Update Notes

All content released since February 8, 2026.

FrontEngine was originally designed to let you keep videos, images, or web pages pinned above all other windows and always visible on your screen. It still does exactly that today, and the way you use it has not changed. What has changed is that it can now display much more content on your screen, and many of these features can now work automatically without requiring you to manually control them.

This is the largest update since the beginning of this project. It introduces a completely redesigned interface, seven new pages, a portable preset system that can be transferred between computers, automation features that react to what you are currently doing, and a complete privacy system rebuilt specifically for users who frequently share their screens.

A Completely Redesigned Interface

This is the first change you will notice. Previously, FrontEngine's interface displayed sixteen tabs arranged in a single row. Whenever the window became slightly smaller, horizontal scrolling arrows would appear, and it was difficult to understand how those sixteen tabs were related to each other.

Now, every page has been organized into grouped categories on the left side — Screen Display, Desktop, Work, and Control. Finding a feature now only requires knowing what you want to accomplish, rather than reading through sixteen different tab names. The interface also no longer overflows when resizing the window, so you can always clearly understand where you are.

Every page has also been redesigned. Settings are now grouped by function instead of being displayed as one long list. Related controls are arranged more clearly, and sliders no longer stretch across the entire width of the window. The buttons that actually perform actions — such as Start, Spawn, and Close all — are now placed together in a dedicated action bar at the bottom of each page. They also have a distinct appearance from normal controls, making the buttons you actually need immediately recognizable.

No features have been removed, and no settings have been moved to different pages. Everything remains where it was before — it is simply organized in a much clearer way.

Desktop Pets That Live On Your Desktop

You can select a single image to create a simple desktop pet, or choose a folder containing animation frames such as walk, idle, sleep, climb, fall, and drag to create a fully animated desktop companion.

They can walk along the desktop floor, freely wander around, or chase your mouse cursor. They can climb along window edges and sit on top of windows. If you create multiple desktop pets, they can even chase and play with each other. Drag files onto a pet to feed them, or drag images and pet packages onto them to change their appearance.

They can also talk — showing short messages throughout the day, reacting when fed, and more — and they can even read these messages aloud. They can react to your speaker or microphone audio, help manage focus timers and break periods, and if you provide your own Anthropic API key, you can even have conversations with them.

Six More New Pages

[]Eye Care — Apply warm, amber, rose, yellow, green, blue, or gray screen filters with adjustable intensity. Includes a reading ruler that follows your cursor, automatic brightness reduction reminders for breaks, and color vision simulations (red blindness, green blindness, blue blindness, and complete color blindness) to help check whether your designs remain readable. []Presenting — Draw directly on your screen using a pen, highlighter, and eraser with undo support. Add cursor highlights, click ripple effects, or enable Spotlight mode, which darkens everything except the cursor. Display keystrokes while recording. Includes a 1.5x to 6x magnifier and an infinitely pannable and zoomable whiteboard that only saves the area you actually draw on. []Wallpaper — Play rotating wallpapers underneath all windows. Each monitor can be configured independently, with image switching intervals from 30 seconds to 1 hour, random playback, and support for nested folders. Wallpapers can also react to currently playing music and automatically switch to a softer wallpaper collection during scheduled nighttime hours. []Focus — Dim everything outside your current working window, or hide only specific distracting areas such as the taskbar, a corner, one side of the screen, or even the entire display. []Widgets — Provides bar or circular audio visualizers, CPU/memory/disk/network monitoring panels, currently playing media information, and sticky notes that automatically restore the next time FrontEngine starts. []Tools — Provides various measurement tools with results that can be copied directly to the clipboard, including a color picker, pixel ruler, and protractor. Capture specific screen regions; record part of your screen with an optional camera overlay; display any video input source including capture cards; keep other application windows always on top with adjustable transparency; save and restore window positions; recognize text from selected areas for copying, translation, or questions; and output selected screen areas (including all overlays) as a virtual camera source for Zoom, Teams, or Discord.

Portable Presets

Save the settings from every page as named presets and reload them whenever you need. Presets can be exported as JSON files and used on different computers. You can also package all referenced images, videos, and audio files into a ZIP archive for export. A specific preset can also be configured to automatically apply when the program starts.

Content you subscribe to from the Workshop can also be imported directly.

Now with Automation

[]Hotkeys — Provides global hotkeys for quickly hiding everything, showing everything, closing everything, muting everything, adjusting transparency, switching Dashboard pages, and locking items. []App Profiles — Automatically applies a selected preset when a specified application becomes the foreground window. []Smart Pause — Automatically hides all overlays when a fullscreen application is running, when using battery power, or when a specified application receives focus. []Signage Mode — Automatically cycles through multiple presets based on a timer, making it suitable for computers used as long-term displays or information screens. []Day/night theme scheduling, launching with the system, restoring your previous session, and displaying reminders at fixed intervals or specific times. []Remote Control — Control FrontEngine from a phone connected to the same network, with support for MIDI controllers as well.

A Control Center for Everything

The new Control Center manages every overlay, regardless of which page created it. You can close overlays by type or close everything at once, hide/show them, mute them, lock/unlock them, reset their positions, and configure the Chroma Key used by OBS.

Unlocked overlays can be dragged directly to new locations, and FrontEngine will automatically remember where they were placed. A low-power mode is also available, along with three quality presets: High, Balanced, and Saver. When running on battery power, these modes reduce refresh rates and rendering resolution to lower power consumption.

Taking Your Privacy Seriously

[]Hide from Capture allows overlays to remain visible on your screen while preventing them from appearing in screen recordings or screen sharing. []Screen-sharing Privacy automatically enables the above feature when meeting software is detected. Detection is performed through window title matching, allowing meetings running inside browser tabs to be recognized as well. []Screen Time data always stays on your computer and is never sent anywhere. []Clipboard History is stored only in memory by default. It is saved permanently only when you explicitly request it, because clipboard contents often contain sensitive information such as passwords. []Audio reaction features only read the volume level (a single numerical value) and do not capture speech content. The audio spectrum feature requires access to audio data to analyze frequencies, but all processing happens only in memory. No recordings are created and no data is transmitted. Once the spectrum feature is stopped, audio capture stops immediately as well. []All features using the Anthropic API will request your permission first and use your own API key. The key is never stored.
• Mobile remote control uses a one-time token generated every time FrontEngine starts and can only trigger button actions available in the interface. It uses standard HTTP communication, so it should not be enabled on untrusted networks.

Seven Languages, Starting With Your Language

FrontEngine supports English, Traditional Chinese, Simplified Chinese, German, Russian, French, and Italian. Switching languages no longer requires restarting the application — the entire interface immediately reloads in the selected language.

When launched for the first time, FrontEngine automatically uses the language configured in your Steam client. This means it opens in your language from the beginning instead of defaulting to English, without requiring you to search for language settings.

This detection only happens once. After you manually select a language, your choice will always be preserved. Steam language information is read entirely locally. Your account is not accessed, no internet connection is required, and no information is transmitted.

Built-in User Guide

Help → How to use... now provides instructions directly inside the application. It explains how to create your first overlay, describes settings shared across pages, and shows how to quickly remove all overlays without needing to visit a website.

Things Worth Knowing

[]Mouse clicks will continue to pass through overlays, allowing the windows underneath to be used normally. The only exceptions are desktop pets and the drawing layer on the Presenting page (when drawing mode is enabled). []Some features rely on Windows APIs and are clearly marked inside the application. These include audio reaction overlays, audio spectrum visualization, keeping other windows always on top, Hide from Capture, and Screen-sharing Privacy. []The virtual camera feature requires the additional installation of the pyvirtualcam package and a virtual camera driver. If either component is missing, the button will notify you immediately. []Pressing F12 will instantly close FrontEngine, regardless of which screen you are currently viewing.

Under-the-Hood Improvements

Along with the visible new features, the internal foundation of FrontEngine has also been extensively improved. Many core components have been optimized to provide better stability, performance, and long-term maintainability.

The major improvements include:

[]Optimized memory management and reduced resource usage. []Improved rendering performance and smoother display when using multiple overlays simultaneously. []Faster startup times through improved initialization processes. []Numerous bug fixes and stability improvements across almost every module. []Improved compatibility with Windows features and third-party applications. []A modernized internal architecture designed to support future expansions.

Thank you to everyone who uses FrontEngine, provides feedback, and supports the project. This update lays the foundation for many more features that will arrive in future versions.

Enjoy the new version of FrontEngine!