Highball 0.8.0 is the release where the app stops asking you to learn what a bottle is.
First launch is one button. Get started installs Rosetta if your Mac lacks it, downloads the engine and prepares one Windows environment, all on a strip at the bottom of the window with a Stop button. No licence checkbox, no bottle name, no Terminal command.
Where are your games? With nothing installed yet, the library asks that question and offers Steam, Epic, or a Windows program you already have. Steam's first start takes 15 to 25 minutes, and the card says so.
One library, no sidebar. The window is your games. Add games and Settings live in the toolbar. Environments, the engine and troubleshooting moved to Settings (⌘,), where the full environment page still exists for anyone who wants it.
The game page tells the truth. It leads with a sentence: who verified the game, on which chip, at what frame rate, how long ago, and whether that matches your Mac. Then Play, then the list of what Play will do, with the time each step costs. Why these settings? shows the database notes and what each graphics mode did. Everything else is under Advanced.
Everything that takes time lives on one strip. Downloads show bytes and a measured rate on a bar, slow steps show the range they usually take, a running game shows with Stop, a Steam client left running shows with Show and Quit. Nothing is modal.
Play from outside Highball. Right-click a game and choose Make a Mac app: a small app in ~/Applications/Highball starts that game without opening Highball first. Scripts and Shortcuts can use highball:// links.
After play, one question. When a session of a minute or more ends, the strip asks how it went. It played fine opens a prefilled compatibility report; Had problems opens a problem report with the log. Both are yours to send or not.
Fixes. A game launched from the library while a Steam window was open inherited that client's graphics mode and sync setting; Highball now restarts the client first when they differ. Starting Steam or a pinned program no longer keeps the app busy until it exits. Games installed from an open Steam window appear within seconds. The early-exit alert names how long the program lived and under which graphics mode, and opens the log from a button. Counter-Strike 2 uses DXMT on macOS 15 and newer, where it was played at about 70 frames per second on an M1 Pro, and DXVK below.
Opt-in install statistics. Highball keeps a local count of installs, failures and first launches. After your first game it asks once whether to share them; you read the exact text before anything leaves your Mac. Off by default.