XMALab v2.2.3 now available for Windows and MacOS

[Peter Falkingham]

Testers have not reported any more issues, so I'm moving this from Beta to general release. v2.2.3 brings visual changes with theming (dark mode), speeds things up significantly on Windows, and fixes the missing file-picker windows on MacOS Sequioa (v15+).

It is available from the releases tab on the XMALab github page: https://github.com/XROMMPackages/xmalab/releases

This will not work on MacOS Tahoe (v26).  A newer version is potentially in the works to address that problem.

As always, if you find problems, email me or create an issue on the Github: https://github.com/XROMMPackages/xmalab/.  I only have a few people willing/able to test the beta versions, and I could be introducing breaking changes that we're unaware of, so please do report issues.

Peter

[Callum Ross]

Hi Peter,

XMA lab quits on loading the downloaded .xma file for the Tutorial.

Any others have this issue?

Windows 11.

Thanks

Callum

[Peter Falkingham]

Hi Callum,

  Looks like the xma file was made with a very old xma format that was changed a long time ago (pre 2.1.0, which was before I started mucking about in the code).  I don't know why it's not opening in 2.2.3 (same thing is happening on MacOS), so I'll take a look at updating XMALab to maintain that compatibility if I can, or at the very least throw a message to the user about what's not working.

For now though, if you open the file in 2.1.0 and save it again without doing anything else, it works absolutely fine in 2.2.3 (which is why it seems the save format was changed long before 2.1.0).

  Not ideal, I appreciate, but all past versions of xmalab remain on the github releases page so if we do get a compatibility issue, we can get around it.  I've attached the re-saved version of the xma file.

  I assume this is the one downloaded from the sandbox on the portal?

Just for info, in case people are interested: if you rename the extension from xma to zip, the old file looks like this:


But a file saved with 2.1.0 (the version from before I started maintaining XMALab) looks like this:

Exactly the same files, but in a different structure.

Hope that helps for now.  Will take a look at making sure XMALab remains compatible with these really old files (nearly 20 years!).

P

---

From: Callum Ross <ro...@uchicago.edu>
Sent: 21 December 2025 20:24
To: XMALab <xma...@brown.edu>
Cc: pfalk...@googlemail.com <pfalk...@googlemail.com>
Subject: Re: XMALab v2.2.3 now available for Windows and MacOS

 

[Peter Falkingham]

Thanks for reporting this Callum.  Now fixed in 2.2.4 - xma files from the portal open fine and don't crash it.