The open-source Wine frontend Bottles was released as version 66 on 11 August 2026. The biggest update: native integration of UMU, which removes the detour through external game launchers and separate Wine scripts.
Bottles helps run Windows applications and games on Linux inside isolated “bottles” (Wine environments). UMU, in turn, is a unified launcher for Windows games: it is based on the same Steam Runtime tools that Valve uses for Proton, but can also be used outside of Steam.
What’s new
- ProtoSoda as default: UMU launches now use ProtoSoda by default – Bottles’ own tweaked build of Soda Wine.
- Adaptive Launch: an automatic tuning feature adjusts performance parameters to the detected application.
- cpak (experimental): a new lightweight, self-contained package format as an alternative to Flatpak.
Important for adopters: shortly after launch, version 66.1 followed as an emergency patch – the initial release had two regressions affecting game launching inside the Flatpak sandbox and the UMU prefix picker. Bottles users should therefore go straight to 66.1.
Sources: Linuxiac, GamingOnLinux.
