BlendTrack

BlendTrack keeps every Blender version you use in one place: browse the official builds (and the Bforartists and UPBGE forks), download the one you want, and launch or remove it — no browser, nothing to install. It is a single portable file written in Python with PySide6/Qt.

_{Every build in one screen, with channel tabs, search, and a grid or list view.}

_{The same store in list view, when you want more versions per screen.}

Get it: latest release — AppImage for Linux, a single .exe for Windows, a .zip for macOS.

What it does

• Browse every official build. Channel tabs (All, LTS, Stable, Daily, Experimental, Favorites), a search box, a grid or list view with a zoom slider (Ctrl + / Ctrl - / Ctrl 0) and release notes one click away. Star a version and it gathers under Favorites.
• Bforartists and UPBGE. Separate programs built on Blender, each with its own tab once you enable it in Settings → Downloads. They download, install and launch like any version, with their own executable and config folder, so a Bforartists 5.2 never gets mistaken for a Blender 5.2.
• Download for any machine. The app detects your system and architecture, but you can also pick Windows, macOS or ARM64. Downloads show progress, are checked with SHA-256 and are unpacked for you (.tar.xz, .zip, or a .dmg mounted and copied on macOS). A protected destination such as C:\Program Files asks for permission instead of failing.
• Move your whole setup to a new version. A transfer board lists the add-ons of an installed version and where each one lands, with a compatibility check first: Blender version, platform, Python wheels and compiled modules, Blender modules that no longer exist (like bgl in 5.0) and add-ons written before the 2.80 API change. The enabled state comes along, the last migration can be undone, and preferences can be copied whole or key by key — only what you changed, shown under Blender's own names.

_{Migrating add-ons between versions, with the verdict shown before anything is copied.}

• Several folders, one kind each. Put LTS on a fast disk and dailies on a big one; every kind has a single owner, so a download is never ambiguous. Lock a folder to read-only to point the app at versions you installed by hand — they are listed, launched and used for migration, but never written to. Moving files between folders is safe (copy first, delete the source only once the copy is complete), and you can remove every folder if you would rather the app warn than quietly pick a destination for you.
• Keep everything current. When Blender publishes a same-series patch, an inline update is offered; a new major series is offered in a dialog you can ignore for that series. BlendTrack updates itself too: the AppImage in place, Windows and macOS through a small helper, and a source checkout with git pull --ff-only.
• And more. Factory-reset a version and restore your settings later; open recent .blend files with the newest version of their series; manage a version's add-ons without opening Blender; tray icon and autostart; a portable mode that keeps everything next to the executable; a single instance (opening the app twice brings the running window to the front); and an interface in English, Spanish, Simplified Chinese, Russian, Japanese and Brazilian Portuguese, picked from your locale.

Get BlendTrack

Download the file for your system from the latest release:

System	File
Linux	BlendTrack-x86_64.AppImage
Windows	BlendTrack-windows-x86_64.zip
macOS	BlendTrack-macos.zip

On Linux, make it executable (chmod +x) and run it. To get a menu entry, integrate it with your launcher of choice (Shelly, Gear Lever, AppImageLauncher, …) — and re-sync that integration after the app updates itself, so the name and icon refresh.

Run from source

You need Python 3.12 or newer. The only dependency is PySide6, which the launcher installs for you:

git clone https://github.com/zebus3d/BlendTrack.git
cd BlendTrack
./run.sh

By hand:

python3 -m venv .venv
source .venv/bin/activate        # Windows: .venv\Scripts\activate
pip install -r requirements.txt
python src/main.py

The app opens on the store; if you already have versions in the destination it opens on Local instead. The default destination is a Blenders folder inside your Downloads folder (~/Downloads/Blenders, ~/Descargas/Blenders on Spanish Linux, or wherever the system says Downloads lives). Change it in Settings → Folders.

Useful flags: --debug (Python stack goes to the log if it crashes), --smoke (list builds in the console, no window) and --screenshot out.png. The log is blendtrack.log in the cache folder — ~/.cache/blendtrack on Linux, ~/Library/Caches/BlendTrack on macOS, %LOCALAPPDATA%\BlendTrack\cache on Windows.

Developers

QT_QPA_PLATFORM=offscreen .venv/bin/python -m unittest discover -t . -s tests

The UI tests run with Qt's offscreen plugin, so they need no display (the same thing CI does). Packaging uses PyInstaller:

packaging/build.sh             # dist/BlendTrack
packaging/build.sh --appimage  # also dist/BlendTrack-x86_64.AppImage

.github/workflows/build.yml runs the tests and builds the three binaries. Every push to main refreshes a single rolling pre-release, and promoting it (Actions → promote) turns it into the final release without rebuilding. The in-app updater only looks at the latest final release, so nobody is notified while a cycle is still in progress. Binaries are downloaded from the Release, not committed to the repository. The build gotchas worth knowing before touching the job (the Ubuntu 22.04 choice, the Qt xcb plugin, the macOS .dmg, the Windows code-signing situation) are in AGENTS.md.

Layout:

src/
  main.py          # entry point and arguments
  i18n.py          # translations (texts in locale/)
  model/           # plain data classes (Build, InstalledBuild)
  services/        # API, downloads, extraction, settings, updates... (no Qt)
  ui/              # PySide6 widgets; qss.py holds the whole look
doc/               # architecture guide in Spanish (start at doc/README.md)
tests/             # unit tests (unittest, UI with Qt's offscreen plugin)
packaging/         # PyInstaller spec, AppImage script and icons
run.sh             # development launcher (creates .venv if missing)

The code is meant to be read: services/ knows nothing about Qt, so it can be tested and understood on its own, and the interface is separated into the stylesheet (ui/qss.py) and the widgets. The guides in doc/ walk through the architecture, the Qt concepts and a worked example of adding a feature.

How it compares

Blender Launcher V2 is the mature reference for this job, and BlendTrack borrows from it: the idea of using Blender's official JSON API, the LTS version map, and the two fork sources (Bforartists' public WebDAV share and UPBGE's GitHub releases).

BlendTrack bets on the opposite: fewer features, but the common flow — find a build, download it, launch it — with as little friction as possible. That is why the whole app is one screen you can read at a glance, why it renders on the CPU instead of OpenGL (so it does not care about your Mesa version), and why on Linux it is a single AppImage instead of a choice between several downloads.

Blenderbase covers similar ground from a different angle (installed versions, add-ons and recent files in one window, built with Tauri instead of Qt) and adds a feature of its own, syncing your setup across computers. It is worth a look.

Privacy

BlendTrack has no accounts, no telemetry and no analytics. See PRIVACY.md for what it stores locally and which servers it talks to.

Credits

This project finishes earlier attempts of mine — BlenderDownloader in Qt and an earlier Kivy version (then called Blender Manager) — and is inspired by Blender Launcher V2. The Kivy version worked, but its OpenGL/SDL2 requirement broke on newer Mesa releases, so the UI was ported to Qt Widgets.

The Blender logo is a trademark of the Blender Foundation. The Bforartists logo comes from the Bforartists project and the UPBGE logo from UPBGE, both GPL-3.0; they identify those forks and all rights stay with their projects. Icons are from Font Awesome Free (SIL OFL 1.1).

License

BlendTrack is free software, released under the GNU General Public License v3.0. Copyright (C) 2019-2026 zebus3d.