# OpenRGB release_candidate_1.0rc2 — OpenRGB Release Candidate 1.0rc2

- Product: OpenRGB (https://whatsnew.fyi/product/openrgb)
- Vendor: OpenRGB
- Date: 2025-09-14
- Version: release_candidate_1.0rc2
- Original notes: https://codeberg.org/OpenRGB/OpenRGB/releases/tag/release_candidate_1.0rc2
- Permalink: https://whatsnew.fyi/product/openrgb/releases/release-candidate-1.0rc2
- Labels: Platforms: Desktop

What's New is an index, not a publisher: every entry below links to the vendor's own release notes, which are the authoritative source. Entries are labelled where they are hand-curated sample data, pre-releases, or drawn from a secondary source such as a developer blog.

Reuse: the summaries, labels and curation here are © What's New. Quote freely with attribution and a link back; wholesale republication of the corpus is not permitted — terms: https://whatsnew.fyi/terms. The vendors' own release notes remain their publishers'.

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- **changed** — User interface has been upgraded since 1.0rc1
- **added** — Additional device support has been added
- **fixed** — Various fixes have been applied
- **added** — PawnIO driver is now used on Windows as the first release candidate build with this driver
- **changed** — SMBus device access on Windows now requires PawnIO to be installed and OpenRGB to run as administrator
- **added** — Windows installer now provides an option to install OpenRGB as a system service so the backend can run as administrator while the frontend runs as a normal user

The second release candidate for OpenRGB 1.0.

There have been some upgrades to the user interface since 1.0rc1 and some additional device support and fixes.  This is the first release candidate build of OpenRGB using the PawnIO driver on Windows.  You must install PawnIO from https://pawnio.eu and run OpenRGB as administrator in order to access SMBus devices now.  The option to install OpenRGB as a system service is now provided in the Windows installer so that the backend can run as administrator while the frontend runs as a normal user.

The plugin interface and SDK version remain the same as 1.0rc1, so plugins that worked with 1.0rc1 should work with 1.0rc2 as well.