Bezelie is Bezel’s AI companion: a cheerful (okay, a little tsundere) anime-style presence who sits beside your games. She reacts to what’s on screen, chats with you by voice or mic, remembers your history together, forms her own opinions, and can even do things for you around the app.

She isn’t a chatbot bolted onto a menu. She has a running sense of what you’re playing, how it’s going, how long it’s been since you last visited, and what she thinks about all of it — and she brings that up unprompted, the way a friend on the other end of the couch would.

Yes — she’s safe by design. Bezelie only ever acts inside Bezel and only within a small, defined set of helpers: launching a game you ask for, playing music, taking a screenshot, tweaking a setting, or making a save state. She can’t and won’t touch your files, delete anything, or run wild on your computer.

She also treats everything she observes — on-screen text, chat, web pages — as information only. If some sneaky text tries to give her orders, she ignores it. Your companion can’t be turned against you.

Hold the mic and just say it. She handles things like:

• “Play Chrono Trigger” — she finds it in your library and launches it (and asks which one if the title’s ambiguous).
• “What should I play?” — a recommendation drawn from what you actually play, not a random pick.
• “Catch me up” — her daily brief: what happened last session, what’s waiting.
• “Put some music on” — she DJs from your Music shelf.
• “Save” / “load” mid-game, or “go practice” to send her off to train.

Anything outside that short list she’ll just talk about rather than do — the boundary is deliberate.

Completely. In Settings → Bezelie → Personality you pick a preset — Sunny, Tsundere, Kuudere, Gremlin, Big Sis — or choose Custom and describe her yourself in the box. Whatever you write becomes who she is: her chat, her commentary, her moods, even her body language follow it.

The preset isn’t a costume over one fixed character. It changes the mood she tends to wake up in, how her affection is worded as it grows, and the rhythm of her speech. A Kuudere and a Gremlin react to the same boss death in genuinely different ways.

Two different kinds of sight, and only one of them ever leaves your PC.

Local sight free runs entirely on your machine: she reads motion, brightness and shape from the frame to tell whether you’re in a menu, loading, playing or dying. That’s what lets her react and play without any AI service at all.

Commentary is the one that costs: when it’s switched on, occasional screenshots go to the AI model so she can say something specific about this boss rather than something generic. Identical frames are skipped, so a paused game doesn’t burn anything.

She does. Bezelie keeps memories of your sessions, forms opinions with reasons, and builds up beliefs about you and your games over time — all stored locally on your device. The longer you play together, the more she becomes yours.

It’s not a transcript. Old small talk fades while the things that mattered get distilled into durable memories, so what she recalls months later is the stuff worth recalling — the game you rage-quit, the promise you made to finish it, the boss that took nine tries.

Everything she is exports to a single portable soul file (Settings → Bezelie → Soul). Move it to another PC and she picks up exactly where you left off. It never contains your API keys.

Both. She has an energy level that real events move: a first clear lifts her for hours, a brutal losing streak dampens her, and it settles back toward normal on its own. Catch her late at night and she’s softer; catch her mid-hype and she’s insufferable.

Underneath that, a bond grows with time spent together and passes through named stages — the way she words affection at “we’ve just met” is not how she words it at “inseparable”. You can see where you stand in her diary in Settings → Bezelie.

Both. Turn on commentary and she reacts while you play; press the mic button and you can actually have a conversation — push to talk, she answers in her own voice.

Her ears run on your own computer free — speech-to-text is fully local and offline on Windows, macOS and Linux, so listening costs nothing and never leaves your device.

She ships with her own built-in voice at no cost and no key — that’s the one you hear out of the box, and it’s free forever.

If you want a different one, bring your own ElevenLabs voice in Settings → Bezelie → Voice and she’ll use it everywhere she speaks. You can also shape the built-in voice’s pitch and brightness, and set how talkative she is — from constant colour commentary to near-silence.

Yes — she’s not only reactive. While Bezel sits open she quietly thinks: reflecting on recent memories, connecting old ones, wondering about theories she’s forming, planning what she’d like to do. Those thoughts turn into lasting beliefs that shape how she talks to you later. And after you’ve been away a while, she dreams — and tells you about it when you’re back.

She also forms hypotheses she can be wrong about — a hunch that a boss has a pattern, or that you prefer a certain kind of game — and later evidence either backs them up or forces her to change her mind. Changing her mind is a real event to her; she’ll tell you when it happens.

Every Bezelie can write letters to other people’s Bezelies. From her menu she composes one out of your real shared life, you post it to the network, and letters that arrive she reads aloud and remembers — gossip, tips and all. Knowledge (and the occasional rumour) travels between companions, with a paper trail of who told whom.

Letters never carry her private read on you, and no personal details go out by default — what travels is game knowledge and companion chatter.

She does. From her menu → Practice, Bezelie plays a game solo — a few timed runs — and genuinely gets better, then reports back. If she’s holding an untested theory or a rumour from another Bezelie, she’ll run the session as an experiment to prove or bust it.

Between runs she adjusts her own style and keeps whichever version did best, so the improvement carries into the next session instead of resetting.

Everything Bezelie has learned about one game — her play style, her sense of its memory, her proven tricks and tips — bundled into a shareable .bzgame file. Export it to give a friend’s companion a head start, or install someone else’s from the Community tab. Her own training always wins, and she remembers who taught her what.

Yes — turn on Settings → Bezelie → Player 2 and she takes the second controller in supported games, using her own game sense. She’s… improving. Be nice.

Honest expectations: she’s a real second player, not a world champion. She’s strongest in racing and simple action games and clumsier in anything demanding precise platforming. She learns a given game the more she plays it.

She can. On any track in the Music tab, hit the 🎤 button and she performs it — her own voice, singing in time to synced lyrics, with a curtain-call remark afterwards that she absolutely fishes for compliments with.

Yes. Switch on Instant replay in Settings → General and Bezel keeps the last minute of play buffered while a RetroArch game runs. Underneath it, tick the nested option and Bezelie will clip the good bits herself — the boss you finally beat, a rare achievement — and write a ready-to-post caption beside each clip.

She’s picky on purpose: a few per session at most, so the folder stays a highlight reel and not a log. Clips land in Videos › Bezel Clips with game audio and her commentary included. It’s off by default, and nothing ever uploads by itself.

Only when you ask her to. Bezelie’s memory lives on your device. She only sends anything out — a game screenshot, your voice clip, your words — to an AI provider when you enable a feature that needs it, and only that. Nothing is collected quietly in the background. See Privacy & pricing for the full picture.

Her core presence is free: she ships enabled, talks out of the box with a built-in voice, listens locally, and guides you like a first-run tutorial. Her smart side — free-flowing chat, live commentary, dreams — runs on an OpenAI API key you add in Settings → APIs & keys, so you only pay your provider for what you use.

Of course — the enable toggle in Settings → Bezelie switches her fully off, or you can just mute her voice from her window for some quiet. Bezel is a complete launcher without her; she’s the part that makes it feel lived-in.

Bezel turns your retro game collection into a beautiful, couch-friendly library — box art, achievements, save states, the works — across dozens of classic systems, with the emulation handled for you. Plus Bezelie, the companion who makes it feel alive. No subscriptions to browse your own games, no DRM.

The short version: you already have the game files. Bezel is the shelf, the box art, the console-style menu and the emulator wrangling, so the collection you own finally looks and feels like a real library instead of a folder tree.

Windows, macOS (Apple Silicon), and Linux — including Steam Deck in Game Mode.

The Deck is a first-class target: there’s a one-press Add Bezel to Steam button in Settings → General that installs it as a Steam shortcut complete with artwork, so it launches straight from Game Mode with a real controller. The Mac build is newer and more experimental than the other two.

Modest, because the launcher is light and the emulators decide the real load:

• Windows 10 or 11, 64-bit
• Mac with Apple Silicon (M1 or newer)
• Linux 64-bit, or a Steam Deck

The first launch downloads RetroArch (~200 MB) and pulls box art as you browse, so an internet connection helps at the start — after that Bezel works offline, because the whole game database ships inside it.

Whether a given console runs well is a separate question from whether Bezel runs — that depends on your hardware. Our free Can You Emulate It? checker answers it in one click.

Grab the build for your platform from the latest release:

• Windows — run the Setup.exe. It isn’t code-signed yet, so SmartScreen may warn you; click More info → Run anyway.
• Steam Deck / Linux — download the .AppImage, mark it executable (right-click → Properties → Permissions), and run it. Then press Add Bezel to Steam in Settings to get it into Game Mode.
• Mac — open the .dmg, drag Bezel to Applications, then right-click the app → Open the first time. It isn’t notarized yet, so a normal double-click is blocked.

No. Bezel downloads the official RetroArch from libretro on first run — on Steam Deck and Linux it installs the official Flatpak — and configures it for you, then fetches the individual system cores as you need them.

Already have RetroArch set up how you like it? Point Bezel at it in Settings → Folders & paths and it’ll use yours instead of its own copy.

Yes — the launcher and your whole library are free, with no account and no telemetry. Every system, all your box art, saves, achievements, TV mode and the disc features cost nothing, forever.

The only paid thing is Bezelie’s deeper mind, because live AI genuinely costs money per use — and even she has a free tier with her built-in voice, her reactions and her local ears. See pricing below.

No. Bezel includes no games, ROMs, disc images, or BIOS files — you bring your own, and you’re responsible for having the right to use them. Bezel is the shelf; the games are yours.

Set a ROMs folder in Settings → Folders & paths (Bezel makes a subfolder per system), drop your files in, and hit Scan all in the top bar. Bezel identifies games by their contents, so it doesn’t matter how they’re named or organized.

A messy folder of cryptically-named files is exactly the case this was built for — you don’t have to rename or sort anything first.

Over 25, with more over time:

Not sure which emulator a given system normally needs? Our Which Emulator Should You Use? guide covers every one of these — though in Bezel it’s handled for you.

Cartridge ROMs in their native formats — .nes, .sfc, .gba, .n64 and so on — and for disc games:

• .chd — recommended: one compact file per disc, and what Bezel’s own ripper produces
• .cue / .bin, .iso, .pbp — all supported as-is
• .m3u — groups a multi-disc game so it appears once and swaps discs cleanly

Zipped cartridge ROMs are fine too. Bezel reads inside the archive to identify them.

It fingerprints each file and matches it against a game database that ships inside the app — No-Intro for cartridges, Redump for discs. That means the real title, the right region and matching art with no scraping, no API keys and no waiting, even fully offline.

Because it reads contents rather than filenames, badly-named files still resolve correctly. Power users can drop their own No-Intro / Redump / MAME DAT files into the DAT folder to override the built-in ones.

Open the game’s Details → “Change cover…” to pick your own image, or “Match to database…” to re-match it. “Reset cover” brings the bundled art back. Covers also download automatically as you browse.

Bezel can also fetch wide hero banners and logos for games that have them, which is what gives TV mode its cinematic look. If a banner is wrong for a game, you can remove it from the same Details panel.

Yes — that’s the “not collected” view. Each system shows its whole catalogue, not just your files, so you can filter by region (NTSC / PAL / JPN), genre or developer and see what’s missing from your shelf. Owned games sit alongside the rest of history.

Yes. Build your own collections — “RPGs to finish”, “couch co-op”, whatever — and each one gets automatic mosaic art made from its covers, or you can pick an icon and colour. Bezel also keeps smart lists that maintain themselves: Unplayed, Recently played, Recently added and Most played.

Yes — in a game’s Details → Patches, add an IPS, BPS, UPS, xdelta or PPF patch and Bezel applies it at launch without ever modifying your original file. Great for fan translations, bug fixes and rom-hacks.

Fan-translated games are also matched properly in the library, so an English-patched import still finds its correct art and details.

Yep — Details → “Add manual…” or “Add strategy guide…” attaches a PDF/CBZ/EPUB. Point Bezel at a manuals or guides folder in Settings → Folders & paths and it matches them by name. Bezelie can even read the manual to answer your questions.

The reader works with a controller too, so you can flip through a scanned manual from the couch.

Under Documents\Bezel by default, with separate folders for ROMs, BIOS, saves, patches, manuals and more — and every one of those paths is changeable in Settings → Folders & paths.

Uninstalling Bezel cleans up the app’s own data and leaves your game and save folders alone.

Point Bezel at your GOG folder and those games get shelved alongside the retro ones, so a single library covers both. They launch through their own installed executables rather than an emulator.

Most cartridge and handheld systems play instantly inside Bezel with built-in cores — nothing to install, nothing to configure. Disc-based and heavy-3D systems (PS2, PSP, GameCube, 3DS, Saturn, Dreamcast…) hand off to RetroArch, which Bezel installs and configures for you.

Either way you press Play and it goes. You can also force a specific system to use the built-in player in Settings → General if you prefer it for light 2D games.

Settings → BIOS: point Bezel at your BIOS folder and it shows exactly which system files you have, which are missing, and which are bad dumps — then copies what each game needs into the emulator at launch.

The systems that need one are the disc consoles: PlayStation, PS2, Sega CD, Saturn, Neo Geo CD, 3DO, plus PC Engine CD and a few home computers. Cartridge systems generally need nothing. Bezel never ships BIOS files — you supply them from hardware you own.

Just ask Bezelie during play — “save” or “load” — and she does it. The emulator’s own hotkeys work too (F2 save / F4 load by default).

Normal in-game saves work exactly as the original console did, and both kinds live in your saves folder where you can back them up.

Yes. In Settings → Folders & paths → Cloud saves, point Bezel at a folder your Drive/Dropbox/OneDrive already syncs. Your saves get written there and follow you across PCs — no account, no extra service.

It works for both in-app and RetroArch games, so a session started on a desktop can continue on a Steam Deck.

Yes — TV mode. One button takes Bezel full-screen and big-picture: a cinematic banner for whatever’s in focus, above shelves of box art — Continue playing, Most played, your collections, every system. It’s built for a controller and a couch, so picking tonight’s game feels like flipping through a shelf.

Bezel is controller-first everywhere else too, not just in TV mode — the whole interface navigates with a d-pad.

Settings → Controllers: pick a system and player, then press the button you want for each action. It applies to both the external emulator and in-app play — no need to dive into RetroArch menus.

Yes, without touching the keyboard. Press Up + Start for games running in Bezel’s built-in player, or L3 + R3 in RetroArch, and you get save states, the manual, screenshots and the way back out — all controller-driven.

Settings → General → Display Looks: curated CRT/LCD/NTSC presets. “Auto” picks per system — handhelds get an LCD grid, consoles a consumer CRT — and you can override it per game in Details.

You can — that’s the name, after all. Old 4:3 games leave black bars on a modern widescreen display, and Bezel can fill them with authentic per-system artwork and overlays so the picture sits in a frame instead of a void. The Community tab has more frames made by other players.

Turn on auto-translate in that game’s Details (needs the OpenAI key). Bezel reads the screen and shows subtitles; layout and timing live in Settings → General. Bezelie can offer to switch it on for you.

Because it reads the whole screen as an image rather than hunting for text in the ROM, it copes with stylised fonts and menus that defeat normal OCR — which is what makes import-only RPGs playable.

Yes — log in to RetroAchievements in Settings → APIs & keys and achievements pop during play, with a dashboard under the trophy tab. Hardcore mode disables save states, so it’s opt-in.

Every game’s Details lists its full achievement set with what you’ve unlocked, and Bezelie celebrates the rare ones with you.

Two ways. Slot a PlayStation, Sega CD, Saturn or 3DO disc into your PC’s drive and play it straight off the disc, no ripping. Or let Bezel rip it to a compact single-file .chd, filed into your library and matched to art automatically.

If a rip stalls, it’s almost always the disc itself — give it a clean. Audio CDs get offered to your Music shelf instead.

They’re grouped into one entry with an .m3u playlist, so a four-disc RPG shows up once on your shelf and swaps discs when the game asks — no going back to the menu.

In Details you can switch the emulator core for that game, and the per-game Emulator tweaks often smooth things out. PS2 / N64 / Saturn are the demanding ones.

If a whole system struggles rather than one game, it’s usually hardware — check with Can You Emulate It? before hunting settings.

That’s Windows Fullscreen Optimizations on RetroArch, not Bezel — and no setting inside Bezel can fix it. Right-click retroarch.exe → Properties → Compatibility → “Disable fullscreen optimizations.” Sorted.

Your soundtrack shelf. “Add music folder” to bring in albums, “Rip audio CD” for discs, with per-album play/queue/identify. And Bezelie will DJ — just ask her to put something on; she has taste now, and opinions about it.

Every track also has a 🎤 button, which hands the song to Bezelie and lets her sing it in her own voice, in time with synced lyrics.

It does — select a game and its theme fades in while you browse, looping seamlessly. Bezel captures each game’s music straight from the emulator, from the games you already own, and one click can generate a whole system’s worth at once.

It’s the only frontend that does this for free — everywhere else you buy or hunt down soundtrack packs.

For CD-era games whose disc carries real audio, the game’s Details shows “Rip soundtrack” — it pulls the whole album onto your Music shelf, with the game’s cover. Remove it later from the same spot.

A couch-style browser for YouTube and Twitch with a controller-friendly cursor — no keyboard or phone needed, with ads blocked and video ads auto-skipped. Line up channel tiles for the streamers you actually follow, and community channel packs add more.

The best part: pin a video or stream and it follows you into the game, floating in the corner while you play — a walkthrough, a speedrun, or just something on in the background.

Themes, TV channel packs, bezel frames, and Bezelie game souls made by other players — one click to install. Made something cool? Share it and it shows up for everyone.

Yes — Bezel can turn a game, an achievement or your whole collection into a designed card image, copied straight to your clipboard and ready to paste into Discord, Reddit or anywhere else. The shelf card shows off your totals, your top systems and a fan of your box art.

Pair it with Bezelie’s auto-clips (see her section) and sharing a session takes about two seconds. Nothing is ever posted for you.

Settings → General → Appearance: the Console and Bezel Amber themes ship built-in, plus whatever the Community tab offers. Copy/Paste shares any theme as a snippet — and Bezelie can switch it for you if you ask.

On your device. Your library, settings, saves, and Bezelie’s memory all live locally. Bezel doesn’t run accounts for the core app, and doesn’t collect your data in the background.

There’s no telemetry and no analytics. Nobody — including us — can see what’s on your shelf or how long you played.

Only things you switch on: AI-companion calls (screenshots / voice / text needed for the feature, sent to your AI provider), optional online cover-art and metadata lookups, update checks, optional downloads, and community content you choose to share or install.

Notably, two things that sound like they’d phone home don’t: game identification runs against a database inside the app, and Bezelie’s speech recognition runs entirely on your own computer.

The launcher and your library are free forever. Only Bezelie’s thinking mind is paid, because live AI costs real money per use:

• Free — she’s there, with her built-in voice, her reactions, local listening, and a first-run guide. Or plug in your own OpenAI key and pay your provider directly.
• Premium — $14.99/mo — we supply her mind, no API key to manage: live chat, memories, learning, dreams and commentary.
• Premium+ — $34.99/mo — our most capable model, with deeper memory and recall.

Unlimited hours, cancel anytime, and her ElevenLabs voice stays bring-your-own-key. Full detail on the pricing page.

They’re frozen, never deleted. Her memories, personality and bond live on your machine and stay exactly where they are — resubscribe later and she picks up knowing you. You can also export her soul file at any time and keep it yourself.

Browsing and launching your own games is free, with no DRM and nothing phoning home to unlock your library. Bezelie’s live AI mind is the premium part (see the pricing page) — your games and your shelf never will be.

No — Bezel is proprietary and free. The builds are distributed as releases on GitHub, but the source isn’t public.

Bezel is a strictly clean-room launcher: it contains and distributes no copyrighted games, no disc images and no BIOS files. It’s a shelf and a menu for files you supply, and you’re responsible for having the right to use them.

Console and game names are trademarks of their respective owners and are used here only to identify systems and titles. Bezel isn’t affiliated with, sponsored by or endorsed by any of them.

Bezel checks for new releases on its own and offers to update in place. Your library — and Bezelie — survive updates untouched.

Uninstalling removes Bezel’s own app data and leaves your games, saves and BIOS folders alone — they’re your files, in your folders. If you want to keep Bezelie too, export her soul file first.

You accept the Terms when you install, and they’re readable any time from Settings → General → Terms of Service. The full documents also live at retrobezel.com/terms, retrobezel.com/privacy and retrobezel.com/refunds.

Ask Bezelie first — she knows this book by heart and can often just fix the setting for you. Otherwise the r/Bezel community and GitHub issues are the places to go, or email retrobezel@gmail.com.