SteelSeries Sonar: with Sonar's Gaming device (a 7.1 device) as your headphones,
you now hear your sounds. The app couldn't open it ("That audio device doesn't
support that many channels") and stayed silent in your ears.
Direct mic: when the background mic helper can't set up your mic (mostly on
Windows 10), clicking set-up now asks Windows once and does it that way, instead of
failing with "code 1" every time. A set-up that worked is no longer reported as
failed when the helper itself couldn't be set up afterwards.
Direct mic: after setting up, the app checks with a short, very quiet test sound (never
in your own headphones) that your sounds really come out of your mic, and adds what it
found to the anonymous usage count. Nothing changes on screen yet.
A headset pulled out while the app is open now says so in plain words ("Can't open
... Plugged in? It's tried again by itself.") instead of a raw device error.
Fixed a crash while the app was starting: on a slow start, the check that notes where start-up is waiting could itself crash the app.
Direct mic: setting up on SteelSeries Sonar's mic in a quiet room no longer restarts
all your sound three more times, restarts Sonar and calls the set-up failed when
Windows wouldn't let the app listen to the mic just before.
Direct mic: setting up, repairing or removing the mic effect checks its work: after
Windows' audio restarts, the effect has to have started on your mic and every mic it
touched has to open in apps again. If not, the audio restarts once more, and if it's
still not right the app says so (with an error code) instead of "done" while your
sounds never reach the mic.
Direct mic: with SteelSeries Sonar on, a set-up, repair or removal no longer leaves
Sonar's mic silent in Discord and other voice chats, or its sound on the wrong
device: the devices Sonar used are set back through Sonar itself after Windows' audio
restarts, in its streamer mode too. Sonar is no longer restarted for it (SteelSeries GG restarts Sonar only 3
times, then leaves it off). It's restarted once only when it won't take its devices
back, or when its mic had already lost its device (after a set-up with 2.7.0), so
that its mic has a device again.
Direct mic: the quiet check sound played after setting up no longer breaks the sound
sent to others: it stopped your sounds and your voice reaching Discord and games until
the app was closed, with an "audio callback failed" error.
Direct mic: uninstalling Onion Board after the mic effect was already off no longer
restarts all of Windows' sound for nothing (it cut every app's sound for a moment, and
with SteelSeries Sonar on, it could restart Sonar).
Direct mic: Sonar is no longer restarted when, after Windows' audio restarts, it won't
take back one of its Game / Chat / Media / Aux channels while its mic is fine (Sonar
picks those again itself). That could use up SteelSeries GG's 3 restarts of Sonar in
a few set-ups, and then Sonar stayed off.
SteelSeries Sonar users who set up direct mic with an earlier version: Windows' audio
restart made Sonar switch its mic to the first device it lists, which isn't always
yours (a webcam, a virtual cable). If Discord hears you badly or not at all through
Sonar, pick your mic again in SteelSeries GG > Sonar. This version keeps it.
Direct mic: the mic helper updates once (Windows asks one more time), so set-ups
through it get these fixes too.
Once you've connected Twitch, the Twitch card has a box (off until you tick it) that
lets the Onion Board developer see your channel's name with the daily usage count,
so they can see who streams with it. Disconnect unticks it.
Pilot Bun's world on the Languages card is 3D now: a lit, turning Earth with drifting
clouds, a night side and glowing air, and Bun's plane is a real 3D model flying low
over the curve of the world, with a contrail and his shadow on the ground.
Fix: on a PC short on memory, the app could freeze for 10 seconds to minutes at a
time, sounds included, while it sat in the background (and Windows could call it Not
Responding). Its memory clean-up read the whole app back from disk; it now waits until
you're back in the window and the PC has memory to spare.
18 new secret achievements to find: poke the Onion Alien on Settings > About, add or
listen through an hour-long sound, play 10 sounds at once, max out the pitch, play a
sound on Halloween, Christmas or New Year, and a few more. There's an old cheat code
hidden in the main window too.
No "Text-to-speech isn't available" pop-up at launch when Windows speech is slow to start: nobody asked for speech yet. Saying a line still tells you if it can't be spoken.
On a first launch right after installing, the loading screen (Bun) no longer gives up
when its first frame is slow: it used to vanish, and nothing showed until the window
was up, up to a minute later. A start that slow now also notes where it waited, in
startup-stall.txt in the settings folder.
The installer no longer asks about FFmpeg: the app needs it for M4A, AAC and video
files, so it is always added when it is missing (not in Offline mode).
Direct mic: a mic whose headset software adds its own effect (some gaming headsets do)
no longer goes silent in every app when that effect won't run alongside Onion Board's:
the mic now goes on without the headset's effect.
Fixed: after the PC had slept, a crash or a closed-from-Task-Manager exit was counted as "frozen" in the anonymous problem count. The exit check now uses the same sleep-proof clock as the freeze check.
Fixed two causes of the app freezing for seconds on PCs short of memory: the audio
device check no longer starts a new background task every half minute, and a safety
check over the app's windows no longer runs while the app sits in the tray.
Direct mic: a headset whose software adds a Windows 11 style effect to the mic
(Logitech G HUB's Blue VO!CE, Windows' own Voice Clarity) keeps that effect with
Onion Board's effect on. It used to be switched off, without a word, while direct
mic was on.
Fixed the window freezing for as long as the PC's drive stalls (half a minute on some
drives): a memory check the window runs every few seconds looked on disk for a
Windows file each time. It looks once now.
2.7.0 — 2026-10-22
The tick next to "Your sounds go into your mic" now sits level with the text.
The tutorial cards' quiet button says OK instead of Not now.
Lite mode: Pilot Bun on the Languages card flies round the globe again, at half the
frames, instead of sitting still like a broken picture.
Voice > Languages: with Offline mode on and speech recognition not installed yet, the Languages tab hides (nothing there could work or be installed); once installed it stays, as it works offline. Before it is installed, the card no longer shows an ON / OFF switch and "Pick a language" with no languages to pick.
The Voice tab's bar has a Reset button: it turns every voice off and forgets them, and
empties the voice changer's mix, so Voices ON no longer brings an old voice back. Undo
puts it all back.
AI voices: an AI voice that gets stuck loading now tries once more by itself, then
says it couldn't load, instead of staying on "starting…" forever. Picking another voice
while it loads no longer says "switching to…" (you still hear the backup voice until
it's ready), and the voice bar's chip names the voice you picked.
Live controls has a Save as new pad button beside Reset: it copies the sound playing
now, with the speed, pitch and effects you dialled in, as a pad of its own (named
"… (modified)", which you can change). Its Edit sound window shows those effects and can
take them off.
The anonymous usage count now also says whether Live controls is opened and changed
(which control, never the values), which achievements were earned and roughly how
many, and whether Lite mode, Connect Twitch, Voice tab recordings, the voice search
and the Stream Deck plugin are used. A long daily count goes in parts (the counter
takes 100 at a time). Everything it can send is listed in SECURITY.md.
AI voices: the Make your own voice window is tidied up: no emoji box next to the name, more room under the heading, the sliders and their values lined up, and Hear it beside Save and Cancel. You can pick a picture for your voice's card; without one it gets the My own mix picture.
AI voices: Make your own voice works when the app runs from source too. It used to do nothing there, because your voices were only written into a downloaded copy of the add-on; the add-on now also reads them from your own voices file.
A settings file whose sound list was blanked out ("sounds": null) no longer opens as an
empty board: like other damage, it is set aside, your last good copy is loaded and you
are told.
A download whose last piece never arrives now stops within seconds, instead of asking the
site for it again hundreds of times over a minute first.
Tab no longer stops on every sound: it goes from the categories to your sounds once
(the arrow keys move between them), then on to the player bar, so Stop all and
Settings are a few presses away however many sounds you have.
A headset pulled out while the app is open no longer stays in the headphones list,
where picking it did nothing.
Chat text read out by the voice (!say and chat-to-speech) no longer reads HTML tags
and codes like "&" letter by letter: they're taken out, or turned back into "&".
Switching Keep window on top no longer turns the whole window white for a moment.
Settings opens without the Audio page jumping down as its mic row comes in.
Picking a device in Settings no longer makes the drop-downs twitch.
The Apps tab's cards show together instead of jumping in one by one, and opening or
closing a program's window view, or filtering Achievements, no longer jitters.
"Hear what they hear" comes back in full after the window is made narrow and wide again.
Edit sound and Edit voice are split into tabs instead of one long page: Edit sound has
Sound, Trim & speed, Effects (in groups) and Equalizer; Edit voice has Main, Change the
voice, Character and Room, each tab saying how many of its effects are on.
The Languages card's speech recognition install now looks like the AI voices one: a
glowing Install button beside Bun flying a little plane round the world.
Clicks that used to give no answer now do: saving a voice says its name on a card,
Say with an empty box says to type a line first, Undo after removing a sound says
it's back, and the Radio list says it's finding stations while it loads.
Importing several sounds: each pad shows up on the board as soon as its sound is in,
not a moment after the count says so.
Live controls no longer opens with plain, unthemed sliders, ticks and buttons after the theme was switched or a page was built while it was closed.
Screen readers: the Sounds search box says it takes a pasted link too, each Apps card's
volume says which program it's for, and the Up next chip reads as a button.
After Pause in the clip editor, the keys (Home, Ctrl+Right, Shift+End…) go straight to
the waveform instead of the Pause button.
Up next: long names now fill the list's whole width before they're cut short, and its
chip says how many are waiting ("3 waiting"), so the number isn't read as counting the
sound playing too.
AI voices: the voices you made come first under All, before the ready-made ones.
Stream Deck: the length and On / Off on small (72 px) keys are bigger and easy to read.
Clearer in four places: the bottom strip says "Mic muted" when your mic isn't sent,
Community's dropdown has a line between the orders (Trending, Most liked, Newest) and
the categories, Trim says your file stays whole, and the Triggers tab says your game's
window has to be open.
The Silent But Deadly badge now counts with sending switched off too.
A sound whose file was moved or deleted now says "its file is gone" and where it was,
instead of FFmpeg's own error text.
The setup guide's "Where do your sounds go?" step keeps a plain Next when sending isn't
set up, with a line saying only you will hear your sounds, and the cable button now just
says "Install the cable" (its tooltip says what that means). The look step names the
board's theme when it isn't one of the nine.
Cancel while Onion Watch is being added now really stops it: it used to install it
anyway when the click came after the download. Once it's installing, Cancel goes away.
The Help and community button at the sidebar's foot is Bun now, and its menu ends with Turn into Bun.
Turn into Bun puts Bun right in the middle of where the window was, instead of a corner or wherever he stood last time.
Uninstalling now removes the empty Onion Board program folder too (your sounds and
settings in %APPDATA%\OnionBoard are still kept).
A damaged settings file no longer leaves a second, scary error in the log when it is
recovered at start-up; a settings file saved with a byte-order mark keeps its language.
Stream Deck keys now show a pad's hotkey when it's a combo like Ctrl+Alt+7; before, only
short keys like F7 fit on a key.
Community: sort by Newest again, from the dropdown next to the search box.
Community: Tab goes straight to the cards, not first to the list itself.
Fix: on a PC short on resources, a long song could start cutting out partway through,
because the part that reads ahead of it stopped for good. It now carries on.
Mute mic during sounds: your mic comes back as soon as the sound ends (or you press
Stop all). It could stay muted for others when your headphones were a moment behind.
Mic effect: a mic Windows' registry names differently from the mic list is now found
by asking Windows directly, instead of "Windows doesn't know this mic". When the
set-up fails, its message has a "Use the cable" button. A mic effect problem no
longer ends the first-run tour as if the tour had broken: the mic's own message says
what went wrong.
Adding a sound from YouTube (or another site) that fails because the site refused it, the
connection dropped or the download got stuck now tries once more by itself before showing
an error, asking YouTube in a different way the second time.
Up next: taking sounds out with the list open now shrinks it at once, instead of leaving an empty gap over the rows until it was reopened.
Play on a YouTube search result starts about 10 seconds sooner: it no longer waits for
YouTube's video picture, which Play never shows.
A pad no longer plays on top of a song you played from a search: like other sounds,
the song stops (set the pad to Overlap to play over it). Clicking a song's name in
Up next also stops what's playing before it starts.
Fewer themes give Bun a floppy ear: Onion, Slate, Paper, Carbon, Retro 98, Amber Terminal,
Vaporwave and Vampire now have both ears up.
The Twitch card in Settings → Remote has a Twitch guide that walks through channel
points, alerts and chat commands step by step, and Copy AI prompt: a message for
ChatGPT or Claude that knows your rewards and sounds, so it can help with the rest.
A voice card that's on says so when you point at it: clicking it again turns the voice
changer off.
Bluetooth earbuds (AirPods and the like) work as your mic like any other: no more
warnings about call quality when you pick them. If their mic drops out while they
keep playing, the mic card says so in one line instead of "Is your headset plugged
in?", and a mic whose sound is coming in is never called unplugged.
Straight into my mic works with Equalizer APO on the same mic. Setting Equalizer APO
up on the mic after Onion Board no longer makes the two start each other over and over
(which could stop Windows' sound), the repair no longer wraps it back, and taking
Onion Board off hands Equalizer APO the mic's own effect again.
Lite mode really stops the animations now: Bun and Hoot are still pictures (sounds,
music and the mic don't move them), and the guide's ring, the download banner, the
achievement pop-up and the playing pads hold still too.
The On Air card says "Lite mode" while it's on; a click opens Appearance.
Settings > Appearance > Look is easier to read: its settings sit in three small groups
(Colour, Size and speed, Background), on/off and size are beside each setting's name,
and the long explanations are shorter.
Settings > Achievements has two new switches: Show pop-ups turns the "Achievement
unlocked" pop-up off, and Pop-up sound turns its chime on. The chime is now off by
default.
The first-launch guide's last part is now two steps: pick a look and your language,
then "A few handy switches" in four cards: your tabs, Discord, Internet and This PC.
New on it: Use less data and Offline mode (for a phone hotspot, a capped plan or no
internet) and Keep window on top, so you don't have to find them in Settings.
Speak another language: no more empty gap between the card's intro and its language cards.
The voice changer no longer remembers last run's voice when it was left off: after a restart,
turning it ON starts from your own mix instead of an old pick. Left on, it still comes back.
The Onion Alien easter egg on About no longer keeps the CPU busy while he sits on the empty window: only he is redrawn, and less often.
Textured themes (Carbon and others) keep their pattern on a hovered card or box,
and the buttons on a hovered box in Settings no longer blend into it.
Live controls: typing a minus into Speed (like -999) now gives the slowest speed
instead of dropping the minus and jumping to the fastest.
Stream alerts: a raid sent with only an amount now says that many people in {count},
and a field with no value (a tip with no amount) is left out instead of read out as
{amount}.
The first-run tour's card moves with the window straight away when it's made narrow
(it used to sit off the right edge for a moment).
Bringing sounds over from another soundboard ends with "✓ Added 3 sounds to Soundpad",
so you know which category they went in.
Live controls: a speed, pitch or effect value typed into its box and confirmed with Enter
now stays; Enter used to also press Reset and put it straight back.
Lite mode now runs the audio in 20 ms blocks instead of 10, so the app uses noticeably
less CPU with nothing playing. Your voice goes out about 20 ms later in lite mode.
AI voices use about a third less CPU in lite mode (or with Use less CPU on): they
run a lighter copy of the same voice model, which converts 40 ms at a time, so you
are about 40 ms further behind. Needs AI voices 0.2.0 (update it under More options).
The Voice changer, AI voices and Languages cards share one tidy bar over their voices:
a dropdown picks the group (with how many each holds), a search box finds a voice or
language by name, and the cards / list switch sits at the end, in the same place on
all three.
Making the window narrower no longer makes the Sounds tab's search box wider: it used to
jump bigger each time a toolbar button lost its words, then shrink again a few pixels later.
The Radio tab no longer jumps up and down by a few pixels at the width where its refresh
button comes and goes.
Downloads, searches, the radio list and the store use less CPU: the app no longer reads
Windows' certificate list again for every connection.
The bars across the top of the window (an urgent fix, "Set up for it?", FFmpeg missing,
the language offer, Enjoying Onion Board?) now all look the same: slim, with a coloured
edge, a bold heading and their buttons lined up.
The red "You're hearing your mic output" banner is gone: the lit Hear what they hear
button already shows it's on.
The "Did you know?" tips bar is gone, and with it Show tips in Settings → General.
Picking a voice or flipping Voices ON / OFF while an add-on was installing could
freeze the window, and the sounds playing, for a second or more. The Voice tab no
longer checks the disk on every click.
Lite mode now also slows the meters and the playing screen (15 updates a second while
something plays, 5 with only the mic), so the app uses less CPU while it sits open.
The app uses a little less CPU while it sits open in every mode: a safety check that
went over every window class 10 times a second now runs when something new loads.
First start is now three steps instead of up to six. Your mic and headphones share one
page, then where your sounds go, then "Make it yours".
"What will you use Onion Board for?" is gone. On the last step, Voice starts ticked and
Radio, Apps and Triggers are tick boxes to opt in to, each with an ⓘ saying what it's for.
Bun now sets Discord up for your sounds himself. He saves how Discord is set for talking,
then switches off what chops up your sounds (noise suppression, echo cancellation,
automatic gain and sensitivity). If Discord is open, he asks before closing it for a few
seconds, then opens it again on its voice settings. Settings → Audio → Audio recovery's
Put Discord back undoes it. The setup guide's last step ("Set up Discord for me when I
finish"), the Setup tab's Discord button, the Fix Discord bar and the Discord guide all
do this now.
Earning an achievement now pops up "Achievement unlocked" at the bottom of the screen,
the classic console way, with its chime in your headphones only (never in the call).
Importing from another soundboard (Soundpad, Resanance and others) no longer asks "are you sure?" first: picking it is enough. Sounds that can't be brought over are listed in a short note instead.
Every achievement now has its own badge: Bun dressed up for it (a crown, a beret, the
bat, Robo-Bun, the rare Golden, Ice, Galaxy and Rainbow looks and more) in a rim of
its rarity's colour.
Settings > Achievements has filters: All, Earned or Not yet, and a rarity.
Bun now waves when the mouse comes onto a theme card in Settings, and clicking the
board or Onion Watch logo on the Triggers tab fires their laser duel, also on PCs
with Windows' Animation effects turned off. Lite mode still keeps them still.
The logo, the level meters, the loading and download bars, the download scribe, the radio
map's pop-in, the theme cards' wave and the logos' laser duel now draw 24 frames a
second instead of 30 to 60, so the window uses a little less CPU while it's open.
Mic effect set-up: fewer failures. A mic that sends no sound itself after the set-up
(a headset switched off) no longer counts as a failed set-up: your sounds go in, and
a warning says the mic is silent. A picked mic Windows no longer knows is swapped for
Windows' default mic instead of stopping. A step that failed once is tried again,
the same mic part already there is kept instead of written over, and a slow PC gets
longer for Windows' audio to stop and for the effect to load.
New: Settings > Achievements (under Show advanced). 56 achievements for using the app,
from your first sound played to 100 hours of voice changing; most stay secret (???)
until you find them. Each badge wears its rarity's colour, like the rare loading
screens. They're counted on your PC only and never sent anywhere.
Bun makes you work for his Pong game now: spam-clicking no longer piles up. Once he has gone red, it takes five more pokes before he fetches his bat.
The Community tab's dropdown starts with Trending (picked when it opens) and Most liked,
then the categories, the biggest first.
Triggers tab: before Onion Watch is installed, Hoot now sleeps in a little bed with
z's floating up instead of dancing to your sounds. Click him to wake him up; he goes
back to bed when you leave the tab.
The onion on Settings > About has a secret. Try clicking him. A lot.
Edit sound's effects now change a sound while it plays: pick a preset, a speed or a voice
and the playing sound switches to it at the same spot (a slow voice shows how far it is,
and the sound plays on as it was meanwhile). Cancel puts it back; Save no longer stops it.
A big "Reset effects" button sits beside Save, glowing while any effect is on: every effect off at once, and a playing
sound goes back to plain straight away.
The Community tab has an Onion Board category, first in the list: only the sounds players
shared here and the app's own sounds, without the ones from other sites.
The control API's status now says whether "mute my mic while a sound plays" is on, so a phone remote can show that switch.
The Community tab shows a small "New" label until you first open it.
Voice "setups" are now called voice combos, so they're not mixed up with the Setup tab.
The Voice tab's My voice combos row has a Share button: send a combo to the store or
copy it as a code for a friend.
The Community tab opens on Trending: the sounds that are popular right now. Votes and
Added still sort the list.
Voice add-ons (AI voices, live voice, translation): when one crashes without saying why, the message now ends with the last line it printed (the actual error) instead of only "code 1", and a reason it did give is no longer replaced by a plain "stopped".
AI voices: when the AI voice can't start, it now says why (for example "not enough free memory") instead of "exited before connecting (code 1)".
Downloads now show in a small card in the bottom-right corner, on every tab, instead of
a big banner across the top that pushed the page down. Minimise it to a pill (it still
shows how far it's got and how many failed), and once everything is added it folds to
the pill by itself, then goes; hovering keeps it up.
Each added sound in the card has a play button and Show, which takes you to its pad.
Use less CPU moved up beside the Voice tab's tabs, since it's for every voice now:
translating your speech or a stream also uses the smaller speech model (if it's
downloaded) and simpler translations. AI voices already use as little as they can.
Radio map: a city's stations all listed at its centre now keep spreading apart as you zoom in, instead of staying one overlapping clump the same size at every zoom.
The Stream Deck plugin comes with every release now: double-click
com.onionalien.onionboard.streamDeckPlugin and Stream Deck installs it. The Streamer
guide (Settings → Remote) links to it and says how to set up a Play sound key.
Developers: a source copy run from the temp folder (a throwaway worktree) keeps its own profile, %APPDATA%\OnionBoard-dev, so a branch under test can't empty the real sound cache or change the real settings.
The Voice tab's Languages card now works like Voice changer and AI voices: a big ON / OFF
next to its name, All / Favorites / Downloaded chips, cards or a list, and a card per
language. Languages you haven't downloaded are grey: click one and it asks to download
and install it. Click a language to turn it on, click it again to turn it off. The
computer voice's own Start moved under More options.
Connect Twitch. Settings → Remote has a Twitch card: click Connect Twitch, say yes on
twitch.tv, and Onion Board plays your sounds when viewers redeem channel points, cheer,
follow, sub, gift subs or raid. Pick a sound (or a random one) for each channel point reward
and each alert, right there. Chat can use !sound, !random and !sounds, and the answer is
posted back in chat. No Streamer.bot or other bot needed. Twitch has its own switch in
Settings > Privacy & security.
The control API's /api/alerts takes &reward= for channel points, so each reward can play
its own sound.
Voice tab: every tab with something on gets its blue border at once. With the AI voice
on and another language spoken for it, Languages lights up beside AI voices (it only did
while the computer voice spoke).
Settings opens straight away after you've looked at About, Add-ons, Connection, Data,
Updates or Remote: it was built again from scratch every time (about half a second on a
slower PC), and only those pages are now refreshed when you open them again.
Switching to and from the Setup tab no longer works out the whole window's layout from
scratch each time (about a tenth of a second each way on a slower PC).
Stream Deck plugin. Onion Board now has its own plugin for the Stream Deck app: add a
Play sound key and pick the sound from a list (no copying links or keys). The key takes
the pad's colour and lights up while it plays. There are also Stop all sounds, Random
sound and a Switch key for Live / Muted, the voice changer, your mic or hotkeys that
shows whether it's on. It finds Onion Board by itself once Settings → Remote → Remote
control is on.
The control API's /api/status now also says whether hotkeys are on (hotkeys).
New on the voice changer card: Use less CPU, for slower PCs. Hiss removal goes off, the
robot voices and echoes get a little simpler and live voice uses the smaller speech
model when it's downloaded: the voice changer uses about a quarter less CPU. It's on
by itself in lite mode.
Live voice and translations use about a third less CPU: their speech recognition no
longer keeps the processor busy between sentences.
The voice changer uses less CPU: the robot voices (Robot, Talkbox, Autotune, Mecha) about
a third less for that effect, and Clean up my mic, which runs under every voice, about a
quarter less. The voices sound the same.
Switching themes no longer redraws the whole board on every frame of its fade.
Onion Board gives its memory back to Windows after 30 seconds in the tray or minimised
(with nothing playing): Task Manager shows about 35 MB there instead of ~350 MB.
AI voice and voice changer samples you listen to no longer pile up in memory: only the
last 16 are kept.
Bun and Hoot use about half the CPU while they move: a frame where they have moved less
than a quarter of a pixel shows the picture already drawn, and a frame where nothing
moved is not drawn again. They look and move the same.
New: Lite mode in Settings > Appearance > Look, for slower PCs. One switch turns off
the animations, Bun's and the logo's idle moves and the theme textures, at once;
everything else works the same. A slower PC gets one suggestion to try it.
The board uses less CPU while it sits idle: the audio engine does less work on blocks
where nothing plays, and Bun and Hoot reuse the shapes that don't change between frames.
Nothing you hear or see changes.
The onion menu at the foot of the tab rail is down to Join the Discord, Send feedback and Report a problem (What's new is the version under the app's name).
Skipping the first-run tour no longer fills a new board with 25 starter sounds in a
Starter tab: the board stays as you left it. Boards that already got them keep them.
The first launch looks cleaner: the loading screen hands over to a plain window with
the logo, the setup guide fades in over it, and the app fades in once you finish or
close the guide (no half-set-up app behind it any more).
The first setup guide now ends with "Make it yours": pick your language, one of nine
themes, and whether Onion Board starts with Windows.
If Onion Board crashes or Windows closes it as Not Responding, Windows now starts it
again by itself (after it had been open for a minute or more), without taking the
focus from your game, and it says it restarted.
Bun's arm now comes from his shoulder when he holds something (the mic, the bat, the hammer, his idle skits' props), instead of poking out from behind his body or floating as a third paw.
Switching themes takes about half as long, so it no longer freezes the app on slower PCs
or ones short on memory.
The Community tab's Bun and the sad Bun on a "something went wrong" card no longer
animate nonstop: after 30 seconds with nothing going on they hold still (using no CPU)
until a sound, a click or a new problem wakes them. The Community tab used half of a
slower PC's core just sitting open.
Hoot on the Triggers tab (before Onion Watch is installed) holds still after 30 seconds
with nothing going on too; the mouse coming near him, a click or a sound wakes him.
The Voice tab's red Stop is now one big Voices ON / OFF switch. OFF turns off every voice
changing your mic (voice changer, AI voice, computer voice, translating) and ON brings
back exactly what was on. With nothing to bring back it says what ON turns on.
New hotkey, All voices on / off (Settings > Hotkeys > Mic and voice): the same switch,
from inside a game.
Click a voice in the Voice tab's bottom bar to turn just that one off (it stays there,
grey) and click it again to turn it back on. Right-click opens its card; its ✕ turns it
off for good.
The Apps tab's Bun no longer keeps animating while nothing plays: after 30 seconds he
holds still (using no CPU) until a sound, the radio or a click wakes him.
The Community tab shows each sound as a card, two side by side on a wide window. Play
plays it now, even over a sound from the tab that's still playing, and turns Pause
(then Resume) with a Stop button while it plays. Play next waits for what's playing,
and Add puts it in your Sounds.
AI voices now look and work like the Voice changer: the same on/off switch at the top
right, the same cards or list view (one setting for both), and the same bar at the
bottom for the voice that's on, with Edit voice (its pitch), Make your own voice and
Hear it. Make your own voice is also a card under Mine.
The Voice changer and AI voices cards have a big ON/OFF switch right next to their
name, and clicking the voice that's on turns it off again.
Community tab: playing a shared link no longer slides the list away when the bar at
the top opens; the row you clicked stays under the mouse.
Voice tab: no more big empty gap under the part buttons on a short part (Languages,
Add-ons); My setups is one line again.
Fix: the Discord check could get stuck on "checking" for good when it couldn't make its
test sound. It now says what went wrong, and you can run it again.
Switching tabs is quicker: the sidebar's status is no longer worked out and laid out
again on every switch when nothing on it changed.
Voice tab: the part buttons (Voice changer, AI voices, ...) and My setups scroll away with the
voices, so a short window shows more of them.
Edit sound opens at once after a theme change and when Onion Board started with
Windows: a ready-made one is built under the theme fade, or a while after sign-in,
instead of on the first click (about a second on slower PCs).
Settings > Hotkeys in a narrow window: each key sits under its words, which no longer wrap a
word a line.
Narrow windows: the Sounds search box says "Search" or "Search sounds" instead of a cut "Sea…",
and the Voice tab's line box says "Type here" (Save as sound goes down to its +).
The red "Couldn't open the store" card no longer squeezes its lines on top of each other in a
short, narrow window.
Settings > Overlay shows your overlay hotkey again (its button was blank).
The installer is about 5 MB smaller again: the voice changer's seven background loops
are now Ogg Vorbis instead of FLAC. They sound the same and still loop without a click.
The installer is about 11 MB smaller: files the app carries twice (the mic helper's own
copy of Python) are stored in it once, and the mic helper and the app no longer carry
parts they never run (the rest of the app in the helper, test tools, PortAudio builds
for other systems). Everything installs and works as before.
Recordings (Voice tab) and Saved clips (Apps tab) have a new look: each clip is a row with a round play button, its name, where it came from and when ("Today 14:02"), its waveform (which fills in as it plays) and its length. A Live label shows while one plays through your mic.
The row you point at (or pick) gets its buttons: play through mic, add to Sounds and more. Space plays a clip for you, Enter plays it through your mic, Esc stops it.
Voice tab: "No mic open" is no longer cut off in some languages and themes (the mic meter gives way instead).
Click either header logo on the Triggers tab for a short laser duel with Onion Watch. Other tabs keep the usual logo wobble.
The Back button over online search results is red with a soft glow now, so the way back to your sounds is easy to spot.
The store's Share a sound button, greyed out while the store can't be reached, has an even edge all round again (its top edge looked cut off).
Subcategory and the Apps tab's + Category also open a name box in place now, instead of a pop-up.
The + next to the category tabs now opens a name box right where the new tab goes: type, press Enter to add it, Esc to cancel. No more pop-up.
Voice tab: a Record button next to Stop records your voice straight away (as others hear it while the voice changer is on). Saved takes go in a new Recordings list above it, where you can play one to yourself, play it through your mic, or add it to your Sounds.
Drag sounds in the Up next list by their grip to change the order, and use a sound's ▶ to play it now (the rest keep waiting).
Free sound packs is now only in the Library menu, not in the Add menu as well.
Selected tabs, mode tiles, filter chips and on-state buttons now have the same glossy finish as the main buttons.
Stop the bottom playback and audio controls from repeatedly shifting sideways when the output meter runs out of room.
Make Reset bigger and easier to click in Live controls on the Sounds, Radio and Apps tabs.
2.6.3 — 2026-10-17
New installs start with Textured themes (each theme's own pattern on the panels). If
you already picked Plain or Textured, that stays.
Opening Onion Board at the wrong moment of an update could make the update fail and
leave the app unable to start until it was reinstalled. The installer now closes any
copy opened meanwhile before it finishes, and the app steps aside while it installs.
2.6.2 — 2026-10-17
Opening Onion Board while an update is installing no longer shows "Unhandled exception
in script" error boxes: it steps aside, and the installer opens it once it's done.
The window no longer freezes for seconds right after installing, when a tab is first
opened while the radio player is getting ready in the background.
2.6.1 — 2026-10-17
A number you type into a box (speed, pitch, effects, volume, trim) now counts after a
short pause or a click anywhere else, without pressing Enter. Enter in the Live controls
no longer presses Reset all, which put a typed speed straight back to 1x.
Clicking Restart to update no longer freezes the window while Windows checks the
downloaded installer, and an update closing the app is no longer counted as a crash.
Sound modes (Game, Voice chat, Advanced) no longer change how sounds play in your
own headphones: only what others get is shaped, and Hear what they hear still
lets you listen to it.
Picking a voice while no mic is open now says why nothing changes ("No mic is open")
on the Voice tab, instead of doing nothing.
Saved clips whose sound file was deleted outside Onion Board no longer stay in the
list as clips that can't play.
2.6.0 — 2026-10-17
A link that failed after a few added ones no longer turns a roomy window into the
mini player (taking the search box with it, so later links did nothing): the download
list folds to fit instead.
A search that fails because the site is down no longer tells you to close and reopen
Onion Board: waiting is what fixes it.
Chat's !random <category> under a category limit now says the category is outside
chat's one (it said "no such category" for a real one) and gives the bot a line to post.
Screen readers: the Live controls button is called "Live controls" (not "1x"), the Up
next chip says what it shows ("Up next 3"), and a limited-edition theme card says until when.
Voice backgrounds now use bundled CC0 audio clips for rain, wind, engine, crowd,
spaceship and fire, with a new rain-on-a-window option. They work offline; previews
and live playback use the same clips, and source credits ship with the app.
Quick setup: pressing X or Esc while Bun is putting your sounds into your mic now says "Bun's almost done, one moment" instead of doing nothing.
You can see your mic being set up now. On the Setup tab, the boxes in the mic card
fold away and back out instead of blinking out, and when your sounds land in your mic
its box lights up green with a tick. Off when Windows' animation effects are off.
Autotune voice: a hard T-Pain style snap. It now sticks to the notes of one key and jumps cleanly between them (no flicker), with a brighter, doubled sound.
Voice bar: each chip (voice changer, AI voice, computer voice, language) has its own ✕, so you can turn one off without stopping them all.
Voice backgrounds have softer rain and fire, smoother wind and hums, and voiced crowd
babble. The talk gate starts quietly, and typed speech includes edited backgrounds
and sounds picked from the board.
"Hear what they hear" no longer squeals on speakers. With speakers as your headphones
output, the mic hears them, and loud enough the sound loops into a squeal. The app now
hears that squeal starting and switches the playback off by itself (and says why), and
turning it on with speakers warns you first. Talking, singing and shouting are left alone.
The Halloween theme's cobweb texture is redrawn: cobwebs now cover the whole card instead of a grid of tiny stamped webs.
The loading screen's card has a soft glow in its theme's colours instead of one flat
colour (High Contrast stays flat), and shows the version small in its top-right corner.
Bun got a little cuter. A fluffy poof on his chest, a belly button, longer feet with
neater toe beans that fit inside them, and longer, floppier ears. His ears lost the grey
strip and the odd pale corner at the bend, and the pad prints on his waving paw are the
right way up now.
Rare loading screens now name their tier: Uncommon (Golden Bun), Rare (Ice Bun),
Legendary (Galaxy Bun) and Super Rare (Rainbow Bun), with more room under the dots.
New installs play a sound with one click (Settings > General > Play pads with one click;
your existing setting is kept).
The setup steps lead with putting your sounds into your mic: that button glows, the
virtual cable comes after "or", and installing the cable asks first (it's only for
people who know they need it).
Clearer words: the rail's Live button says On, the search button says Search online, the
ear button says Listen, the Voice tab's Discord tip and the Privacy page are in plainer
words, and the setup card is shorter.
Settings > Audio shows the everyday cards; speech servers, buffering and the duplicate mic
switch are under More audio settings (Show advanced).
The chain-link mark on a sound kept outside the library shows while you point at it.
After a few days of heavy use (open 2 hours or more on 3 different days), a slim bar
asks once, ever, "Enjoying Onion Board?" with Bun holding up a survey: a thumb up or
down, then a few optional words. It waits for a calm moment (never over a game) and
only shows while the anonymous usage count is on; the answer goes with a one-off
random ID, never linked to you.
Settings > About: a shorter note, said by a new mascot, the Onion Alien, in a speech bubble that types itself out.
While the Community store's server is having trouble, Share a sound and Share a voice
are greyed out and say why, instead of letting you fill in the form and then fail. They come
back by themselves once the server answers again (Refresh checks).
When something doesn't work (a search that can't get through, the radio that can't
connect, the Community store that can't load, a voice that can't switch on), sad Bun
now says so on a red card with Try again and Report a problem, instead of a line of red
text. The tutorials do the same instead of vanishing, and carry on after Try again.
Bun and Hoot have a personality in every theme. Click them and they talk in their
outfit's character: a sea captain in Ocean, a wizard in Midnight, Dracula in Vampire, a
hacker in Hacker, a little witch in Halloween, and so on (four lines for Bun, three for
Hoot, in every theme and language).
Bun no longer sits still on the loading screen: each launch he does one of 13 acts,
picked at random (headbanging, karaoke, building, batting practice, a party, a nap,
Robo-Bun booting up, plugging in his headphones, hopping, drumming, an ear wiggle,
peekaboo, a spin), and waves goodbye as the window comes up. In October he wears a
witch hat and in December a Santa hat.
Rare loading screens, with a glowing border and their drop rate: Golden Bun (1/50),
Ice Bun (1/500), Galaxy Bun (1/5000) and Rainbow Bun (1/50000).
A game that runs as admin keeps its keys from other programs, so hotkeys went quiet
in it with no word why. Now the board tells you when such a game is in front, with a
Restart as admin button.
New limited-edition Halloween theme, the first card in Settings > Appearance > Themes:
pumpkin orange and witch purple with cobwebs, a jack-o'-lantern logo, and Bun and Hoot
in witch's hats. Use it by 31 October and it's yours to keep; after that it's gone.
Settings > Appearance has two tabs instead of six: Themes (with Textured or Plain on
top) and Look (highlight colour, size, live tabs and background together).
Finish in the setup guide now means done: it no longer opens again on the next start when
sending wasn't set up (the Setup tab's Step-by-step guide still opens it).
Bun shows his buttons, Back to the board among them, for a few seconds as he appears, so the
way back is seen even before you hover over him.
Importing from another soundboard puts its sounds straight into their own category (for example "Resanance"), shown from the first sound on, instead of All.
No more "Keep them?" box after an import you already said yes to.
When the Community store is down, it says so. Instead of "Couldn't open the store",
you get "Sorry, the store's down" with a sad Bun kicking at the ground, and Try again.
Control API: /api/alerts?type=raid alone now lists that type's rules instead of an
error, and /api/event?test=1 without a type sends a test follow.
The mini player's red "All" pill is read out as "Stop all" by screen readers.
Bun DJs in Live controls. While Live controls is open, Bun sits left of its title tapping
sound pads and scratching a record, in every tab that has it (Sounds, Radio, Apps).
Dropdown lists and button menus now open with a small gap from their button instead of
stuck to it (the Store's category list, the Radio filters, Settings and the rest).
Radio map: the most played stations stand out now, as bigger glowing dots (the more
plays today, the bigger), and the rest are small plain dots. Stations crowded on one
spot (a whole city's) spread out round it at every zoom, so each can be seen and clicked.
2.5.0 — 2026-10-17
A maximised window stays maximised: close or restart Onion Board while it's maximised and it
opens maximised again, and bringing it back from the taskbar or the tray no longer turns it
into a normal-sized window.
Speak another language: no more empty box under Install speech recognition before it's installed.
The voice bar has an Effects button: a small pop-up where you add rain, wind, a crowd,
a fire, an engine or spaceship hum, a sound from your board, or an extra Robot, Radio,
Echo or Reverb on top of any voice, each with one slider and a ✕. They stay when you
pick another voice. Edit voice is still there for every setting ("Advanced: Edit voice").
The anonymous usage count (if it's on) now also says, by name only, whether the
newest features get used: the voice changer's Background, hiding a category from All,
setup share codes, the phone remote and control API, and its chat commands and alerts.
SECURITY.md lists each one.
Voice tab: the tabs at the top are bigger with a line under them, and My setups sits in its own slim box with smaller buttons, so the tabs, your setups and the card below no longer run together.
Pressing "Not now" on two tabs' how-tos within a minute switches the rest off, so
clicking through the tabs isn't held up on every one. Settings → General turns them
back on.
Switching the Community tab off in Settings while its list was loading made the tab
say "Couldn't open the store" instead of "The store is off". It says it's off now, and
the list comes back as soon as the tab is switched on again.
The Community tab refuses shared sounds, links and voices whose name or tags hold a link
or a blocked word, and blocked words can't sneak past with accents, spaces, dots,
look-alike numbers (b4d) or stretched letters. A refused share now says why.
A category can be left out of All: right-click its tab, Advanced, Hide its sounds from All.
Handy for a big imported pack you only want on its own tab. Advanced also holds the
random-sound hotkey and Export as a sound pack now.
The voice changer has a Background: rain, wind, an engine, a crowd, a spaceship hum or a
crackling fire behind your voice, each with its own level, or up to four sounds from
your board. Every one has a "Speed and pitch" button for its speed, pitch, bass, muffle
and reverb, with quick picks like "Next room" and "Through a wall". It plays only while
you talk unless you switch that off.
"Make it yours" is now called "Edit voice".
Onion Board now opens in front of your other windows when you start it (for example from
the installer's last page), instead of behind your browser. A start with Windows still
stays quiet in the tray.
The control API (Settings → Remote) takes chat commands: a bot like Streamer.bot sends
each chat line to /api/chat and viewers can use !sound, !sounds, !random, !say,
!voice and !stop, with cooldowns, who may use each, a category chat is kept to,
blocked words, and a reply for the bot to post back. It can read chat aloud too.
Alerts and donations: /api/event plays a sound, a random one from a category, says a
thank-you or puts on a voice for a while for follows, subs, bits, raids, tips, channel
points or TikTok gifts, set per type and amount with /api/alerts. It also reads what
Twitch, StreamElements, Streamlabs and Ko-fi send. /api/feed lists what they did.
The control API reaches the newer parts of the app: the Apps tab, My setups, a random
voice (or any voice for some seconds), all hotkeys off / on, Mute my mic while a sound
plays, and sound search. A POST can send its values as JSON or a form.
Share codes work for My setups now: right-click a setup → Copy share code, and Import a
code (next to Save what's on) adds it, AI voice and language included. AI voices get codes
too, from the Share a voice window. Old voice codes still import.
A setup someone else made no longer turns on a different voice of yours that happens to
have the same name.
Bun wears his theme's look everywhere now: his paw holding a skit's prop or the
download bar's quill, and his ears popping out of the build cloud, are his theme's
fur instead of plain white. Pictures of him (help cards, the theme switch, message
boxes, the Appearance cards) and the small Bun in the setup guide no longer cut off
the tip of an upright ear or the sides of a wide collar.
Hoot the owl (in the Triggers tab) dresses for every theme like Bun does: his own
feather colour, eye colour, belly marks, ear tufts and beak. Dark keeps plain teal Hoot.
A bug no longer pops up an "Onion Board hit a problem" window while you use the app. It's saved on your PC and, with the usage count on, counted a minute later so it gets fixed. Settings → About shows See report if you want to send one yourself.
Tor: switching on Offline mode after Tor couldn't connect now says Tor stays off in
Offline mode, instead of still showing the old connection error.
Fixed a short freeze the quick-setup guide could cause on its last step, where it keeps
checking Discord's settings.
Setting up the mic effect no longer says it can't find your mic after you plug it into
another USB port (Windows renames it "2- …" there).
The anonymous usage count (if it's on) now also says, by name only, which newer features
get used: Live controls setups, list view, voice keys, auto push-to-talk, the voice
leveler, Up next, Bun's games, the Store's order and categories. SECURITY.md lists each one.
The Free sounds tab is now called Community, with a new look: it sits in the middle
of the window, Bun greets you in his headphones at the top (he cheers when you add a
sound and looks sad when nothing turns up), and every sound and voice has a coloured
picture of what it is. A sound's bars bounce on its picture while it plays, and the
chips have pictures too.
A working mic no longer looks broken before your sounds are in it. The Setup tab
says "Your mic works" in green, with its level, above "Your sounds aren't in your mic
yet", and the sidebar and the mic card say "1 step left" instead of "Not set up". The
quick-setup guide says the same on its mic and send steps.
"What others hear" gets a "Voice only" tag until your sounds are in your mic, and its
meter no longer moves with sounds nobody else hears yet.
The guide's last step no longer shows an empty box when your sounds aren't in your
mic yet, when only you hear them, or when the virtual cable is missing.
Picking a setup with an AI voice in Live controls asks first, since it takes a while.
A sound made in the AI voice says when it's ready to play.
Updating no longer opens the setup guide again for people who already used an earlier
version (it did when the guide was finished before sounds reached voice chat). The
first thing after an update is now What's new.
What's new covers this version again (it had stopped at 1.9.20), in your language, and
an update over several versions shows only the newest few changes instead of a long list.
13 new voice changer voices: Drunk, Choir, Goblin, Fairy, Zombie, Evil twin, Giant,
Mecha, Ship computer, Pilot, Drive-thru speaker, Old film and Cathedral, each with its
own picture.
A Random voice card after the last voice: it turns on one of the voices shown, picked
at random (from your favorites when Favorites is picked). Settings → Hotkeys has a
Random voice key for it.
Hear it for the voice changer: a short line said in the voice, in your headphones
only, from the bar under the voices or a voice's right-click menu.
Wobble's Vibrato now reaches 40 ms, enough for a slow sway of a semitone or two.
Bun and Hoot have been redrawn in a softer storybook style: rounder faces, sparkly eyes,
little brows, head tilts, Bun's floppy ear and tail, stubby arms that clasp when he hopes
and fold when he's cross, and Hoot's open beak when he cheers. Every outfit, act and
Easter egg is still there.
Bun looks different in every theme: his fur, ears, tail (fluffy, long, a tuft, a heart),
eye colour, markings (an eye patch, spots, a mask), nose and ear colours, and paw prints
under his feet. Dark keeps plain Bun.
Each theme card in Settings shows Bun dressed for that theme, and he waves when you
point at it.
Clearer icons: a solid speaker, mic, headphones, eye and gear, and rounder sound
bars.
Live controls on the Sounds, Radio and Apps tabs has My setups: put one of the voice
setups you saved on the Voice tab on everything playing. Its voice changer voice is on
at once. With an AI voice, a sound is made in that voice first (it pauses and carries
on from the same spot) and the radio or a program waits while the AI voice gets ready,
with a progress bar and Cancel.
Store → Voices: share your voice changer voices, AI voices and setups with everyone, and
get theirs. Hear any of them first, vote on them, report bad ones. Only settings are
shared, never your voice. Right-click one of your voices or setups → Share to the store.
Cards or a list, everywhere: two little icons at the top right of the Sounds, Apps and
Voice tabs switch between them, the one in use lit. Apps' list puts each program on one
line (level, Send, Record, volume); Voice's list shows a small picture beside each name,
more voices on the screen. Each tab remembers its choice. On Sounds the switch replaces
the Cards / List items in the order menu.
The AI voices have pictures now, drawn like the voice changer's.
Live controls (the speed, pitch and effects box on Sounds, Radio and Apps) is a pop-up
again: it opens right above its button and a click anywhere outside closes it, instead
of a separate window you had to drag and close. The sound modes' What do these do?
and a sound's source details work the same way.
The sound store checks every shared file from end to end, not just its first bytes: a
program, script or web page dressed up as an MP3 or WAV is refused, and sound names lose
markup and the hidden characters that can make "x.exe" look like "x.mp3". The app also
keeps a store download only when it really starts like the sound it says it is.
Your voice setups can be renamed to anything you like: right-click one under My setups
and pick Rename.
Six new AI voices: Atlas (a deep storyteller), Sarge (a barking drill sergeant), Nana (an
older woman), Zoe (a young woman), Onyx (a very low woman's voice) and Bean (a little kid).
They need no new download.
Muted for over a minute: the Live switch gets a yellow ring (and, with the side bar open, shows how long it's been muted), so a forgotten mute isn't mistaken for a broken app.
Saving a sound with a voice (or any slow effect) shows how far it is: a progress bar and
time left in the Edit window, which you can now close while it carries on, and a bar
with a percentage on the pad. An ✕ on either stops it and the sound keeps its old
effects. Pressing the pad meanwhile says why it can't play yet. The render now runs
outside the app, so long songs no longer make the app lag or the audio stutter.
Bun's Easter egg game: Pong's paddle now follows the mouse even when it leaves the court (it no longer sticks), and holding an arrow key glides it smoothly instead of needing fast taps.
Bun now picks a game at random when he challenges you: Pong, quick draw, rock paper scissors or tic-tac-toe, each with its own sounds in your theme's style. Another game at the end switches to a different one.
The Community tab's stop button is easy to see in every theme now (it was black on a
near-black row in Amber Terminal and other dark themes). Record buttons keep their red
when switched on in Hacker and other green or red themes, Setup's "Straight into my mic"
icon shows on its filled button, and a few icons on buttons in Barbie, Flashbang and
Retro 98 are darker so they read.
Switching the theme, its texture or your highlight colour blends now instead of flashing:
the dimming and Bun fade in over a tenth of a second (they used to appear in one frame),
and the old look fades a little more gently into the new one.
Radio: the first station you play asks once who should hear it (just you, or you
and others), and the app remembers. The Send button now says "Send to others" and is
outlined in your theme colour while only you hear the radio, and the line under the
list has a "Send to others" link right where you're looking.
Hoot moves like Bun now: his ear tufts and wings trail behind his hops and wobble back,
a landing squashes him a little, and his acts ease in and out instead of snapping (waking
up when the mouse comes near, a click cutting a beg short). His dance bob no longer jumps
at the end of each beat and lands right on the hit.
2.4.0 — 2026-10-17
Free sounds: switching it off in Settings > Privacy & security while its list was still
loading now says The store is off with a way to Settings, instead of
Couldn't open the store.
Fixed an error that could pop up when an Undo card closed after the page it belonged to
was already gone.
The first-run tour is one card now, and it can't be clicked away by accident: clicks
around it do nothing until the search step, which has a Not now button. Add a sound
and it says well done.
Radio, Apps, Triggers, Voice and Store each show a quick how-to the first time you
open them: do the thing (play a station, pick a voice…) or press Not now. Turn them
off in Settings > General > Show tutorials.
Up next is now one chip with how many sounds wait. Click it for the whole list: every
name in full, a ✕ on each (even the 10th of 13, which you couldn't reach before) and
Clear for all of them.
Sounds can be said in a voice: right-click a pad → Effects → Voice opens picture cards
of every voice changer voice, the AI voices and your setups (Favorites and your own
first). A voice changer voice and an AI voice can go on together. It's laid on once
and kept; the original file is never changed.
Voice tab → My setups: save the voice changer voice, AI voice and language you have
on as one named setup, turn it all on again with one click, or put it on sounds.
Spamming Play and Add on lots of search results works: up to 30 Adds wait their turn
(it was 3), and a Play or Add clicked on a song that's still downloading isn't lost
when you click another song or type a new search. That used to blank the download
bar while the song kept downloading.
Bun has a little skit for every theme, played now and then while he's idle (on an
empty board, in Bun mode): in Blood Moon he grabs the moon out of the sky, takes a
bite and finds it's cheese; in Retro 98 his shades drop onto his face; in Brainrot his
propeller lifts him off the ground; and so on. Themes without an outfit juggle.
Sound store: Myinstants' sounds are in the store's list now, with thumbs up and down like
the rest (they play and download from Myinstants). Every sound has a category to pick,
and Top, New and Trending are buttons on the card instead of a menu.
The Store tab is now called Free sounds, so nobody mistakes it for a shop: every sound
in it is free.
Stream Deck and other control-API presses right after the app starts are answered at
once, not after a few seconds or with "the app is busy": the update check and the
start-up work behind the loading screen no longer hold them up.
Bun mode's Bun dances to what's playing: on the beat, and in the song's style. He
headbangs to rock and metal, hops side to side to electronic music, nods along to
hip-hop, sways with his eyes shut to something calm and talks along when someone's
speaking. His notes come out on the beat and grow and shrink with him, and he gets
bored, then sad, when nothing has played for a while.
Sound store: the share window, the README and the website now say how to get a sound
taken down: email onionboard.contact@proton.me.
Hotkeys no longer take the key away from your game: press F1 (or W) in a game and the
game still gets it while your sound plays. Settings → Hotkeys → Keys in games turns
it off if you'd rather only Onion Board got the key. The overlay's number keys are
still kept from the game while it's open.
Settings: every drop-down now has a name a screen reader says (Audio buffering, your mic
and headphones, Send my sounds to, download and video quality, radio stations, and the
overlay's), instead of a bare "combo box".
The Chat tab is gone. Chat was switched off for everyone on 2026-10-17, and the tab is
now removed from the app. Settings saved with it open just fine.
2.3.1 — 2026-10-17
Chat: with nobody talking, the Chat tab no longer asks the server again and again
without a pause; it waits for news and asks at most about once a second.
Chat and the sound store: reports now count once per internet address, so one person
can't mute someone or take a sound off the store with made-up installs. Mutes and bans
cover the address too, and reports and votes have their own limits.
Search results and the store: a title with HTML in it shows as plain text in its tooltip.
Settings: with the Sounds or Radio tab underneath, pressing Space on a box you clicked now
ticks it, instead of playing or pausing the sound.
2.3.0 — 2026-10-16
Pong with Bun opens again in the installed app: it stopped with a missing-module error.
Renaming a category or subcategory to a name that's cut back to the one it already has
now says names can be up to 30 characters, instead of doing nothing.
New Chat tab: one anonymous, text-only room for everyone using Onion Board. It is off until
you add it (+ More tabs, or Settings > Tabs) and shows its rules the first time you open it.
You get a made-up name like Cute Onion or Red Car, new every time you open the app, links
are blocked, and you can mute a name or report a message (enough reports mute someone for an hour). It has its own switch in
Settings > Privacy & security.
New Store tab: free CC0 sounds anyone can use. Hear one first, add it to your Sounds in
one click, and give it a thumbs up or down so the best ones come first. Share your own
there too, as a file or as a link to a video (only the link is shared: right-click a
sound you downloaded and pick Share to the store). Shared sounds show up once they've
been checked, and you can report one that breaks the rules. The store has its own
switch in Settings > Privacy & security, and you can hide the tab like the others.
Trending on Myinstants: the Search button's menu now has a line that shows the meme
sounds people play most on Myinstants right now (the ones for your country). Play one
once or add it as a pad, like any search result; no words to type.
A new install's board no longer stays empty: if you skip the first-run tour (or leave it)
without adding anything, 25 short starter sounds (air horn, vine boom, bruh, rimshot…)
are added for you, in a tab of their own called Starter. They come with the app (under
1 MB, no download), and you can delete or rename them like any sound. Add a song during
the tour and they aren't added.
Every voice on the Voice tab can have its own hotkey: right-click its card and pick
Set a hotkey…. The key turns the voice changer on with that voice, so you can swap
between voices in a call without opening the app.
The tray icon has a Voice changer menu: turn it on or off, or pick one of your
starred and saved voices.
Closing Onion Board now puts Discord's noise suppression, echo cancellation and
automatic volume back the way you talk, so your plain voice sounds right without
the board. If Discord is still open, a notification says so and it's done the
moment Discord closes. "Put Discord back for talking on close" switches it off.
New free pack in Free sound packs: the General sound pack, 483 sounds in 20 categories
(memes, comedy, game show, crowds, animals, video game, combat, sci-fi, magic, horror,
nature and more). All CC0.
Bun moves more smoothly and feels more alive: twice the frame rate, ears that trail
behind his hops and wobble as they settle, a squash on every landing, and quicker,
more natural blinks (now and then a double blink).
Your voice now stays at one volume while you talk, loud or quiet, so friends don't
have to keep turning you up and down with voice chat's own automatic volume off.
Settings has a "Keep my voice at one volume" box to switch it off.
2.2.2 — 2026-10-16
AI voices: a voice card only lights up while the AI voice is on, like the Voice changer
cards, instead of the saved voice looking switched on when it was off.
Fixed a short freeze while the mic effect is on: re-checking the mic effect's state no
longer starts a new thread each time (the window waited for Windows to start it).
The FFmpeg check no longer fails with an error when Windows can't look at winget's
FFmpeg shortcut; it carries on looking elsewhere.
Settings > Connection: the Get Tor button now sits right next to the Tor choice.
Mic effect set-up no longer says your mic isn't plugged in while the meter shows it
working: it now finds the mic the same way the meter does (spacing and case ignored).
The anonymous usage count (if you left Count me in on) now sends the tabs and features
you used since the last daily count when you close the app, instead of a day later, so
the last day before someone stops using the app is counted too. Same names as
before; the close waits 2 s at most.
2.2.1 — 2026-10-16
A link whose download kept getting cut off no longer sits on "Adding… 90%" for good: after
a minute without new data it stops and says "The download stopped moving. Try again."
Radio: in a narrow window, where the map is hidden, the search box and the station count no longer tell you to click a dot on the map.
Mic effect set-up: when your picked mic can't be found, it now says why. If Windows no longer knows that mic, or two mics have names alike, it asks you to pick your mic again in Setup → Devices instead of saying it isn't plugged in.
Setup's Onion Pocket card says it's waiting for Windows to allow it while Windows asks
about the firewall, instead of "it couldn't start".
Making a new category (or subcategory) with a name you already have now says
"There's already a …" and goes to it, instead of doing nothing you could see.
Auto push-to-talk presses the game's key as a sound starts. With the board minimised it
came up to a quarter of a second late, so a game that only sends while the key is held
cut the start of the sound.
Fixed a rare freeze while sending sounds straight into your mic: the check for apps recording your mic (every 2 seconds) no longer starts a new thread each time, which could leave the window stuck. MIDI, the Onion Pocket network check and two Settings pages got the same fix.
Opening Settings no longer reads every language file again each time: the list of languages is read once, so Settings can't stall on a slow disk or while a virus scanner is busy.
Setup's Devices card now says when your headphones or mic won't open (unplugged), and
stops once they're back. Before, only a toast said it, and it faded.
On a slow first start (the virus scan checking a just-installed FFmpeg), the app waits up to a minute for FFmpeg to answer instead of 8 seconds, so it no longer calls a working FFmpeg broken and downloads it again.
Settings > Updates no longer says "Get FFmpeg" when FFmpeg is installed: the FFmpeg row now checks and shows "Working" even when Updates is opened before Data & quality.
Adding a free sound pack puts it in one tab named after it ("Streamer") with its
categories inside, instead of also making an empty tab for each of its categories.
Opening the Radio tab for the first time no longer freezes the whole window for several
seconds on a slow or busy disk.
FFmpeg got by the installer no longer shows as FFmpeg won't start (some of its files are gone) the first time the app opens, and the app no longer downloads a second copy of it: on PCs where winget can't make its usual shortcut to FFmpeg, the app now finds it in winget's own folder.
Importing the same soundboard yourself while the installer's import of it is still
running no longer adds every sound twice, or asks "Keep your imported sounds?" after
you already said yes.
Several copies of one game: when you close one copy and start it again, its
triggers now follow that copy. Before, it came back as the newest copy, so its
triggers watched another copy (and that copy's pictures set them off).
Pictures that sat plainly in a game window are caught at once: some bigger
pictures, ones with a sharp edge or mark in them, were taken for a look-alike
for a few seconds before they counted, so one that showed for only 2 or 3 seconds
could be missed. They now go off on the first check that sees them.
0.13.0 (2026-10-18)
Limited-edition Halloween theme: pumpkin orange and witch purple with cobwebs,
Hoot in a witch's hat, and the logo carved into a jack-o'-lantern whose eye still
glows and looks around. It's the first card in Settings > Appearance: use it by
31 October and it's yours to keep; after that it's gone.
Settings > Appearance: Textured or Plain now sits on the Themes tab, and the theme
cards widen to fill each row with even gaps.
The version under the name: the header now says "by Onion Alien · v0.13.0" (the
version you have), as Onion Board's does.
No more double sounds when a game's picture blinks dark: if a window's capture
came out black for a moment while a picture stayed up, its trigger went off again
when the picture came back. It now plays once, however often the capture blinks.
A game restarted with its picture up plays it again: if a watched window closed
while a trigger's picture showed and came back showing it, the trigger stayed quiet
until the picture went away once. A window that closes and opens again now counts
as a fresh start (the cooldown still holds).
0.12.0 (2026-10-17)
Hoot on every theme card: each theme in Settings > Appearance shows Hoot dressed
for that theme, waving hello.
Smoother all round: switching themes fades over instead of flashing half-styled
for a moment; the start-up hop, the logo and the live score bars move smoothly
instead of jumping.
A click on the logo gives it a little wobble, like Onion Board's.
0.11.4 (2026-10-16)
Fewer wrong sounds after alt-tabbing out of a fullscreen game: Windows can
hand back an old picture of the game once, from before you went fullscreen, so a
trigger could go off for something long gone. That copy is skipped now.
0.11.3 (2026-10-16)
Fewer wrong sounds: a small match now has to look like the picture all the
way down, not just on the whole, so a picture is no longer "found" on something
that only shares its outline (a bright bar over a dark panel, say).
A game that stops responding no longer holds up the triggers of your other games
until it answers again.
A game restored from minimized no longer sets off a trigger for something that
went away while it was minimized: Windows hands back the old picture once, and
that copy is skipped now.
The View box says "Cards (too narrow)" when List and editor is picked but the
window is too narrow for it, instead of "List and editor" over a page of cards.
0.11.2 (2026-10-15)
New trigger: "A bar runs low", "A chat line changes" and "Everything stops
moving" now get their own step 2 in the same pop-up, like "Something shows up" and
"Something goes away", instead of jumping straight to the window list. Paste a
screenshot of the game, drop one in, or take it from the game as it is now; then
pick the game's window and drag the box round the bar, the chat or the part to
watch. A screenshot works even while the game is minimized.
A game switching into (or back into) exclusive fullscreen is seen again within
about a tenth of a second, instead of after a second and a half.
0.11.1 (2026-10-15)
Screens with HDR or automatic colour management: a screen Windows shows in
HDR, or with Windows 11's automatic colour management (on by default on many new
laptops), was read far too dark, so screen triggers and fullscreen games there
matched badly. Its true colours are read now.
A game in exclusive fullscreen that loses focus but keeps its screen (you clicked
onto another monitor) is still seen while nothing else is shown over it, instead of
coming out black.
0.11.0 (2026-10-15)
Fullscreen games: a game window you're playing in fullscreen (exclusive or
borderless) is now read straight off its screen, so exclusive-fullscreen games no
longer come out black when you watch their window, and it costs less. Alt-tab away
and the window is copied as before. A screen watched both as a screen and as a
fullscreen game's window works too.
Stay quiet while I'm in that window now also works for a trigger watching a
screen: it stays quiet while a fullscreen game you're playing fills that screen.
Cutting a picture from a game that's minimized or comes out black now says how to
get one anyway: a game in exclusive fullscreen hides itself when you switch to the
app, so take a screenshot in the game and paste it.
With Max detection: only while away, a game that switches the screen to another
resolution no longer counts as you being away, so the extra checks stay off while
you play.
Start watching plays a start-up animation that suits your theme: a laser sweep
in the dark red themes, code rain in the terminal ones, neon rings, petals, a sonar
ping, embers, fireflies, an 8-bit burst, a comic "!", a flashbang, confetti or a
shine. The logo also has a small idle animation in each theme's style (a breathing
glow, a shine, a scan line, a neon buzz, fireflies...), stronger while it watches, and
its eye slowly looks around while it watches.