Updates

What is on the page

The version badge sits under the logo, always visible, and clicking it opens Settings → Updates. Everything that can be updated right now is on that one screen, in this order:

• Application — the version you have, a one-line summary of the update on offer, a Check now button and a Download and install button. On a tester's account this card also carries the Update channel picker.
• Under that summary, a stable release has a What changed in full link: it opens the release history on straimer.com at that version. A test version has no page there, so Show everything unfolds its Added and Fixed lists right on this screen.
• Under the application card, a note with a Download page link — the way to install by hand when the automatic route does not work.
• Modules — updates for installed modules, with an Update all button when there is more than one. The buttons are here; what a module update can and cannot do is in the guide "Module Catalog".
• Release history — recent releases of your channel, including the one you are running, with a Roll back button on the ones you can return to. How the channel and rolling back work is in the guide "Test builds and rolling back".
• Anonymous install ping — the one thing the app reports about itself when you are not signed in. Signed in, it also reports whether you are live: see "Signed in: the live report" below.
• Require a newer app version — at the very bottom: modules that have a newer version out, but one that needs a newer app than you have.

Updating is always manual. There is no automatic update and no schedule — the app never installs anything on its own.

When the app checks

The app checks by itself at startup and every 30 minutes; the answer is cached for the same 30 minutes, so Check now is the way to force a fresh look.

How an install goes

1. Press Download and install. The button reads Downloading… while the file arrives, and the percentage runs on the card.
2. The file is checked — its size, its checksum and its signature — then Install the update? asks to confirm. Press Install. Closing that question changes nothing — the file stays ready on disk, and the button now reads Install instead of downloading a second time.
3. The app closes and the Windows installer opens. Settings, tokens and statistics stay in place.

Do not do this in the middle of a broadcast — the app closes.

The installer is a little over 150 megabytes and usually arrives in a minute or two. If it crawls for noticeably longer, the likely cause is the route between you and the server rather than your own connection: there is nothing to gain from testing your speed or reinstalling the app. The download can be left running while you do something else — it breaks nothing, and the installation only starts once you confirm it.

Updating a module from here

Press Update on the module's row. The row you pressed is the one that reports the work: its buttons go inactive and Updating… appears on it while the package is downloaded, checked and unpacked. A second or two is normal. When it is over, the row leaves the list, because there is nothing left on it to update.

Update all does the same to every module in turn, and the row it has reached is the one showing it. A bundle moves as a whole: one row, one press, its members updated one after another.

The same buttons sit on the module's card in the catalog, and it makes no difference which of the two screens you press them on. What a module update can and cannot do is in the guide "Module Catalog".

The YouTube bot sign-in after a bigger update

Some releases move the app onto a newer browser engine. The bot sign-in window on the YouTube page keeps its sign-in in a store that belongs to that engine, and a store written by a different engine is thrown away rather than carried across. This works in both directions, up and down.

What it costs you is small, and it is worth knowing in advance:

• The bot keeps writing. Its access to YouTube is held by strAImer itself, not by that window, so timers, command replies and the AI agent go on exactly as before.
• The window will want a sign-in the next time you open it, for instance to move the bot to another channel. The button is Sign in again or change the channel on the YouTube page, and the guide "YouTube Integration" describes what happens there.

Going down to an older build says so before it installs. The entry in Release history and the confirmation window both carry the same line: The YouTube bot sign-in window will ask you to sign in again: that version has an older browser engine, and it erases newer sign-in data. The bot itself keeps working. An ordinary update forward carries no such line: the consequence is the same, and there is nothing to decide about it.

The warning about Windows blocking the update

strAImer's installer is not signed with a publisher certificate yet, and one Windows 11 feature — Smart App Control — refuses unsigned installers outright. On a computer where it is switched on, the update cannot install at all.

The app reads that setting and says so before the download: when an update is available and this machine has the feature on, a warning appears on the application card with a Download page link to the instructions. Nobody else sees it — where the feature is off, missing, or in the "Evaluation" state Windows uses while it decides, nothing is blocked and the card looks as it always did. That is the usual case.

Download and install stays available: the feature can be switched off in Windows and the button pressed straight after. strAImer never touches that setting itself — it only reads whether it is on, because turning a Windows protection off is yours to decide.

What that Windows window looks like, and where the switch lives, is in the article "Update will not install".

Installing from the site by hand

The note under the application card is the fallback for an update the app could not install itself: download the installer from the site through the Download page link and run it over the current version. That page also lists the recent releases with their changelogs, so it is the place to look when the app itself will not start.

There is nothing to uninstall first. The installer replaces the program in place, and settings, tokens and statistics are kept outside it, so they survive untouched.

One failure this does not get around is Windows refusing the installer outright. Smart App Control blocks the file itself, not the route it came by, so a copy fetched by hand is refused exactly the same way — the article "Update will not install" is where that one is dealt with.

The same Download page button also appears in the Update was not installed window, so the manual route is one press away from most failures. The hotkey helper is the one that window answers differently, and that is the next section.

When the hotkey helper is in the way

The hotkey helper is the background piece that keeps hotkeys working while a game running as administrator is in focus. It runs with administrator rights of its own, so the installer cannot close it — and an installer that cannot close every part of the app stops with an error instead of replacing files.

The app stops the helper itself before handing over to the installer, and on most machines that is the end of it: the helper stays switched on in your settings and comes back with the new version. Nothing to do afterwards.

When it cannot be stopped, the install does not start at all, and the Update was not installed window offers a Turn the helper off and update button. That button is the one with a lasting cost. It switches the helper off in your settings — for good, not for the duration of the update — and installs. So once the new version starts, switch it back on with Turn on in the settings of the Panel: Buttons tile, where it was switched on in the first place. Hotkeys keep working meanwhile, except in games running as administrator.

When even that fails, the article "Update will not install" says what to press.

Anonymous install ping

The card near the bottom of the page. About once a day the app tells the server that this copy is alive: a number it made up for itself, the version and the channel it is on, the operating system and the interface language. No name, no email, no account, nothing out of your settings. It is how a release can be seen reaching people at all — the app works on your computer, and without this an install does not exist from the outside.

The exact rhythm: the first ping goes out five minutes after the app starts, and after that one on every day the app runs for at least five minutes. Days are counted in UTC, and a stream that runs past midnight UTC sends the new day's ping five minutes after midnight. One thing skips the wait — installing a different version, which is reported straight away, because "did the release reach anyone" is the question the ping exists for.

Send the anonymous ping is on out of the box, and the line under it says when the last one went out. Turning it off sends nothing at all — not an empty ping, nothing. The number itself is only created when the first ping goes out, so turning the ping off inside those first five minutes leaves no number on the disk either.

Signed in: the live report

While you are signed in to a strAImer account, the app also tells straimer.com whether you are live: the platforms you are live on, your channel names and the stream category. Viewer counts and the stream title are not sent. While a switch on your streamer page shows your stream, the report goes out when a stream starts or ends, every two minutes during it and about every fifteen minutes otherwise. With those switches off, or with no streamer page, it goes out about every fifteen minutes, live or not.

It is sent even when your streamer page shows nothing: that is how the server learns that a switch was turned on, on this computer or another. What is shown in public is decided by the switches on the streamer page, described in the guide "Streamer Page".

The report has no switch of its own, and the ping toggle above does not affect it. Signing out of the account stops it.

Uninstalling strAImer

Remove the app the usual Windows way: Windows Settings, Apps, Installed apps (Apps & features on Windows 10), then strAImer and Uninstall.

Uninstalling keeps your data. Settings, platform tokens, statistics, logs, images and sounds stay in %APPDATA%\straimer, and installing again later picks all of it up as it was. For a clean start, delete that folder by hand after uninstalling. That cannot be undone, so make a backup first if anything there matters (the guide "Backup").

If the hotkey helper was ever switched on, Windows asks for administrator rights during the uninstall: that is the uninstaller removing the helper's background task. Refuse, and it says so and offers to try again.

Uninstalling does not touch your strAImer account or a subscription. Auto-renewal is turned off, and the account deleted, in the cabinet on straimer.com (the guide "Account and Credits").

What this page cannot do

• Install on its own. No automatic update, no schedule, no "install it overnight".
• Update without closing the app. The installer replaces files the running app is holding, so there is no way to update mid-stream and stay on air.
• Change a Windows setting for you. The app reads whether the protection is on and warns you; switching it off happens in Windows Security, by you.
• Manage modules. Their updates are on this page, but installing, uninstalling, bundles and rolling a single module back live in the catalog — the guide "Module Catalog".