Collections
Favorites, automatic lists and your own cross-system game lists
A collection is a game list that ignores system boundaries. Favorites, the games you are part-way through, every RPG you own, a shortlist for the weekend. They sit next to the per-system lists on the home screen.
Everything is under ES → Game Collection Settings.
The buttons in a game list
Worth knowing before anything else, because the collection shortcuts live on button holds:
| Input | What it does |
|---|---|
| A | Launch the game |
| Hold A | Save states for that game |
| X | Game options for that game |
| Hold X | Add or remove from Favorites |
| Y | Search |
| Hold Y | Jump to a random game |
| SELECT | Options for the whole list |
| Hold SELECT | Show only favorites, and back |
User Interface Settings has a switch called Access game options with north button. It is on by default and it is what puts Game options on a press of X. Turn it off and Game options moves to a hold of A, with save states on a press of X.
Automatic collections
ES builds these itself from metadata you already have. Turn them on individually under Automatic game collections:
all games, last played, favorites, 2 players, 4 players, never played, retroachievements, arcade, vertical arcade, lightgun games, wheel games, trackball games and spinner games, plus one per genre and one per arcade system.
Most of them need scraped metadata to have anything in them, see Scraping. Favorites, last played and never played work without it.
The retroachievements one needs the achievement hashing pass first, see RetroAchievements.
Editable collections
These are lists you fill by hand.
Create it
Game Collection Settings → Create new editable collection. You get Enter name for a name of your own, and a Create from theme group listing the collections the current theme already has artwork for. Art Book Next offers now-playing and completed.
Add games
Highlight a game, press X for its options, then Add to custom collection. That entry only appears when you have more than one custom collection to choose from.
Turn it on
Back in Game Collection Settings, tick it under Custom game collections.
Dynamic collections
These fill themselves from a filter: genre, year, rating, number of players, whether the game is scraped. Anything new that matches shows up on its own.
Game Collection Settings → Create new dynamic collection, name it, then open the collection, press SELECT and pick Edit dynamic collection filters.
You can also start one from any game list: SELECT → Create new dynamic collection.
The filters read scraped metadata, so an unscraped library gives you empty collections.
Boot straight into a collection
Two settings in the same menu, and you need both:
- Start on system, set to the collection you want.
- Start on gamelist, on.
Now the console opens that list instead of the system carousel.
Hide systems you do not use
Systems displayed, in the same menu, untick whatever you do not want on the home screen. Nothing is deleted, the systems just stop appearing.
Show empty systems is the blunter version of the same idea: leave it off and any system with no ROMs in it disappears by itself.
Where the files are
/storage/.config/emulationstation/collections/An editable collection is custom-<name>.cfg, a plain text file with one game per line, written relative to /storage:
./roms/snes/Chrono Trigger.zip
./roms/psx/Vagrant Story.chdA dynamic collection is <name>.xcc and holds the filter, not a game list.
You can edit both from a computer over SSH or Samba. Stop EmulationStation first with systemctl stop emustation, because it rewrites its files when it exits.