Frequently Asked Questions

Ember (Ember Universal Launcher) is a lightweight, locally operated Windows desktop gaming launcher. It gives PC gamers a clean, centralized place to organize and launch their games across platforms, track playtime automatically, monitor live hardware metrics with a customizable in-game performance overlay, and stay quietly accessible from the Windows system tray.

Yes. Ember Universal Launcher is completely free to download and use. There are no paid tiers, no subscriptions, no advertisements, and no locked features.

Ember is built for Windows (Windows 10 and Windows 11, 64-bit). It integrates directly with Windows APIs for process path detection, Start Menu application discovery (AppUserModelIDs), native toast notifications, and hardware performance telemetry.

No. Ember never requires a user account, login, or internet connection to organize or launch your games. Everything runs locally on your computer.

All of your data lives locally on your PC inside %APPDATA%\ember-launcher\ (including the SQLite database launcher.db, copied cover images, overlay-settings.json, and app-settings.json). Nothing is uploaded to the cloud. If you ever want to erase all data, simply uninstall Ember and delete the %APPDATA%\ember-launcher\ folder.

When you launch a game through Ember, a single session tracker starts for that game (preventing duplicate timers if clicked twice). Every 4 seconds, Ember checks running process paths locally and writes a heartbeat to SQLite. A process counts if it matches the game executable, lives in the game folder (handling launcher-to-game hand-offs), matches the configured emulator, or matches a custom "Process to track" executable name. If your PC or the app closes unexpectedly mid-game, the session is safely closed at the last 4-second heartbeat on next start. When you exit the game, the session ends 15 seconds after the last matching process closes.

Open the Library tab and click "Add game". You can add games in three ways: (1) Standard PC games: browse to the game's .exe file, and optionally set a display name, custom cover image, group, launch arguments, or a specific "Process to track" (such as Game-Win64-Shipping.exe) for games started through another launcher; (2) Emulated games: set "Game file" to the ROM or disc image and "Emulator" to the emulator's .exe file; (3) Automatic Windows Discovery: click "Import Windows Applications" inside the Add Game dialog to scan and import applications registered in the Windows Start Menu, including Microsoft Store and Xbox games launched by Windows App ID.

Installed copies of Ember check GitHub Releases automatically on startup and every 6 hours. When a new version is published, Ember shows an update indicator in the app and sends a single native Windows notification (even if minimized to the system tray). When you choose to update, Ember opens a compact progress window, downloads the update from GitHub Releases, verifies its SHA-512 integrity, installs silently without a setup wizard, and reopens automatically with your games and settings intact. Portable copies notify you when an update is available and open the official GitHub release page.

You can report bugs, share feedback, or inspect existing issues directly on the official GitHub Issues page at https://github.com/laggzilla16/ember-universal-launcher/issues ↗.