If your budget retro handheld has been gathering dust, this is your weekend project. MustardOS — the open-source Linux firmware better known to longtime tinkerers as muOS — just shipped version 2606.0, codenamed Andromeda, and it is one of the biggest releases in the project’s history.
Andromeda landed on October 24, and according to Retro Handhelds it packs nearly 1,250 changes. Pants Pants Revolution puts it more conservatively at “over a thousand,” but either way, this is not a quiet maintenance patch — it is the successor to the 2601 Jacaranda branch.
The headline feature is one I have wanted for years: proper built-in Bluetooth. Until now, pairing a wireless controller or Bluetooth headphones to a MustardOS handheld meant hunting down third-party community scripts or add-on apps — a chore that made TV play over HDMI feel like more trouble than it was worth. Andromeda pulls all of that into the main menus: pair controllers and audio devices, switch audio outputs on the fly, even control hardware RGB lighting, no separate utility required. It also adds network proxy support and a local Web Dashboard (muos.local) for managing saves, files, and play history from a browser.
Most of the work went into Pickles, the system’s own lightweight Libretro player. Pickles now supports Network Play, RetroAchievements, cheats, overlays, colour filters, turbo buttons, and per-port controller remapping, plus suspend and resume and on-the-fly softpatching for .ips, .bps, and .ups files. My favourite addition is “Direct Link” mode, which lets two compatible handhelds link up over local network adapters or a direct USB-C cable for multiplayer. No internet required, just two handhelds and a cable — gloriously old-school.
Keeping the condiment naming scheme alive (for better or worse), Andromeda also introduces Wasabi, an integrated media player with backends for console chiptunes. It plays video files and live radio or TV streams, plus native Commodore 64 SID tracks through a ten-band equaliser.
Under the hood, the font engine was rewritten so theme creators can drop in raw TrueType fonts, and themes are now stored as open folders rather than compressed .muxthm archives. Existing themes will need to be extracted manually.
Full system images are available now for 18 handhelds, mostly Anbernic’s Allwinner H700 family — the RG35XX, RG40XX, RG CubeXX, RG28XX, RG34XX, RG SP, and RG Vita Pro lines — plus the TrimUI Brick, BatleXP G350, and GKD Pixel 2. One honest caveat: because Andromeda overhauls how storage paths and Pickles save data are structured, the developers recommend starting from a fresh setup rather than carrying over old test-build backups. Back up saves first: backups are now .muxbak files in the ARCHIVE folder.
Neither outlet reports any generative-AI involvement in the release. This is volunteer open-source work, GPLv3-licensed, led by developer XongleBongle since early 2024. If you have a budget handheld in a drawer, Andromeda is a very good reason to dig it out.
Are you updating tonight, or is your handheld already running something else you swear by?
Sources: Pants Pants Revolution — MustardOS 2606.0 Andromeda releases with built-in Bluetooth and netplay (Oct 25, 2026); Retro Handhelds — muOS Andromeda Is Now Available; Packed With More Than 1200 Changes (Oct 25, 2026); muos.dev — official download and supported-devices pages.