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Custom Hotkey Shortcuts

Custom hotkeys cannot be set up globally

Before you attempt to manually reassign your hotkey shortcuts in RetroArch, please be aware of two issues:

  • KNULLI comes with a lot of emulators which are not integrated with RetroArch. Your RetroArch settings will not apply to any standalone emulators. By changing your RetroArch shortcuts, you will put your device in an inconsistent state with different shortcuts for different emulators.
  • Some hotkey shortcut actions are implemented on the operating system level, not on the emulation level. Consequently, those hotkey shortcuts cannot be disabled or modified. Assigning any emulation-level action to a shortcut which is also assigned to an OS-level action will inevitably result in a double binding. For that reason, some buttons are not available for custom hotkey shortcuts.

RetroArch-integrated emulators allow hotkey shortcuts to be set-up via configuration. Since KNULLI generates configuration files before every launch of every game, you can use the KNULLI GUI to customize hotkey shortcuts for every RetroArch-driven system or even for a single game.

Where to customize hotkeys

Before customizing hotkeys shortcuts, decide whether you want to apply the customization to an entire system or just to a single game.

To reach the hotkey customizing menu for an entire system,

  • press Start on the home screen to bring up the main menu.
  • head to Game Settings.
  • head to Per System Advanced Configuration.
  • pick the system you want to customize hotkeys for.
  • find the Hotkeys menu in the Controls section.
    • (If the Hotkeys menu is missing, you have chosen a system where hotkey shortcuts cannot be customized!)

To reach the hotkey customizing menu for a single game only,

  • find the game on your device by browsing your game lists.
  • hold the button that launches your games (usually A or B).
  • go to Advanced Game Options.
  • find the Hotkeys menu in the Controls section.
    • (If the Hotkeys menu is missing, you have chosen a game for a system where hotkey shortcuts cannot be customized!)

How to customize hotkeys

Remove any old overrides/customizations before proceeding

Since the "Firefly" version, KNULLI supports customizing hotkeys for RetroArch cores. However, with KNULLI, you are not expected to customize hotkeys inside of RetroArch. Instead, you are supposed to customize hotkeys via EmulationStation, the KNULLI GUI.

If you still have hotkey customizations from a previous installation of KNULLI, either in form of game/system overrides or in form of manual edits to batocera.conf, please remove them before customizing your hotkeys via EmulationStation as explained below.

In the Hotkeys menu, you will find a list of actions which can be bound to hotkey shortcuts on the emulation level. All hotkey shortcuts will rely on the Function button (also known as F, M, or Menu button) being pressed and hold while pressing a second button. This second button is what you can customize in the Hotkeys menu.

For example, if you do not like the default hotkeys to save (Function + ) and load (Function + ) your game, you can change them from to different combinations, e.g., Function + R2 and Function + L2.