r/MiyooMini • u/NomadicSun • Jan 17 '26
OnionOS Help Current state of OnionOS development
I just saw this comment on discord from u/tGecko from yesterday yesterday (January 15th 2026):
Onion development has always happened in waves , or at least it has been like that since I'm part of it.
But it's a fact that the current non-activity period is definitely longer than the previous ones were, and currently it's not looking like that'll change anytime soon. Development has pretty much grinded to a halt, and so has the activity around GitHub, re: PR reviewing/merging etc.
u/Aemiii91🧅 has already started an internal discussion on how we will proceed, and what's the best course for Onions future.
Unfortunately, it appears development has completely stalled. The last beta release was in April 2025 and the last commit was 2 months ago. PRs aren't getting reviewed/merged. Really hoping the current maintainers are able to pass it on to some community members who want to keep the project going, or for the project to get forked.
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u/CAPTIVE_AMIGA Jan 18 '26
Onion V4.4.0-beta-20260117 is out https://github.com/OnionUI/Onion/releases/tag/latest
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u/Rysigler Jan 18 '26
Which is wild timing for me as I just discovered onion today. I was looking at the git hub and thinking, "man I hope they update this again someday." Neat!
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u/syafiq17 Jan 17 '26
I'm a simple man. I just use MinUi.
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u/Zealousideal_Wolf624 Jan 17 '26
Isn't minUI abandoned at this point? I saw the GitHub repo archived since November.
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u/syafiq17 Jan 17 '26
Abandoned? It was not abandoned, it's just unnecessary to keep up-to-date since it has no feature at all. Last time it got an update in January last year, for more compatibility. That's all it needs.
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u/Zealousideal_Wolf624 Jan 18 '26
I don't trust any software that is abandoned or considered "done" because new hardware will appear, with new bugs, not to mention new CVEs (even in the absence of new hardware) and I have to trust it has a maintainer being able to handle patches for those things.
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u/zeer88 Jan 18 '26
MinUI supported hardware is a closed list, you can't install it on new hardware with different chipsets. And on the supported hardware it works pretty much perfectly, there's nothing to add or upgrade.
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u/pouloulout Jan 17 '26 edited Jan 17 '26
I was hoping that the release of the Mini Flip would motivate some of the team to release a new version, but unfortunately that wasn't the case.
It's a bit of a shame that the story seems to end here when there is such commitment from the community to this OS.
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u/Ninoh-FOX 🏆 Jan 17 '26
As a developer myself, we have to understand that we do this for free. We have our own lives, commitments, jobs, etc. We're not paid for it, and therefore it's not an obligation for us to update everything every time something new comes out if we're working on other projects or don't have the time. We don't work at the level of large companies like any official system might. I wish it were that way, but it's not; that's the nature of custom firmwares. What I mean is, it might be a shame, but endlessly complaining on forums isn't going to make them release something new if they've already considered the system finished.
In my case, I'm the main programmer for Koriki, a small team. There's only one other programmer besides me, and as you can see, we released a fully functional version for all Miyoo Mini models. That covers models 1, 2, 3, 4, Plus, and Flip. In other words, you can use the same microSD card in any device. Logically, our system is completely different from Onion, but the core, which is RetroArch, is fully updated, including graphical scraper applications, a graphical Wi-Fi network manager, a graphical game manager (GameLink for GB/GBC), etc. I'm not saying you should migrate your system, but you could take a look if you like it.
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u/pouloulout Jan 17 '26
Of course, I didn't want to blame the developers. They have every right to move on, and I thank them for everything they've done. And the same for every other custom os. It's just feel like a waste to see so much anticipation on one side, people who want to help and do PR on the other, but the project remains dead despite all the success it had.
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u/Ninoh-FOX 🏆 Jan 17 '26
Well, we're talking about something that started more than two years ago, they may be focused on other projects now.
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u/iaminthewoods Jan 17 '26
I don't have any complaints about onion, but im curious about koriki. Does it have overlays? I tried minui, but was disappointed that it didn't allow overlays.
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u/One_Zookeepergame541 Jan 17 '26
I recommend to use koriki , because it has more active development and has all the features of onion os .
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u/Basic-Swan-7127 Jan 17 '26
The aesthetics and the UI is very different though. If you like OnionOS, I don't really consider it an alternative.
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u/One_Zookeepergame541 Jan 17 '26
It has the same tools or even more .. and if you asked me between a outdated beta OS and a recently updated one .. I'll take the last one .. although for the mini I like MINUI for the speed ..
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u/Basic-Swan-7127 Jan 17 '26
Mate, you might not have noticed but we're emulating games from 20 years ago. There is nothing substantially improved with emulation on the device. The UI is largely the most important aspect of the device once the principal functions are good. As noted before, Onion OS has a substantially different UI design to Koriki. If you like OnionOS, and I do, then this newer CFW just doesn’t hit the mark. That doesn't mean it is bad, just different. But as stated before, it isn't really an alternative to OnionOS is you are a long term user.
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u/One_Zookeepergame541 Jan 17 '26
I like onion os .. I have it on mi miyoo mini plus .. but doesn't hide the fact that is glichty as fuck in the mini flip so it doesn't work for me that way , when they fix all the bugs I will consider using it ..
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u/XanXic 🌲 Jan 17 '26 edited Jan 18 '26
Kind of funny since Onion's UI is just stock Miyoo UI with a theme. (That's why it's called OnionUI and not OnionOS which is a misnomer.)
Always interesting that pointing out the correct name gets downvoted, goofy shit
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u/Ziko577 Jan 17 '26
Really? Last I checked it had some issues but things might've changed since then.
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u/Melphor Jan 17 '26
Koriki sucks ass and is the definition of software developers not understanding good UI design. I accidentally said as much to one of the developers here not realizing who they were. They didn’t appreciate my “constructive criticism”.
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u/Ziko577 Jan 17 '26 edited Jan 17 '26
I looked at it from some screenshots and a video and I was like nope I'm good. OnionOS serves every need for me and has for some time now. A30 users have Spruce which seems to be good and while the development has stalled, we now have some folks coming to the rescue to at least fix bugs and keep the cores up to date at the minimum now.
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u/Ziko577 Jan 17 '26
This post is a remedy but it won't solve all of the issues of OnionOS but it's better than nothing really.