# Runners

## Types of runners

There are two types of runners in Bottles:

* Wine
* Proton

The **Wine** runner is used for all Environments and is therefore in all bottles created, but also for external prefixes imported into Bottles. We support 4 different runners:

* [Caffe](https://github.com/bottlesdevs/components/tree/main/runners/wine) (our official runner)
* Lutris (from Lutris Developers)
* Proton-GE (from [GloriousEggroll](https://github.com/GloriousEggroll))
* Vaniglia (our vanilla runner, available by default since Bottles v3)

**Caffe** is a powerful runner that came with a large set of patches and improvements for Gaming and Software.

**Vaniglia** (Vanilla) is a clean runner as its name suggests. Apply only wine-staging patches and a modern theme created by Joshua Ashton.

The **Proton** runner (developed by [Valve](https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton) and improved/offered by [GloriousEggroll](https://github.com/GloriousEggroll/proton-ge-custom) in the GE custom version) is a much more complex version of Wine and is suitable for the most modern games.

It contains several patches for specific gaming titles support, implements [OpenVR](https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/features/steamvr/openvr) support and integrates dxvk (installable on wine from the bottle preferences page).

The Proton runner can be installed from the Bottles Preferences page and chosen on a bottle creation by selecting the Custom Environment. You can also switch from Wine to Proton at any time by changing your bottle preferences.

{% hint style="warning" %}
We personally recommend using the Proton runner only in special cases where there is a patch for a specific video game. However, **Valve collaborates in the development of Wine** and many of the features integrated into Proton are also available in the latest versions of Wine.
{% endhint %}

## Runner updates

You can install new runners by clicking the download button next the runner of your interest.

![Bottles - Preferences - Runners](https://1779667294-files.gitbook.io/~/files/v0/b/gitbook-x-prod.appspot.com/o/spaces%2F-MQH3F0OVam8XE3i-Jc-%2Fuploads%2Fgit-blob-2e589c873bf29755ed8db9dc4ac7c40d1ebf73ab%2FMain.png?alt=media)

If you're feeling fearless, you can enable Release Candidates ("Pre-release" option) to download and then test premature versions of runners, which may include greater software compatibility at the cost of bugs and possible regressions.

![Bottles - Preferences - Runners (Pre-release)](https://1779667294-files.gitbook.io/~/files/v0/b/gitbook-x-prod.appspot.com/o/spaces%2F-MQH3F0OVam8XE3i-Jc-%2Fuploads%2Fgit-blob-be7745a2f34532febf89df13d147926092511c8b%2Fimage.png?alt=media)

### How to add unlisted runners?

Runners are installed via a community-driven Bottles [repository](https://github.com/bottlesdevs/components).

If the runner you are looking for is not present, you can add it yourself by opening a Pull Request in the repository, [providing the runner manifest](https://github.com/bottlesdevs/components/blob/main/README.md#how-to-contribute).