Project updates.

BootForge 0.1.31 is going out on Google Play, to half of users first. A staged rollout reaches a share of users at a time, so it may take a few days to arrive on your phone.

Browse the files inside an ISO. In the Library, an ISO now has Browse contents. It opens the image and lets you walk its folders, see file sizes, and read its text files in the same free viewer the file browser uses, all before you copy it anywhere. Nothing on that screen writes, and it is free. It reads Windows ISOs and the usual Linux ones; if an image is in a format BootForge doesn’t recognise, it says it can’t show the files, which says nothing about whether the image boots. Looking inside an image.

A download cut off part-way is no longer shown as complete. When a download stalled and the connection was dropped, BootForge could in some cases treat the partial file as finished. It now reports the download as failed, so you can retry it.

FAT32 drives are named as FAT32. A drive prepared with a FAT32 data partition used to show an exFAT badge on Home and offer a boot-menu theme and persistence, which BootForge can only write to exFAT. The badge now names the file system it finds, and those two options appear only where they work. A FAT32 drive BootForge prepares also uses the standard FAT32 partition type, so a Mac now mounts it like any other FAT32 stick. BootForge still can’t list or manage the files on a FAT32 drive from your phone; add images to it from a computer or the system file manager. Choosing the filesystem.

The built-in distro list is refreshed, so the copy the app shows on a fresh install or offline points at newer releases of several distributions. Once the app is online it fetches the current catalog anyway.

BootForge 0.1.30 is on Google Play. Its rollout has finished, and it is what you have unless 0.1.31 has already reached your phone, which carries every change below forward.

The built-in distro list is refreshed. The app carries a copy of the catalog so the Catalog tab has something to show on a fresh install and when you are offline. That copy now holds 101 entries instead of 94, and 25 of the ones already in it pointed at versions that have since been superseded. It is a starting point either way: once the app can reach the network it fetches the current catalog, so nothing here changes what you can download.

A crash while reading a drive is fixed. On a damaged or unusual drive, reading the files could use far more memory than the drive’s contents justified, and the app closed. BootForge now bounds that read, and a drive it cannot make sense of is reported as unsupported with the reason it saw, instead of taking the app down with it.

That fix first shipped in 0.1.29, which reached only a small share of users before 0.1.30 replaced it. If you are coming from 0.1.28, this release carries both.

BootForge 0.1.28 is on Google Play. Its staged rollout reached half of users before 0.1.30 took over, and every change below is carried forward there, so this is what you get whichever of the two lands on your phone. It answers three things users reported.

Persistence past 16 GB. You now type the size of a new persistence file in gigabytes, decimals included, and the only ceiling is the biggest unbroken free space on the drive. Creating the file is also much faster, because BootForge now writes only the filesystem’s own structures. If you want every byte of the file overwritten first, tick Erase old data in the file (slow) on the confirmation; on a slow stick that takes more than a minute per gigabyte. How it works.

An import failure says why. Importing an image saves a full copy on your phone, and the app used to blame the file when the real problem was free space. BootForge now checks the space before copying, and a failed import names the cause it saw: not enough space, a file it couldn’t read, or a storage folder it couldn’t reach. Importing.

ISOs that only boot on older BIOS PCs. Some ISOs, Tiny Core Linux among them, carry no boot entry for UEFI, which is how most modern PCs start. When BootForge can read that from the image, it tells you as soon as you pick it, along with the firmware settings that can boot it. You can still write it. Details.

Stability improvements round out the release.

BootForge 0.1.27 is now on Google Play for everyone. It carries everything from 0.1.26, which reached a small share of users first, plus a round of fixes. Every new feature below is free.

Back up & restore a whole drive. Under Tools, BootForge can now save a USB drive to one file on your phone and write it back later. The file is a compressed .img.gz or, if you prefer, a plain .img that desktop imaging tools read. Empty space is skipped by default, which makes a mostly empty drive much faster, and a restore can skip it too. Backing up only ever reads the drive. How it works.

Persistence for live Linux. On a Ventoy drive, the drive card’s ⋮ menu now opens a Persistence sheet. It shows which images use a persistence file, lets you pair one or turn it off, and creates a new one (1 to 16 GB) for Ubuntu and Ubuntu-based distros like Mint and Zorin, so the changes you make in a live session can survive a reboot. How it works.

Windows Setup options. When you build a Windows installer drive, BootForge now lists the editions inside your ISO and can write your pick into an answer file on the drive, along with switches to skip the Microsoft account, skip automatic BitLocker encryption and start Windows in your language. Windows Setup reads them where your Windows build allows it. The answer file never chooses a disk, so you still pick where Windows installs. The installer mode stays UEFI-only. How it works.

A closer look at the drive. Tools → Drive information now shows the drive’s partition layout, read straight from its own MBR or GPT table, entry by entry. Beside it, a diagnostics report records what the app did recently, so a problem can be described accurately. It stays on your phone unless you copy or share it, and drive names, file paths and identifiers are removed. Drive details.

One progress view for long jobs. Backups, restores, single-image writes and Windows installer builds now share a clearer full-screen progress view, with each stage named, the speed, and the time remaining.

Fixes. The app could stop responding after a copy to the drive failed, and the cause of that freeze is fixed. On a phone whose file picker is turned off, choosing a file now says so instead of closing the app.

BootForge has moved a long way since 0.1.9, and this note catches the site up with it. The app on Google Play is now 0.1.24.

Boot-menu themes. The menu a PC shows when it boots your drive no longer has to be Ventoy’s plain one. There are seven themes, each a genuinely different layout rather than a recolour, and you can put your own photo behind the menu instead. A prepared drive still gets the plain menu unless you pick something, and BootForge’s own theme is free. The rest of the gallery and the custom background are part of Pro. How it works.

A file browser. You can now walk the folders on the drive and in your phone library, not just the list of bootable images. Text files open in a viewer that’s free everywhere, and it tells you when it’s showing only the beginning of a long file rather than truncating quietly. With Pro you can edit them and create new ones, which is what finally makes Ventoy’s own ventoy.json and ventoy_grub.cfg editable without a PC. The drive’s EFI partition can be browsed too, read-only for everyone. How it works.

Hindi. BootForge speaks five languages now: English, Español, Português (Brasil), Русский and हिन्दी, all fully translated.

The drive, easier to work with. Search, sort and a grid view on both the Drive tab and your library. BootForge also records a checksum for every file it writes to a drive and can read it back later to tell you whether the drive still holds what it wrote — a real check, not a claim about the past.

Copies that survive a wobble. If the connection drops for a moment mid-copy, the transfer now waits and picks up again instead of failing. When a file genuinely can’t be copied, its row says why and what to try.

Honest verification. The read-back check after writing a single image is a toggle, and the app is now precise about the result. If a drive will neither commit its cache nor let BootForge read the flash directly, it says the check may have read the drive’s buffer and tells you to boot-test before relying on it, rather than reporting a clean pass it can’t stand behind. A write that can’t place every byte fails instead of finishing quietly.

Fixes. A few drives used to close the app the instant they were connected; the cause sat in how Android hands a drive’s reply back to an app, and BootForge changed the way it reads from a drive to take itself out of that path. Those drives should now open. A hub with a built-in card reader also stops costing a second permission prompt on every connect — BootForge learns which slot is empty and tries your actual drive first.

Kits, the ready-made bundles of images for one job, also got a page of their own.

BootForge 0.1.9 is rolling out on Google Play, and it grows the app beyond multiboot. Three additions, all in the free tier:

Single-image writes. Pick one ISO and write it straight to a drive, byte for byte, with a read-back verification pass before the app calls it done. The classic direct-write job that used to need a second app.

Raw .img support. Raw disk images are accepted on the same write path. The app is upfront about the one thing it can’t promise: whether a raw image boots depends on the image and the device it targets, so the write is verified and the rest is stated plainly, not claimed.

Windows installer drives. A dedicated mode that turns Microsoft’s official Windows ISO into a standard UEFI installer stick, splitting the oversized install file automatically so the FAT32 layout Windows Setup expects just works. No conversion steps on your side.

The Home screen now opens with a build-mode chooser when you connect a blank drive, so all of this is one tap from the front door. The guides covering single-ISO writes and Windows installers have been updated to match.

BootForge for Android is now available on Google Play. It builds and manages Ventoy-powered multiboot rescue and installer USB drives directly from your phone over USB OTG — no PC, no root.

The core drive-making engine is free: USB detection, preparing and updating Ventoy, importing ISOs, copying them to the drive, and checksum verification. BootForge Pro is a one-time purchase that adds conveniences on top, such as in-app image downloads. What Pro includes today.

Catalog updates and release notes will continue to land here.