A very good day to you all out there! Today, we are excited to announce a new yuzu official release channel for our Patreon subscribers — yuzu Early Access. It comes with all the perks you’re already accustomed to and more.

This new release channel includes all the same daily yuzu updates that you are accustomed to, plus the early releases of features that you have typically seen in special Patreon releases!

Note:
Early Access builds are currently only available for Windows users.
Linux users won’t have access to Early Access builds due to limitations of the installer, and how we bundle the source with the binary. If enough users request a Linux port, we may look into it in the future.

What does it mean for you?

If you are a Patreon subscriber at the Early Access tier, you will be able to install this new release channel. You will not need to worry about manually checking in on the yuzu Patreon and downloading one-off releases — as these updates will be pushed directly to you through the installer. You’ll also get all of the other daily updates with this release channel, so there will not be a need to switch back and forth between Patreon releases and daily releases.

If you are not a Patreon subscriber and use the regular yuzu builds, not much will change! You’ll still get the same daily yuzu updates, which will include new features and bug fixes once they are ready for mainstream use.

Note:
All build downloads are bundled with the source code within in the download.

How do I install yuzu Early Access?

Follow this detailed step-by-step guide, to install yuzu Early Access via the Installer.
Click here for the guide

Why did we make this change?

Since February 2019, we’ve released a total of 8 special Patreon preview builds alongside hundreds of daily regular releases. Like many open source projects, we automate the entire build and release process for the application, so that our developers can spend more time working on the actual project and less time fiddling with building and releasing. This way, the latest and greatest changes are delivered directly to you through the updater.

When we made the first preview release, we figured that for a once-a-month preview build it isn’t worth the trouble to automate the process. But recently, the process for building and releasing has started to really take up more time than acceptable.

(Credits: xkcd)

Each build was made by merging several different developers’ code together, causing unforeseen errors due to different developers making changes to same sections of the code. For a once-a-month build, we ended up needing to block out at least a week to prepare for the release; we needed time for internal testing, time for squashing every bug we found, and time for fixing any issues found after release.

Over the past month, we rebuilt the build process for daily yuzu releases. We built it in such a way that we can easily extend it to include Early Access builds. Today we are pleased to announce that we now have automated the build and release process for Early Access from start to finish, meaning from today, you can now install the latest Early Access build directly through the yuzu installer.

So I’ve installed Early Access, now what?

We’re rolling out the release of Early Access softly — so you may not notice too many new features or bug fixes just yet. This is to give us time to make sure the new release channel is stable, and work out any kinks.

But rest assured — we have a really exciting feature coming, that many of you have been asking for, and it’s right around the corner! This feature is days away… not weeks… So, hang tight!

Please consider supporting us on Patreon!
If you would like to contribute to this project, check out our GitHub!