Wine components

Enable or disable Wine’s built-in Windows component libraries to control DirectX, audio, networking, and runtime support per container.

Wine components are optional Windows subsystem libraries that Winlator can activate or deactivate inside a container’s Wine prefix. Toggling a component updates the Software\Wine\DllOverrides registry key, switching the relevant DLLs between native (Winlator-supplied) and built-in (Wine’s own) implementations.

Components are stored in the wincomponents field of the container config as a comma-separated key=value list where 1 means enabled and 0 means disabled.

Default and fallback component sets

Default (Container.DEFAULT_WINCOMPONENTS):

direct3d=1,directsound=1,directmusic=0,directshow=0,directplay=0,vcrun2010=1,wmdecoder=1

Fallback (used when detection fails — Container.FALLBACK_WINCOMPONENTS):

direct3d=0,directsound=0,directmusic=0,directshow=0,directplay=0,vcrun2010=0,wmdecoder=0

Component reference

Component	Default	Description
direct3d	1 (enabled)	Activates native Direct3D support. Required for any game using D3D8, D3D9, D3D10, or D3D11 with a DXVK or WineD3D wrapper. Disabling this falls back entirely to Wine’s built-in stubs.
directsound	1 (enabled)	Enables native DirectSound audio. Required for games that use the DirectSound API for sound effects and music. Disabling causes audio routed through DirectSound to be silent.
directmusic	0 (disabled)	Provides MIDI/DirectMusic playback support. Enable for games that rely on DirectMusic for their soundtrack. Disabled by default because most modern games do not use it.
directshow	0 (disabled)	Activates the DirectShow media framework, used for in-game video cutscenes (AVI, WMV). Enable if a game shows a black screen where a video should play.
directplay	0 (disabled)	Provides the DirectPlay legacy LAN/multiplayer networking API. Needed only for very old games (pre-2004) that use DirectPlay for multiplayer.
vcrun2010	1 (enabled)	Installs the Visual C++ 2010 runtime libraries (msvcr100.dll, msvcp100.dll). A large number of Windows applications require these libraries to launch.
wmdecoder	1 (enabled)	Registers native Windows Media codecs (wmadmod.dll, wmvdecod.dll) for WMA/WMV audio and video decoding, replacing Wine’s GStreamer-based fallback.

After changing components, Winlator updates the Wine registry automatically. No manual wineboot is needed.

Wine add-ons: Mono and Gecko

Beyond the toggleable components above, Winlator bundles two larger Wine add-ons in the wine_addons/ directory.

Wine Mono

Bundled versions: wine-mono-10.1.0, wine-mono-9.0.0

Wine Mono is a packaged build of the Mono runtime that Wine uses as a drop-in replacement for the Microsoft .NET Framework. Install it when an application requires .NET Framework and shows an error about a missing mscoree.dll or fails to launch entirely.

How to install:

1. Open the Windows Start Menu inside the container
2. Navigate to System Tools → Installers
3. Select Wine Mono and follow the prompts

Installing Wine Mono is strongly recommended for any productivity software, game launchers, or tools built with .NET.

Wine Gecko

Bundled version: wine-gecko-2.47.4

Wine Gecko is a stripped-down Gecko-based browser engine embedded inside the Wine prefix. It provides the HTML rendering engine used by Wine’s built-in Internet Explorer (iexplore.exe) and any application that embeds a WebBrowser control (mshtml.dll).

Most games do not require Gecko. You may need it if an application shows an in-app browser panel or depends on mshtml for its UI.

Changing components

1. Open Container Settings

   Long-press a container on the Winlator home screen and tap Settings, or tap the pencil icon.

2. Navigate to the Components tab

   Select the Wine Components tab from the settings tabs at the top.

3. Toggle the desired component

   Flip the switch next to the component you want to enable or disable. Changes take effect on the next container start.

4. Restart the container

   Stop and restart the container so the updated DLL overrides are applied to the running Wine session.

Disabling direct3d will prevent any 3D game from rendering correctly. Only disable it if you are diagnosing a specific issue.