Every Arsenal release.

In plain language

• The Lighting page now shows your laptop's lid with the Slash bar on it, playing whichever effect you have chosen, right above the list you choose from.
• Fixed the crash when changing the quality setting from your phone. The last release aimed at the wrong cause; this one is the real one.
• Screen sharing now runs in a separate background process, so a fault in it can no longer take Arsenal down with it.
• Arsenal uses about half the memory it used to, and much less while it is sitting in the tray.
• A new setting, Draw without the graphics card, saves more memory still, at the cost of noticeably rougher animation. It is off unless you turn it on.
• Opening settings sections as their own page is now a setting instead of something only the Arsenal theme did. It works in every theme and you can turn it off.
• Your mouse's side buttons now move back and forward, as do Alt with the arrow keys.
• Changing the theme now repaints the whole window. Some buttons, cards and charts used to keep their old colours.
• The title bar shows whether Arsenal is running as administrator.
• Removed the icon next to the heading of an opened settings section.

Technical detail

• The Lighting page shows the lid of the laptop with its Slash bar, drawing the effect you have selected, and it sits above the effect list so that choosing a visual and seeing what it does are not a scroll apart. Where the machine carries the frame tables ASUS ships with it, those exact frames are used; otherwise the shape and pace of each effect are reproduced. The bar reports nothing about where in an animation it is, so the preview matches the lid without being in step with it.
• Changing the quality mode from a paired phone still took Arsenal down after the previous attempt at this, which fixed a real race but not the one doing the damage. The Media Foundation platform was reference counted and the count was wrong: enumeration took one reference for a whole run of candidates while each candidate rejected inside it gave one back, so the first rejection shut the platform down underneath the loop still enumerating from it. It is started once and left running now.
• The remote session's video encoder and screen capture run in a worker process of their own. Media Foundation and the vendor encoders it loads are the least trustworthy code in the application, and a fault in any of them now takes the worker rather than Arsenal.
• Arsenal holds roughly half the memory it used to while a window is open, and far less while it sits in the tray. It asks Windows to draw it on the integrated graphics, which keeps over 130MB of discrete driver libraries out of the process; it releases hidden pages and native heaps once the window has been away for a while; and the Quick Panel no longer rasterises its tile grid into an offscreen texture that cost 27MB every time it opened.
• A new Appearance setting, Draw without the graphics card, roughly halves the memory again for anyone who wants it. It is off by default and it costs a great deal: page changes stutter on a large display and the Quick Panel drops enough frames to look like it has no animation at all.
• Opening a settings section as a page of its own is a setting rather than a property of the Arsenal theme. It is under Appearance, on by default, and it applies to whichever theme is on. Turning it off gives back the single long page the light and dark themes always had.
• A mouse's side buttons move back and forward. Alt with an arrow and a keyboard's dedicated browser keys do the same, since plenty of mouse drivers are configured to send those instead. Back leaves an open subpage before it leaves the page, and both are ignored while a panel is open over the page.
• Switching between Arsenal and light or dark now repaints everything on screen. Buttons, choice chips and cards were holding the style they resolved when their page was first loaded, and the controls that draw themselves, the fan curve, the slider scales, the range markers and the capacity chart, kept the colours of the theme they were last drawn under until something else made them redraw.
• The title bar says which rights Arsenal is running with, ADMIN or STANDARD, in a pill beside the temperatures. It is not coloured as a warning, because almost everything works either way; the tooltip carries what actually differs, which is reporting the charge limit to Windows and scheduling Arsenal at sign-in.
• A settings section shown open no longer puts an icon beside its name. It was the one glyph on a page that answered to nothing else on it: the page title carries none and the rows below have a column of their own.

In plain language

• Fixed a crash when changing the quality setting from your phone. Changing the monitor or the cursor setting could do the same.
• The Battery page now shows the Windows battery report itself - health, capacity, cycles, runtime and a chart of how capacity has changed - instead of opening a web page.
• Generating a battery report no longer leaves files in your home folder.
• Settings cards you had already opened once stopped animating on hover. They work again.
• Toggle switches on the Lighting page were missing their labels.
• The keyboard colour picker is now next to the keyboard preview instead of further down the page.
• The keyboard shape switches are easier to tell apart.
• The status tiles on the Battery page now hide when you open a section, like everything else on that page.
• The donation note on the About page sits after the licence.

Technical detail

• Changing the quality mode from a paired phone crashed Arsenal. Stopping the capture pipeline waited two seconds for the capture thread and then released the encoder and screen source whether or not that thread had stopped, so an encode that ran long had its buffers freed underneath it - memory corruption rather than an error, which is why the whole application went. Changing the monitor or toggling the cursor took the same path.
• The Windows battery report is now read inside Arsenal. The Battery page shows health, current capacity against design, cycle count, estimated runtime at both capacities, and a chart of the weekly capacity readings Windows keeps. The full Windows document is still one press away. A cycle count of zero is reported as not published rather than as zero, because that is what several ASUS packs mean by it.
• Both report files are written into Arsenal's own folder. Generating one used to leave a battery-report.html in the middle of your home folder.
• A settings card that you had opened and come back from stopped leaning toward the pointer for the rest of the session. The hover nudge and the card's return from the subpage were animating the same thing, and the return kept hold of it.
• Toggle switches show the labels they were given. The Arsenal theme's toggle had nowhere to put one, so the three switches under the keyboard preview and the two in the AniMe text panels were drawn as unlabelled switches. Labels now lead the switch rather than following it.
• The keyboard colour picker sits beside the keyboard preview rather than in a separate section further down, so choosing a colour and seeing where it lands no longer takes a scroll between them. Apply colour moved with it.
• The three keyboard shape switches each get their own panel instead of running together in one line.
• The Battery page's three status tiles step aside when you open one of its sections, as the rest of the page already did.
• Support the developer sits below Licence and source on the About page rather than above it.

In plain language

• Opening a settings section now renames the page heading to that section, instead of leaving the page's old name at the top.
• The breadcrumb in the title bar only shows when you are inside a section, and now lines up with the page beneath it.
• Switching pages while a section was open no longer leaves that section's name stuck in the title bar.
• Every page now slides in the same direction instead of up or down depending on what you clicked last.
• Arsenal gives memory back properly when you close it to the tray.
• The Edit and Reset buttons on Home are visible again in the Arsenal theme.
• Fixed a case where running a test tool could hijack the sign-in startup entry.

Technical detail

• An open settings section now titles the page it fills. The header used to keep announcing the page the section had been reached from - "Display & graphics", above nothing but the GPU mode rows - so the heading contradicted both the path in the title bar and everything under it. The title and the description change together in one motion instead of fading separately.
• The path in the title bar appears only while a section is open, and sits against the left edge of the page's content rather than over the seam between the sidebar and the page. It tracks the sidebar as that opens and closes, and stops clear of the toolbar buttons when the sidebar is collapsed. On a plain page the sidebar's selection and the page's own title already say where you are.
• Choosing another page while a section was open carried that section across. Nothing closed it on a page change, so the new page arrived with the previous page's section beside it in the title bar and kept it until something else opened or closed. The back arrow then spent its first press closing a section belonging to a page that was no longer on screen.
• Pages all arrive the same way. A page used to slide in from whichever direction the sidebar selection had moved, so choosing a page looked like two different gestures depending on where the last one was, and going back up the list read as the page being pushed away.
• Returning the window to the tray releases the pages it was holding. The release dropped the page cache but a second cache still referenced every page the session had visited, so nothing was actually collected.
• Home's Edit controls and Reset are back in the Arsenal theme. The theme's own section template had nowhere to put them, so they were constructed and never shown - no failure, no binding error, which is why it looked as though they had been removed.
• A test harness can no longer take over the Windows sign-in task. Running one left the task pointing at the harness instead of Arsenal, so the next sign-in would have started it. Scheduling now refuses unless the running executable is Arsenal.

In plain language

• Flipping a switch inside a settings section no longer kicks you back out to the list. This only affected 1.2.0.
• Every settings section now has a line under its title saying what is in it.
• All the Slash lighting settings are in one section on the Lighting page instead of two.
• The donation note sits on the About page itself rather than behind another click.
• In the Arsenal theme, buttons you have not selected are outlined in the theme colour instead of looking greyed out.

Technical detail

• Using a control inside an open settings group no longer throws you back out to the list. A group treated every unload as leaving the page, but one is also raised whenever a subtree is detached and put straight back, which is what happens when a control shows or hides the rows around it. That is why only some toggles did it. This affects 1.2.0 only.
• Fourteen settings sections had a title and nothing under it saying what they held. They all explain themselves now, across Performance, Display, Battery, Lighting, Automation, Advanced, Settings and About.
• The Slash settings are in one place. The animation interval, the boot and sleep animations, the battery alerts and the dimming move into the Slash lighting section instead of sitting in a second section further down the Lighting page.
• Support is a card on the About page rather than a section of its own. It held a single row, so it had become somewhere to open to find one button.
• In the Arsenal theme, a chip or button that is not selected is an accent outline with no fill instead of a grey stroke that read as disabled. Selecting one still fills it, lights its leading edge and lets it glow.

In plain language

• There is a new Arsenal theme in Settings, beside System, Dark and Light. It is black with a cyan highlight, and things you have selected glow.
• That theme draws its own buttons, switches and panels. Corners are cut rather than rounded, and a switch says ON or OFF.
• In that theme, each settings page opens as a short list you pick from, instead of one long scroll. Performance keeps its profile chooser on the page, and Home keeps your controls.
• Pages slide in when you pick a destination in the sidebar, in every theme.

Technical detail

• A fourth theme, Arsenal, sits beside System, Dark and Light. Black with a blue cast, a cyan that only ever means live or selected, heavier panel borders and a glow behind anything chosen. It carries its own signal colour rather than following the Windows accent.
• The Arsenal theme replaces controls rather than repainting them. Panels, chips, buttons and toggles are cut at two corners instead of rounded, and a toggle is a slab with a travelling block that says ON and OFF rather than a pill that only changes colour.
• Settings live one level down in that theme. Each page opens as a short list of panels, and pressing one leaves that group alone on the page with a way back. The Performance profile chooser and the Home controls stay on their pages, because everything else on those pages depends on them.
• A theme can now change more than colour. Corner radius, border weight and the type families are theme values, so a theme is no longer limited to being a lighter or darker version of the same shapes.
• Choosing a destination in the sidebar slides the page in and fades it up instead of swapping it instantly. This applies in every theme.

In plain language

• The panel by the clock no longer opens half off the screen the first time you open it after switching displays.
• The headings in that panel are spaced evenly.
• The brightness and OLED dimming sliders grey out while the laptop screen is off, and tell you why. They only control the built-in screen.
• A slider you cannot use now looks like it, instead of looking normal and refusing to move.

Technical detail

• The Quick Panel opened past the bottom-right corner the first time it was pressed after switching to another display, by 151 pixels across and 257 down. It is now seated using the size its window really is on screen rather than the size Windows reports, which is wrong for one open after a scale change.
• Performance modes, GPU modes and Quick settings are spaced alike in the Quick Panel. Two of the three headings share a row with buttons and inherited part of their gap from the height of those buttons, so equal margins had produced unequal spacing.
• The panel brightness and OLED dimming sliders turn off while the built-in panel is off. Both reach that panel and nothing else, so the backlight slider used to move and write to a screen that was not lit. Each says why it is unavailable.
• A slider that is switched off is dimmed rather than left at full strength. Its label, readout and scale are painted from fixed brushes, so only the track greyed and the control read as working right up until it refused to move.

In plain language

• Notifications now appear properly when your monitors use different scaling, and stay in the corner you chose.
• A notification no longer slides right across the desktop when it moves to another screen.
• The panel by the clock opens on the screen you moved to, not the one you left.
• The Display page puts its refresh rate choices beside the label instead of stacked underneath.
• Home offers the same refresh rate choices as the Display page, and agrees with it about the highest rate your screen can do.
• Menu text and the buttons in the title bar are readable again in light mode.

Technical detail

• Top-aligned notifications did not appear at all on a desktop whose displays run at different scales, and the stack drifted toward the middle of the screen. The stack is now laid out in device pixels using the scale of the screen it is on.
• A notification no longer slides right across the desktop when the stack moves between displays.
• The Quick Panel is placed with the destination monitor's scale, so it cannot be positioned using the scale of a display it has just left.
• The Display page shows its refresh rate choices beside the row label instead of stacked underneath it.
• Home offers the same refresh rate choices as the Display page, including the overdrive rate where the panel supports it, and reports the same maximum rate even while the built-in panel is off.
• Navigation text and the title-bar icons are legible again in light mode. The warm grey stays the dark theme's; light mode uses the same hue turned dark.

In plain language

• Arsenal is portable, so it often runs from Downloads or the desktop. The task that holds your battery charge limit now refuses to run from a folder anything on your PC could change, because that task runs with full system rights.
• Updates are handled more carefully, so the file that gets checked is the file that gets installed.
• The key your phone uses to connect is now locked to your Windows account instead of sitting in a readable file.
• Arsenal only answers your phone if it is on the same network as your PC, and hangs up on connections that go quiet.
• A driver you already downloaded is found again after you restart Arsenal, instead of downloading the whole thing a second time.
• ASUS colour profiles download normally again.
• The panel by the clock no longer opens off the edge of the screen after you move between monitors.
• The cover shown while the graphics mode changes now has rounded corners like the panel underneath it.

Technical detail

• The charge limit task runs as SYSTEM at boot, and was registered against whatever folder Arsenal was running from. Arsenal is portable, so that is usually Downloads or the desktop, where anything running as you can replace the file. The task is now refused unless Arsenal sits somewhere only administrators can write, and one already registered against a writable folder is removed.
• The updater no longer writes its script to disk before asking for administrator rights, so the file cannot be swapped in between. It also copies an update package into the install folder before checking it, so the file that is verified is the file that is installed.
• Companion bearer tokens are now wrapped to your Windows account instead of being stored in the clear, and the copy of the configuration that the charge task reads no longer carries private keys.
• The companion bridge answers only a device on a network this machine is also on, limits how many connections it holds at once, and gives each one ten seconds to make its request.
• Downloading a driver, closing Arsenal and reopening it put the card back to "Get update" with the installer still in your downloads folder, and pressing it downloaded the whole package again. A scan now finds the file and restores the state. An interrupted transfer still reads as not downloaded.
• ASUS colour profile downloads are unrestricted again.
• The Quick Panel could open outside the monitor after you moved from the laptop display to an external one at a different scale. It is now placed with the scale the window is actually drawn at.
• The overlay shown during a GPU switch or a services change painted a square over the panel's rounded corners, so the panel looked as though it was sitting on a box. It now follows the panel's own shape.

In plain language

• The About page has a support row with a Donate button, for anyone who wants to help the app along.
• It opens the donation page in your browser. Arsenal never handles the payment, and nothing in the app is held back if you do not donate.

Technical detail

• About has a support row with a Donate button, sitting below the machine specification rather than anywhere the app is being used. Donations are optional and nothing in Arsenal is withheld without one.
• The button opens the donation page in your default browser. Arsenal never handles the payment and collects nothing itself.

In plain language

• Arsenal can start straight to the system tray, staying out of your way until you want it.
• The refresh rate no longer reads -1 Hz when an external monitor is doing the work and the laptop screen is off.
• The Display page lists every screen you have connected, with its resolution and the rate it is actually running.
• Controls that only reach the laptop's own screen now show as unavailable while that screen is off, instead of doing nothing when pressed.
• The About page describes your laptop's own screen first, then any monitors attached to it.

Technical detail

• Arsenal can start minimised to the system tray, leaving a normal launch out of the way while opening a specific page still shows the app.
• Refresh rate no longer reads -1 Hz while an external monitor drives the machine with the built-in display off. A reading the display stack cannot answer now falls back to the panel's remembered maximum.
• The Display page lists every connected display with its resolution and the refresh rate it is actually running, so an attached monitor's rate is visible without opening Windows settings.
• Refresh rate, panel overdrive and Mini-LED zones reach the built-in panel alone. While that panel is off, the Display page, the Home refresh row and the quick panel tiles show as unavailable instead of accepting a press that changes nothing. Automatic refresh stays available, because it takes effect when the panel comes back.
• The About page describes the built-in panel specifically and lists attached monitors after it, instead of describing whichever screen Windows currently calls primary.
• Panels that report no name of their own are no longer mistaken for an unnamed external monitor, and Arsenal Companion no longer reports the built-in panel as on when it is off.

In plain language

• The menu down the side of the app is a little more compact.
• The battery card on Home now matches the Battery page. It shows what the battery is charging towards rather than a misleading number, and 100% reads as Fully charged everywhere.
• Keyboard previews can show the light through the letters only, which is how GU605 laptops look.
• Switching to Eco now warns you first if it might disconnect a monitor you are using.

Technical detail

• Sidebar navigation uses slightly tighter vertical spacing while preserving the existing Windows design and interaction states.
• The Home battery card now matches the Battery page, reports the current charging target instead of a misleading discharge value, and shows Fully charged at 100% everywhere.
• Keyboard previews can hide light around the keycaps for legend-only backlighting, with GU605-series laptops using that appearance by default.
• Switching manually to Eco mode now warns when an active external display may disconnect; leaving Ultimate for Eco combines that warning with the required restart confirmation.

In plain language

• The panel by the clock stays usable after you plug in or unplug a monitor, and scrolls if the screen is too short to show everything at once.
• Arsenal stays sharp when you move it to a monitor set to a different scale, instead of looking blurry.
• The refresh rate no longer shows as -1 Hz while Windows is still settling after a monitor change.

Technical detail

• Quick Panel: keeps the complete panel accessible after connecting or disconnecting a monitor, refits to the current work area, and adds scrolling only when the screen is too short to show every control at once.
• Display scaling: enables Per-Monitor V2 awareness before WPF and Windows Forms initialize, so Arsenal re-renders for each monitor instead of relying on bitmap scaling.
• Display detection: waits for Windows to settle monitor topology changes and preserves the last valid internal-panel refresh rate instead of displaying -1 Hz.

In plain language

• The language setting has been removed. Arsenal offered 21 languages but only about six per cent of the app was actually translated, so picking one changed a handful of labels and left the rest in English.
• Everything is written in English for now, and the download is 633 KB smaller without the translation files.
• The language picker in the Android app has gone too, since there is no longer a setting for it to change.
• Proper translation is worth doing and will come back as its own piece of work.
• Also includes the slider fixes from 1.1.2 and the startup update fix from 1.1.1.

Technical detail

• Removed the display language setting. Arsenal offered twenty-one languages but translated only about six per cent of what was actually on screen, so choosing one changed a handful of labels and left everything else in English.
• Every label is now written where it is shown. Nothing on screen changes wording, and the download is 633 KB smaller for carrying no translation files.
• The Android companion's language picker has gone with it, since there is no longer a setting for it to change.
• Localization is worth having and will return as its own piece of work, starting from a set of strings that describes Arsenal as it is today.
• Includes the slider improvements from 1.1.2 and the startup update fix from 1.1.1.

In plain language

• Dragging a slider now shows the value in a small bubble above your finger, so you can see what you are setting.
• The bubble reads the way the slider does, so it shows 65% or 2 rather than a bare number.
• Fixed sliders jumping backwards while you drag them, brightness worst of all. The slider now keeps the value you are setting.

Technical detail

• Dragging a slider now raises a small bubble above the thumb showing the value being set. The Quick Panel's four sliders drop the number beside the track to gain length, so until now the value was nowhere on screen while you were setting it.
• The bubble is worded the way the slider words itself, so it reads 65% or 2 rather than a bare number, and it follows the thumb for the whole drag.
• Fixed sliders twitching while being dragged, brightness worst of all. A slider bound to hardware hears its own writes come back, late, and applying one pulled the thumb back to where the pointer had been two steps earlier — and the drag then carried on from there.
• A thumb being dragged now keeps the value you are setting, and holds it briefly after you let go so the last of those late reports cannot land on it.

In plain language

• Fixed the Install button doing nothing on the update notice that appears when Arsenal starts.
• That notice now installs exactly the version it names.

Technical detail

• Fixed Install failing immediately on the update notice shown at startup. The startup check and the About page reached the update through different paths, and only About's was carried through to the installer.
• The startup notice now hands the exact signed release it is showing to the download and installation step, so the button installs the version named above it.

In plain language

• Name your own performance plans and keep up to 17 of them alongside Silent, Balanced and Turbo. A plan starts from the one you are already using.
• Choose three plans to sit in the panel by the clock, and switch graphics mode from there too. Modes your laptop cannot do are hidden.
• That panel now holds up to 20 controls across pages of six, and keeps its own layout separate from Home.
• Sliders show their value beside them, and settings put the choice next to its name so less space is wasted.
• The panel opens from whichever edge your taskbar is on, and slides in from that edge.

Technical detail

• Added reusable named performance plans that inherit the active plan's settings, support names up to 48 characters and can be selected, renamed or deleted from a dedicated plan library.
• Supports up to 20 performance plans in total: Silent, Balanced and Turbo plus as many as 17 custom plans. Deleting the active custom plan returns Arsenal to Balanced.
• The Performance page keeps its first five plans visible, preserves the active plan in view and provides a full library for the remaining plans.
• The Quick Panel now has three configurable performance-plan shortcuts, while Custom opens the full tuning window. The Companion bridge can also expose the complete plan list.
• Added direct Eco, Standard, Ultimate and Optimized GPU controls to the Quick Panel, with unavailable hardware-dependent modes disabled or hidden as appropriate.
• Changed Quick Settings to six tiles per page with capacity for 20 controls, separate from the Home layout, plus paging, add, reset and edit controls.
• Moved Brightness, OLED dimming, charge limit and keyboard-brightness minimum and maximum values beside their Quick Panel sliders, removing the duplicate current-value scale.
• Made the Quick Panel follow the notification area on bottom, top, left or right taskbars, including secondary work areas and shell fallbacks. Moving the taskbar takes effect on the next open.
• Matched Quick Panel and tray-menu entrance motion to the taskbar edge, including downward opening from a top taskbar and horizontal motion from side taskbars.
• Reworked the Quick Panel header around a smaller bare Arsenal mark, the Your Arsenal title, a compact Open app action and an equal-sized close button.
• Moved Theme, Accent colour, Performance profile, GPU mode, keyboard-lighting brightness and Automation's AC and battery choices beside their labels for a denser, more consistent layout.
• Added contextual descriptions for the active performance profile and GPU mode, while keeping the custom accent colour editor on its own line.
• Unified the sidebar, title gutter and selected navigation indicator with the same neutral navigation ink.

In plain language

• You can save your own performance settings as a plan and pick it again whenever you want.
• The panel by the clock was rebuilt around buttons that change a mode straight away.
• The menu down the side of the app uses one consistent colour.

Technical detail

• Added reusable custom performance plans.
• Reworked the Quick Panel around direct mode controls.
• The navigation column, its title gutter and the selected indicator share one ink.

In plain language

• The panel by the clock now opens in the right corner whichever edge your taskbar sits on.
• Five settings rows are easier to read, with the choice beside its name instead of underneath it.

Technical detail

• The Quick Panel opens in the notification area's corner, whichever screen edge the taskbar is docked to.
• Five settings rows put their choices beside the label rather than underneath it.

In plain language

• The first version of Arsenal: one app for the ASUS settings that normally take several.
• Switch between Silent, Balanced and Turbo, choose how the dedicated graphics chip is used, and tune the details yourself if you want to.
• Set the screen's refresh rate and colour, cap how far the battery charges, and control the keyboard lighting.
• Put the controls you actually use on the Home page, and reach the rest from a small panel by the clock.
• See temperatures and frame rate while you play, keep ASUS drivers current, and pair your Android phone with your laptop.

Technical detail

Initial release