Hotkey Shortcuts¶

Hotkey shortcuts are among the most important basics you need to learn in order to navigate your KNULLI device and play your games. This section will give you an overview over the available hotkey shortcuts.

Customizing shortcuts

KNULLI attempts to provide the best possible out-of-the-box user experience. For that reason, KNULLI comes with pre-defined hotkeys which apply to (almost) every emulator KNULLI comes with.

It is possible to customize hotkeys from the KNULLI GUI for RetroArch-integrated emulators. You can find instructions in the RetroArch section. However, please be aware that those customizations will only apply ro RetroArch cores.

Many standalone emulators cannot be configured at runtime. Instead, hotkeys have to be defined on the source-code level and cannot be overriden via configuration.

All hotkey shortcuts follow the same pattern: Press and hold the Function button and press another key to call the respective action as indicated by the table below. If you cannot locate the function button on your device, find help in the Basic Inputs section.

On-screen manual

If you forgot a shortcut: Don't worry! KNULLI comes with an on-screen manual. At the home screen, press Select to bring up the Quick access menu. Here, you will be able to View user manual, which contains a list of all shortcuts.

KNULLI Hotkey Shortcuts¶

Shortcut	Action
`Function` + `Start`	Quit the game and return to EmulationStation
`Function` + `Select`	Only on devices without analog sticks: Toggle between mapping either the D-pad or an analog stick to the D-pad (e.g., for playing N64 or moving the touch cursor in NDS)
`Function` +	Open the emulator menu of the current core
`Function` +	Quick save in the currently selected save slot
`Function` +	Quick load from the currently selected save slot
`Function` +	Next save slot
`Function` +	Previous save slot
`Function` +	Fast forward
`Function` +	Rewind
`Function` + `L1`	Take a screenshot
`Function` + `Volume Up`	Increase brightness
`Function` + `Volume Down`	Decrease brightness
`L2`	In Drastic (NDS): Swap first/second screen (single screen) or switch between screen arrangements (dual screen)
`Function` + `L2`	In Drastic (NDS): Switch between single/dual screen
`R2`	In Drastic (NDS): Touch cursor click
`Function` + `R2`	In Drastic (NDS): Microfone input

Drastic-Steward Hotkey Shortcuts¶

Since Firefly, KNULLI comes with Drastic-Steward, an additional NDS emulator. However, Drastic-Steward has some hard-coded hotkey shortcuts which are very different from the default KNULLI hotkeys. Unfortunately, we cannot change the hotkeys of the closed-source emulator, so you will have to learn them if you want to play with Drastic Steward.

Shortcut	Action
`Function` + `Start`	Open Quick Settings
`Function` + `Select`	Open Drastic Main Menu
`Function` +	Toggles blur on/off
`Function` +	Switch bezel decoration
`Function` +	Switch between current screen layout and dual screen layout
`Function` +	Next screen layout
`Function` +	Previous screen layout
`Function` + `L1`	Quit the game and return to EmulationStation
`Function` + `L2`	Quick load
`Function` + `R1`	Toggle fast forward
`Function` + `R2`	Quick save
`L2`	Turn touch cursor on/off
`R2`	Swap first/second screen (single screen) or switch between screen arrangements (dual screen)
`R3`	Touch cursor click

Not every emulator supports every shortcut

Most hotkey shortcuts work for most cores. Even though only savegames from RetroArch cores are integrated into the EmulationStation GUI and can be loaded directly from the menu, most other cores also provide save game slots which can be accessed by the same shortcuts."

Hotkey shortcuts and RetroAchievements

If you are collecting Retro Achievements in hardcore mode, all save/load fast foward/rewind actions are disabled by definition. However, for regular RetroAchievements, saving/loading etc. is enabled.

Emulation shortcuts do not apply to native applications

Games from the PortMaster library are not emulated and therefore do not respond to emulation shortcuts. Do not panic if your PortMaster games do not react to your hotkey shortcuts - this is expected behavior. To find out how to save, load, and exit your PortMaster games, please refer to the game's manual.