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Troubleshooting

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If the problem concerns one game, open that game’s Game Health panel first. It states whether AW Next can see the game, read its achievements and announce its unlocks, and it offers only the repairs that genuinely apply. Most single-game problems end there.

Use the rest of this page for problems that affect the app as a whole. Settings → Help has a short version of the first checks under its Something is wrong group (Game health and Troubleshooting), and its Your current setup line shows your theme, notification mode, controller, overlay hotkey and how many sources are enabled. If a problem remains, include the app version, Windows version, source involved, exact reproduction steps and relevant logs in the bug report.

On Linux

The Linux app has problems this page does not cover. The AppImage does not start without FUSE 2 (libfuse2t64 on Ubuntu 24.04). The keyring asks for its password only with automatic login. The overlay shortcut under Wayland is one you bind in your desktop’s keyboard settings. Each has its fix in Linux and the Steam Deck. The rest of this page describes Windows; on Linux the logs are in ~/.config/Achievement Watcher Next/logs.

Open logs and local data

Settings - Advanced, diagnostics


App/runtime versions and quick access to logs, data and update checks

The Advanced tab only exists while the interface is in Advanced mode. If you do not see it, switch the Interface control at the top of Settings from Simple to Advanced first - nothing is lost by switching back afterwards (see getting-started.md).

Use Settings → Advanced → Diagnostics to open the log or data directory. The default log path is:

%APPDATA%\Achievement Watcher Next\logs

The most useful files are usually Achievement Watcher.log, renderer.log, parser.log and the Watchdog logs of the affected source. A failure that crosses scanning, UI and notification behavior needs several of them, so use Export logs (.zip) in the same Diagnostics card rather than copying files by hand: the processes writing those logs never stop appending, so a manual copy can catch a half-written line. The export works with the app running and adds an about.txt with the app, Electron, Node and Chrome versions the logs came from.

The archive is meant to be attached to a public issue, so the copies it holds are masked: your Windows user name in every path becomes [username], and keys, tokens and passwords become [redacted], [token] or [apikey]. The logs on your disk are left as they are. A file that cannot be masked is left out of the archive. The masking works on known shapes, so still read the files before posting them; a game folder named after you, for instance, stays as it is.

Logs are appended, never truncated, so a crash survives the next launch. Each run starts with a marker, which is how you tell one launch from the next:

===== session 2026-08-11T00:53:31.890Z pid=19276 =====

Right after it, a [diag] block records what a bug report needs - versions, install and data paths, how the app was started, the active language and theme, and the geometry of every display:

[diag] app: Achievement Watcher 3.10.0 (packaged)
[diag] runtime: electron 43.4.0 · chrome 150.0.7871.224 · node 24.18.1 · v8 15.0
[diag] display: 3056414223 1080x1920 @1x work=1080x1872 rotation=270
[diag] display: 3933707034 (primary) 2048x1152 @1.25x work=2048x1104 rotation=0

Paste that block into an issue. Window size and placement problems are almost always a display-scaling or multi-monitor story, and the [MainWindow] lines that follow record the window’s bounds every time it is shown, moved, resized or closed - including which display it was on.

Each log file rotates to <name>.log.1 past 2 MB, so one older generation is always kept.

A game is missing

  1. Open Settings → Sources and confirm the relevant integration is enabled.
  2. Open Settings → Folders, run Smart Find, then use Generate configs for a full scan.
  3. Add the actual game library or save root manually if it uses a custom location.
  4. Turn off Show installed games only temporarily to see whether the game is known but no longer considered installed.
  5. For emulator saves, launch the game once so it creates a runtime folder.

If only old save residue remains and the game files are gone, the installed-only filter is expected to hide the entry.

A game whose metadata could not be fetched is never removed from the list: what is on disk decides that a game exists, and the online lookup only decorates it. Such an entry appears with whatever name is known locally and fills itself in on a later scan.

Achievements stay locked or show 0%

No runtime unlock file means 0%, even when a complete achievement list is present.

Open the game’s Game Health panel: it names which part is missing and offers the repair for it - rewriting the achievement data, restoring the emulator file, or correcting a steam_appid.txt that names another game. If you would rather check by hand:

  • verify that the detected AppID or platform ID belongs to the correct game;
  • check for a custom save path;
  • repair a mismatched steam_settings schema only after reviewing the report;
  • if the game was played on another PC, connect that Steam account - a game with nothing to read locally is then read from your Steam profile, whose game details must be public, and the answer is cached for six hours so a second launch the same day does not ask again for every game (see Connected accounts).

Steam-emulator saves can end up split across %APPDATA%\GSE Saves and %APPDATA%\Goldberg SteamEmu Saves for the same game; AW Next reads whichever of the two actually holds the unlocks rather than whichever one happens to exist first, so this is not something you need to fix by hand.

A game with no achievement set at all has no progress bar rather than 0% (or No achievements, if you turned that bar back on in Settings → Appearance → Library tiles), and is left out of completion statistics.

It works from AW Next’s Play button but not from a Steam shortcut. A cracked game added to Steam as a non-Steam game (often for Steam Input) is started by Steam with a game ID of its own in the environment, and GBE Fork reads that ID before its steam_appid.txt: the unlocks are then saved under the shortcut’s own number and never reach the game’s card. Steam passes the real ID instead when a steam_appid.txt sits in the shortcut’s start folder (Start In, in the shortcut’s properties); one beside the executable alone is not read. Game Health flags a shortcut whose start folder lacks it, and its repair writes the file there.

A scene crack is served and nothing is ever recorded. Some cracks never report achievements at all. After an hour of play with nothing recorded, Game Health says so and, when that crack is the game’s Steam library file, offers to install the supported emulator over it (the current file is kept).

See Goldberg and GBE Fork setup or Goldberg Uplay R2 setup for source-specific steps.

The wrong game was matched

When a game’s folder name matches several Steam releases and the automatic match picked the wrong one, right-click it and choose Set AppID manually…. The AppID you enter is written to steam_appid.txt and remembered for that install folder, so later repairs use it instead of guessing again; Clear the manual AppID override, in the same menu, undoes it. Game Health’s Correct the game ID file repair now asks for the AppID too, starting from AW Next’s own suggestion instead of only confirming it. Full detail: Set a game’s AppID by hand.

A mismatch is not always the emulator’s fault - if it was set up on purpose for the ID actually on disk, leave it alone rather than correcting it.

Names, descriptions or artwork are missing

  • Refresh while online so the app can retry its metadata sources.
  • Confirm the game’s platform identity is correct; a wrong Steam AppID can return convincing but unrelated metadata.
  • For Goldberg/GBE, a valid local schema can fill some missing text offline.
  • Use the game’s cover actions to retry or choose local artwork when automatic sources fail.

A card titled with its bare Steam AppID means the name lookup came back empty for that game while its artwork, which is derived from the AppID alone, resolved. The entry is kept rather than hidden, and the next scan replaces the number with the real title once the lookup succeeds.

DLC and update achievements show their owning group under the title (e.g. a “Hearts of Stone” tag) when SteamHunters knows the groups; games without groups are left untagged.

Hidden achievement descriptions may stay hidden when every available source intentionally omits them.

A game update added achievements that aren’t showing up

A cached schema re-checks itself against Steam every 3 days, since Steam never announces when an update adds achievements. To pick them up immediately instead of waiting, use Settings → Advanced → Recheck achievement lists, which works even with Automatic achievement data updates turned off. That switch, also under Settings → Advanced, only stops the periodic background check and the repair of blank descriptions - it does not affect anything already cached, and existing achievements and unlocks are never removed by either check. Turn it off only if you maintain steam_cache by hand.

An update is stuck on the same file

Downloaded update files are kept between runs. If a download keeps failing on the same file, use Settings → Advanced → Clear caches and check for updates again. Only re-downloadable caches are deleted - settings, game data and logs are untouched.

Updates normally download only the part of the installer that changed since your version, so this is rare; if that smaller download ever fails, the app falls back to the full installer on its own.

Update refused. Every update is checked against the project’s own pinned signing certificate before it is allowed to install - not just any signature, and not the SHA-512 published alongside it, since both come from the same release. A refusal almost always means the downloaded file was tampered with or corrupted: clear caches as above and download again from the official Releases page.

Notifications do not appear

  1. Confirm the background tracker is running.
  2. Open the game and read the Notifications row of its Game Health panel: it names the transport that actually delivered the last notification for that game, and why.
  3. Use the normal, rare and overlay tests under Settings → Notification.
  4. Confirm the delivery mode and selected preset. On Automatic, a missing overlay popup is often the intended fallback rather than a fault - see Notifications.
  5. Check Windows notification permissions for AW Next.
  6. If the issue happens only while playing or in full screen, turn on Priority notifications under Settings → Notification and accept the Windows permission prompt.
  7. Test the overlay outside exclusive fullscreen mode.
  8. Review the logs immediately after a failed test or unlock.

If the library updates but no notification appears, the source watcher works and the problem is likely in the selected notification transport. If the library also stays unchanged, diagnose the source or save path first.

The OBS browser source stays empty

  1. Press Preview under Settings → Notification → OBS browser source, or open http://127.0.0.1:8082/obs/?test=1 yourself. A sample card every ten seconds means the page and the feed both work, and the problem is the source’s settings in OBS.
  2. Nothing at all, not even a blank page: another copy of AW Next, or another program, holds port
    1. Only the copy that started first serves the address.
  3. A page that stays blank is normal between unlocks - it draws nothing on purpose. Use ?test=1 to see it draw.
  4. Check that Websocket @localhost:8082 is on under Settings → Notification → Transport: the source reads that feed.
  5. The card fills whatever size the source is, so it cannot be too small to see. If it looks soft, give the source more pixels and place it smaller in the scene.

See Show unlocks on stream (OBS) for the full setup.

A game will not start from the Play button

Some games require administrator rights, either because their manifest asks for it or because their launcher expects it. Windows refuses to start those the way AW Next normally starts a game and reports EACCES.

AW Next then retries through the Windows shell, the route that raises the ordinary UAC prompt, so such a game starts once you confirm. If even that is refused - a launcher needing administrator without declaring it - AW Next offers to retry as administrator explicitly. Only the game is elevated: an elevated AW Next would create its files with permissions your normal account cannot rewrite.

Dismissing the UAC prompt is treated as a decision, not a failure, so nothing is reported.

Playtime is not tracked

AW Next follows the configured game executable and its process lifetime. If a launcher, helper or differently named binary starts instead:

  • right-click the game and open its configuration;
  • select the executable that remains active while playing;
  • avoid launcher and crash-handler processes;
  • restart the game after saving the change.

A Java game that starts through javaw.exe and exits its own launcher is tracked through that Java process automatically; you do not need to point AW Next at javaw.exe by hand.

A Nemirtingas Epic game records nothing

When a game folder holds the emulator (its EOSSDK library with a nepice_settings\NemirtingasEpicEmu.json beside it), the game’s Game health tab shows an Epic emulator row:

  • SavePath must be "appdata". The emulator writes achievements to %APPDATA%\NemirtingasEpicEmu, where AW Next reads them, only with that value; anything else keeps them in the game folder. The row warns when it is set to something else.
  • Some games need the Epic launch arguments. Some EOS games only sign in to the emulator, and so only save an achievement, when a launcher passes -epicapp=... and the others; many do not need them. While the emulator has saved nothing for the game, the row offers Add the Epic launch arguments, which writes them into the game’s own launch settings from the config’s AppId, so the Play button starts it the way the Epic launcher would. A .bat that passes them works too.
  • If the game crashes at launch with the emulator in place, turn its overlay plugin off ("Plugins": { "Overlay": { "Enabled": false } }); the row reminds you while it is on.

Ubisoft or Uplay R2 uses the wrong action

Ubisoft games should receive Ubisoft-specific metadata and the Uplay R2 repair action, not the Steam GBE action. Run a fresh folder scan and check the source icon. If the game is still misidentified, attach parser.log, the displayed source/IDs and the game directory name to a report.

Antivirus or SmartScreen warning

Packaged releases are signed with the project’s own certificate, pinned by its exact thumbprint rather than issued by a publicly trusted commercial authority, so Windows SmartScreen may still warn. You never need to install the certificate yourself: before installing any update, AW Next checks that it is signed, that the signer is CN=Shirow, that the certificate’s thumbprint matches one of the two the app has pinned, and that the file was not modified after signing - the SHA-512 published alongside a release is not treated as a substitute for that check, since both come from the same release and would be replaced together. Optional emulator DLLs can also trigger heuristic detections. Download only from the official Releases page and compare the installer against the SHA-512 value stored in the matching latest.yml if you want a second check.

Do not disable system-wide protection. Submit a false-positive report to the antivirus vendor when a file from the official release is incorrectly quarantined.

Checking a release yourself

Every published installer can be looked up on VirusTotal by its own SHA-256, so you never have to take this page’s word for it:

Get-FileHash "Achievement.Watcher.Setup.3.12.1.exe" -Algorithm SHA256

Open https://www.virustotal.com/gui/file/<the hash it prints>. If the file is the published one, the report is already there. For the current release that is the 3.12.1 installer (72315a76f29f976c534b5807dd2df14ebb3925da4c0716b26d4b6e47c240f463).

Read the result for what it is: a list of what each engine thinks, not a certificate. A handful of heuristic detections on a build that bundles emulator files is expected and is the false positive described above; what matters is that the hash matches the file the releases page published, which is what the command above proves.

The emulator files are flagged

This is the detection people actually hit, and it is a false positive. Recording achievements for a game with no store client running means putting a stand-in library beside it: the Steam emulator (GBE Fork) or a Ubisoft loader. Replacing a game’s Steam or Ubisoft library is precisely the behaviour detection engines exist to notice, so they notice it - on what the file does, not on anything it contains. Windows Defender quarantines every copy it can see in one go: the one in the game folder, the ones installed with AW Next, and the ones in its cache.

When it fires. At the moment a file is written, and only then:

What you did What gets written
Ran a repair, from a game’s menu or from Settings the emulator or loader, into that game’s folder
Opened Settings → Emulators → Ubisoft / Uplay R1/R2 the bundled loaders, into AW Next’s own cache
Turned on Automatically fix newly detected games the same, during a scan, for each game that needs it

Launching AW Next writes none of them. Automatic repair is off unless you switch it on, and it tells you to expect this beforehand, with the chance to add a Defender exclusion first. If you had already turned it on, the same thing is said once, the first time it is about to act, with the exclusion and the off switch on the same dialog. Nothing is written while the window is hidden in the tray, since you would have no way of connecting the alert to anything.

What AW Next does about it. A quarantine is reported as an antivirus problem rather than as a failure of its own, with a button to allow the folder in Windows Defender and another to put the removed files back. Settings → Emulators → Ubisoft / Uplay R1/R2 → Restore integrated DLLs does that restore at any time.

What to do. Allow the specific file your antivirus named, or exclude %APPDATA%\Achievement Watcher Next\cache. Note what an exclusion does not cover: it protects AW Next’s own copies, and the copy written into a game folder can still be flagged - exclude that game’s folder too if it keeps happening. Reporting the false positive to your vendor is what eventually fixes it for everybody.

Windows Defender names the GBE Fork archive Trojan:Win32/Suschil!rfn while AW Next downloads it into its cache. It is the same false positive, reported to the emulator’s authors too; allow it, or exclude the cache folder above, and run the fix again.

If you would rather check first. Both are third-party and open source: the Steam emulator is downloaded from the official GSE Fork releases, and the Ubisoft loaders ship in app/resources/uplayR1/ and app/resources/uplayR2/ in the repository. AW Next verifies the bundled ones against known SHA-256 digests, their PE architecture and their achievement capability before any repair may use them, and a file that fails is refused.

An antivirus reacts while AW Next runs

Behaviour engines (Kaspersky’s System Watcher, for one) judge what a program does rather than what it contains. Up to 3.11.0, AW Next did three things such an engine reads as hiding something: it compiled a small screen-capture program into %TEMP% for achievement screenshots, compiled a Windows call through PowerShell before each notification, and passed the update check to PowerShell as an encoded command. None of that happens any more: screenshots go through the native helper that ships with the app, and the notification check calls Windows directly. The update signature check no longer starts PowerShell either: Bitdefender’s Advanced Threat Defense blocked it and quarantined the app with it. Windows notifications are posted by the app itself and start no other program.

If your antivirus still reacts, note the exact detection name it shows and report it, with the file it names, as a false positive. For Kaspersky that is opentip.kaspersky.com: look the file up by its hash, then Submit to reanalyze.

The window does not open

  • Use the tray icon in case the app started hidden.
  • End a stuck AW Next process, then launch it once more.
  • Remove ELECTRON_RUN_AS_NODE from the environment if it was set for development; that variable makes Electron start as plain Node.
  • Check renderer.log and the main app log for the first error.
  • Try Settings → General → Disable hardware acceleration if the UI is visible long enough to change it.

Start with a fresh profile

Use this only after backing up data you want to keep:

  1. Exit AW Next fully from the tray.
  2. Rename %APPDATA%\Achievement Watcher Next to Achievement Watcher Next.backup.
  3. Start the app and reproduce the issue with the new profile.

If the issue disappears, restore only the data you need or attach the relevant configuration files to the report. Renaming is safer than deleting because it keeps a rollback path.

Report the problem

Search the existing issues first. If no report matches, open a bug using the repository template and attach logs after removing any information you do not want to share publicly.

See also: FAQ for short answers · Advanced tools for maintenance, cache clearing and resets · Game Health for single-game problems.

That’s the end of the user path. From here the documentation turns technical: Goldberg/GBE reference for file formats and detection rules, and Architecture for the app / renderer / Watchdog boundaries.

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