This update is mostly about setup and about what Playto tells you when something goes wrong — capture that started without the OCR language pack it needed, error banners that hid the very message they existed to show, and screens that stayed untranslated with no explanation.
Capture checks the OCR language pack first
Capture no longer starts without the pack it needs — with the Windows OCR engine, reading a language whose pack is not installed produced garbled text, which then failed to translate. It looked like a translation problem. Playto now stops before capturing and shows you what to install.
Two ways out — copy the install command for the language pack, or switch to the OneOCR engine, which needs no pack at all.
The check runs at every entry point — during setup, when you change the language, and when you press Start or Quick Translate. Setup used to let you finish with a language the OCR engine could not read.
Installing a pack needs a restart — Windows only exposes a newly installed pack to Playto after a restart, so Playto now says so and offers to restart itself.
OneOCR is checked properly — Playto used to accept the OneOCR engine as soon as it loaded. It now runs a read test before relying on it, so an engine that loads but cannot read is caught at setup.
This only applies to the Windows OCR engine. If you are on OneOCR, nothing changes.
Error banners say what failed
The message is no longer cut off — when a long driver note was present, the line naming the actual failure was truncated to a few characters while the note was shown in full. The message now stays readable and the note wraps below it.
Five more failures are explained — the engine failing to start, a missing or moved model file, a port already in use, a processor without the required instruction set, and an engine that loads but never answers. Previously only two of the failure types had any explanation at all.
Switching engines is one click — when the engine fails or stops responding, the banner offers Vulkan or CPU Safe Mode directly, instead of only offering a restart. It does not re-offer the mode that just failed.
One layout across all banners — the banners were built twice, in two different shapes. They now share one structure, so the message, the explanation, and the buttons sit in the same place every time.
Screens that stayed untranslated
Language mismatch is pointed out — if the screen looks like a different language from the one you set, Playto now says so instead of guessing.
Pausing no longer triggers a false warning — the untranslated-screen timer kept running while capture was paused, so resuming could show a warning about a screen that had just been sitting there.
Fallbacks no longer happen quietly
Falling back to the Windows OCR engine is announced — if OneOCR is not available on your PC, Playto switches to the Windows engine to keep working. It now tells you once, so a session running on the lower-accuracy engine is not a surprise.
Locked features answer the click — pressing a paid feature on the free version could silently revert instead of explaining anything, which looked like a dead button.
Other fixes
The upgrade button closes its dialog — pressing it waited for the browser to open before closing, so if the browser was slow to respond the dialog stayed up and the button appeared dead.
Diagnostics no longer include your Windows account name — file paths in diagnostic reports are anonymised, but some path shapes were slipping through unchanged. Non-English text in those reports was also being garbled, which made reports harder to act on.
Tell us what still feels off
Much of this came from reports sent through the app, including ones we could not reply to. If something still bothers you, tell us through Contact us in the app, Discord, or this Steam thread.