v2rayN has two layers: the graphical shell (v2rayN itself) and the core inside it (Xray-core). New protocol features usually land in the core first, so sometimes you only need to update the core, not the UI.

One-click update (recommended)

Menu → “Check for updates” → “Check Xray Core update”. v2rayN pulls the latest core from GitHub and swaps it in automatically. Afterwards the new version number shows in About or the log. The same page has “Check v2rayN update” for the UI itself.

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Manual replacement

If the network blocks the one-click update, do it by hand: download Xray-windows-64.zip from the Xray-core releases page, extract xray.exe, overwrite the file of the same name in bin\xray\ under the v2rayN folder, and restart v2rayN.

Confirm it took

On startup, the first log line prints the core version, e.g. Xray 25.x.x. If it matches what you installed, you're done.

Fully quit v2rayN before updating the core, otherwise a running xray.exe makes the overwrite fail (file-in-use error).