clock and framebuffer write-combining.
• Accent colors — Material You palettes extracted from the wallpaper in fixed-point math, with 7 variants.
• Btrfs snapshot booting — snapper/Timeshift/plain layouts, manifest or direct detection, one-shot boot from the menu.
• Live USB hotplug — sticks appear in the menu with a pop-in animation while it is open, and leave when unplugged.
• Filesystem drivers — EfiFs download/install integrated (pinned + hash-verified), started lazily so the menu stays fast.
• Smarter detection — raw kernels are found alongside UKIs, and detected kernels get an automatic, accurate cmdline (UKI .cmdline → fstab → GPT root partition type).
• Simplified encryption — visor encrypt kernel initrd: one password, ESP install, generated entry with LUKS auto-detection.
• Diagnosable failures — LoadImage status codes logged, Secure Boot rejections named, device-path quirk fallback.
• Hardening — firmware file-size-0 workaround, no config size limits, partition pinning, decode budgets, long-filename handling.

1.2.1 — Firmware fixes 2026-07-18

A field-report release: fixes driven by real machines.

• Raw kernels no longer rejected with "file size is zero or implausibly large" on firmware with broken seek-based size probing (Acer and others) — sizes come from GetInfo() with the seek probe as fallback (#3, #5).
• Auto-detect falls back to chainloading distro loaders (shimx64.efi/grubx64.efi) from \EFI\<vendor>\ when no UKI, BLS entry, or raw kernel is found — fixes Ubuntu-style installs (#6).
• "Visor loading…" prints before log rotation, to help diagnose early-init freezes (#8).
• Size warnings log the value the firmware actually reported; README gained the "Booting from non-FAT filesystems" section (#7).

1.2 — Requested Features 2026-07-03

The community-requests release.

• Encrypted kernel/UKI/initrd support (VISORENC) with tools/visor_encrypt.py.
• LUKS password prompt and initrd keyfile handoff.
• Boot-failure recovery console with log viewer and retry/menu options.
• OSTree/BLS deployment detection, version browsing, and boot-count rollback support.
• autoboot, animation, and fade_speed config options.
• Safety work: boot handoff, file reads, config parsing, PNG/BMP bounds checks.

1.1 — A lot of fixes 2026-06-27

No new features — a hardening release from a full security and stability review.

• Malformed/oversized PNGs rejected cleanly; sane decode limits.
• Filesystem drivers verified under Secure Boot like kernels are.
• NVRAM preferences writable only from Visor at boot, not by a running OS.
• Graceful failure on malformed config and low-memory paths; corrupt kernel handoff headers refused.
• Performance: boot log opened once per boot, faster image assembly, quicker scans.

1.0 — Stable Release 2026-06-24

Rebuilt, cleaned up, and tested across distros.

• Mouse, trackpad, and touchscreen support with click-to-boot.
• Theme rotation (random/cycle) and remember-last.
• Recovery: one-shot cmdline editing with e and auto (recovery) entries.
• Secure Boot awareness (verification before starting images).
• Unified entry { } blocks with automatic boot-method detection; config comments.
• Reliability: shim/GRUB chainloading fixes, firmware compatibility fixes, safer installer.

Where the details live