ARC 2026.07.16.00 (Pro, Runtime And Free)

This release is all about making ARC faster, smoother, safer, and much harder to upset.

We tackled a large collection of stability issues, performance slowdowns, memory leaks, camera hiccups, connection problems, and those strange little bugs that only seem to appear after ARC has been running for a while.

Camera improvements

Camera performance received a major tune-up.

Camera displays now run more smoothly without forcing the camera processing to wait for the user interface. Starting, stopping, changing resolutions, and recovering from camera errors should also be much more reliable.

The Face Tracking module can now automatically resize images for different resolutions, reducing the need for manual fine-tuning and improving performance across different screen and camera configurations.

Faster and smoother interface

Several areas of ARC were optimized to reduce unnecessary work:

• Robot Skill menus update faster
• Virtual desktop thumbnails are more efficient
• Opening the Add robot skill window is quicker
• Searching for Robot Skills no longer causes unnecessary pauses
• Moving robot skill windows around the workspace is smoother
• Large projects should load with less interface overhead

We also removed a few situations where ARC was doing the same work repeatedly just because it really wanted to be sure.

Improved robot skill management

Adding, searching, updating, cloning, and removing Robot Skills is now more reliable.

Icons and preview images are cleaned up properly, shared images are protected from accidental disposal, and stale search results should no longer mysteriously return after being cleared.

Unique robot skill names are also handled more consistently, including names that differ only by uppercase or lowercase letters.

Safer project saving

Project and history information now use safer save methods.

ARC writes updates in a way that greatly reduces the chance of a project being damaged if the computer shuts down, ARC closes unexpectedly, or something interrupts the save process.

Automatic backups are also better protected against unexpected errors.

More reliable robot connections

Robot communication received a substantial stability update.

ARC is now better protected against connection timing issues, unexpected disconnects, invalid responses, disposed connections, and background communication errors.

This helps prevent rare freezes, crashes, and deadlocks when hardware disconnects or communication fails at exactly the wrong moment.

Firmware-related startup errors are also handled more gracefully, and launching ARC on a high-DPI display will no longer lose the project filename or other command-line information.

Servo safety improvement

Servo limits are now applied in the correct order, preventing servo multiplier settings from accidentally producing a command beyond the configured minimum or maximum position.

That one is small in appearance, but important for hardware safety.

Better scripts and variables

A number of scripting and variable-management issues were corrected:

• Array updates are safer during simultaneous script activity
• Array events now report the correct changed position
• Reading variables while a project is closing is more reliable
• String indexing now returns the expected character
• Values inside quoted text are protected from unintended substitutions
• Robot Skill control commands are returned more consistently

These changes should especially help larger projects with multiple scripts running at the same time.

Logging improvements

ARC’s logging system is now much more dependable.

Logs written during an upload are preserved, simultaneous log messages are less likely to be lost, and cancelling an upload will no longer interfere with the next one.

Long-running connection error logs are also prevented from growing forever and quietly consuming memory.

General fixes

This update also includes improvements to:

• Version checking
• Number parsing
• Decimal values on computers using different regional settings
• File compression
• Web request responses and timeouts
• Theme handling
• Image cloning
• Registry settings
• URL handling
• Startup cleanup
• Desktop selection
• Robot Skill command routing
• Background task error handling

In other words, a lot of invisible plumbing has been replaced, tightened, labelled, and politely asked not to leak anymore.

The result

ARC 2026.07.16.00 should feel faster during everyday use, remain more stable during long sessions, handle cameras and robot connections more reliably, and recover more gracefully when hardware or external services behave unexpectedly.

It is a big maintenance release made up of many small fixes-and together, they make ARC noticeably more solid.