Has anyone gotten FO4 LooksMenu sliders (or overlays) working? I see f4se's version number under settings, and can load a variety of f4se unrelated mods, including hair mods, but I haven't found anything that leads me to believe f4se is actually loading anything. There's no dollar signs in LooksMenu while loading, so it's at least getting strings from somewhere, but the sliders and overlays buttons are greyed out (even though you can still open them to find empty lists).

I've tried a couple f4se achievement enablers in an attempt to see if f4se is loading anything, but I always get the prompt that achievements will be disabled when loading an old / starting a new game. Is there any other quick f4se mods I could use to test that f4se is actually pulling in f4se-related mods?

Go into settings menu and look at the bottom. That will show the version of F4SE that is running or it won't be there if not running.

I probably should have mentioned I'm using MO2. They apparently have an open issue posted over on github that describes what I was experiencing:

https://github.com/ModOrganizer2/modorganizer/issues/1856

I applied the workaround they described there, adding -forcesteamloader to f4se's launch arguments, and that fixed it! Not sure if it's really specific to MO2 or if it's gog-f4se specific. Hopeful they get it worked out.

This is why I manually install everything. If the F4SE version number is there, It is running. If not. its not running.

Not sure what "-forcesteamloader" would have to do with GOG version, but if it works thats good i guess.