Chris Hoffman
If you’re a PC gamer, you probably use too many game stores. Steam, Epic, Origin, Uplay, Twitch, GOG, Battle.net, Bethesda—it goes on and on. Playnite is a universal library for all your PC games, and it’s open source.
Using Playnite is simple: Just download and install the free Playnite application for Windows, go through the quick setup process. It will automatically scan your PC for installed games and show them in the Playnite application window. Playnite supports Battle.net, Bethesda, Epic, GOG, itch.io, Origin, Steam, Twitch, and Uplay.
Here’s why this is awesome: Playnite does all of this automatically. Whenever you launch the application, it scans for new games, and you can also manually trigger a scan. Just press F5 or click menu>Update Game Library>Update All. You can even have Playnite connect to your accounts so it can show you games you own but don’t have installed right now, although this feature is optional.
You can also manually add games to the library just by dragging and dropping them into the window, which means you can add Minecraft, any games you purchased from the Windows Store, and anything else you like. Playnite supports emulators, too.
When you want to play a game, click the “Play” button and Playnite will automatically launch the appropriate launcher and start the game. You can also open the full-screen interface (press F11) and use a game controller to launch your games.
Rather than pinning a huge number of game launchers to your taskbar and then trying to remember which games are where, you can see them in a single application. Games like Apex Legends, Fortnite, and Overwatch will be in the same launcher as all the games you own on Steam. Free games you get from Twitch Prime or the Epic Game Store will be right there along with your other games, too.
We keep seeing Playnite recommended in comments on websites, forum threads, and posts on Reddit. That strong word of mouth inspired us to try it, and it’s great.
