User Manual
A guide to every tab in ZX-Next-Unite, written for someone opening the app for the first time. Each tab has its own page: read the one you need, ignore the rest.
Not installed yet? Start with the Installation page, then come back here.
The SD Card Utility tab — one of eleven. Every tab has its own page below.
The two TOOL: tabs are the reason the app exists. The 🌍 tabs are for finding software to put on your Next. The rest are support.
| I want to… | Go to |
|---|---|
| Put files on an SD card image and launch an emulator | SD Card Utility tab |
| Send files to a real Spectrum Next over Wi-Fi | NextSync tab |
| Search several archives at once | Unite! tab |
| Browse software made for the Spectrum Next | GetIt tab |
| Browse ZX Spectrum demos, music and artwork | zxArt tab |
| Look up any ZX Spectrum game ever released | ZXDB tab |
| Install games I already own on itch.io | itch.io tab |
| Get back to something I saved earlier | Favorites tab |
| Change how the app looks and behaves | Settings tab |
| Read the built-in help and credits | Help tab (?) |
| Play the hidden game | Alien Floyd's tab |
Tabs appear in this order. Two of them are optional and may not be there:
TOOL: SD Card Utility │ TOOL: NextSync │ 🌍 Unite! │ 🌍 GetIt │ 🌍 ZXArt.ee │
🌍 ZXDB/ZXinfo.dk │ 🌍 itch.io* │ 🌍 ♥ Favorites │ 🌈 Alien Floyd's* │ Settings 🔩 │ ?
* itch.io only appears when the optional itch-dl package is installed,
and Alien Floyd's only when you switch it on in Settings (it needs
pygame-ce). Both can also be hidden from Settings.
Some tabs show a number in brackets — 🌍 Unite! (24), 🌍 ♥ Favorites (7)
— which is how many items they currently hold. A small spinner on a tab
title means that tab is still fetching something in the background; you can keep
working elsewhere while it finishes.
Learning these four once saves you re-reading them on every page.
The SD Card Utility and NextSync tabs each have a scrolling log at the bottom. This is where the app tells you what it is doing and why something failed — if an action seems to do nothing, look there first. Newest messages are at the top.
Nearly every pane has one. It swaps the normal Qt widgets for a pygame-rendered
8-bit version — an animated starfield with green console text for the log
windows, a chunky arcade-style presentation for the galleries. It is pure
decoration and changes nothing functional. The button is greyed out with an
install hint if the optional pygame-ce package is missing. Click 🖼 Switch
to 'Classic' view mode to go back. Your choice is remembered per pane.
About the screenshots in this manual: most were taken with Retro mode switched on, because it is the more interesting view. Every control sits in exactly the same place in Classic mode — only the results area and the log windows are drawn differently.
The four online tabs and Favorites each have a View: dropdown:
- Table — a spreadsheet-like list with columns, plus a small preview image and action buttons on the right. Best for scanning many titles quickly.
- Gallery — a grid of picture tiles. Best for browsing by eye.
Double-clicking any item in either view opens the full-screen item viewer:
big screenshots with ← / → to step through them, a slideshow, the item's
metadata, and action buttons (Download, Send to SD card, Send via NextSync,
Launch CSpect / Mame, Open on website). Press Esc to close it.
Every gallery tile and every full-screen viewer has a heart. ♡ means not saved, ♥ means saved. Click it to save an item from any source; it then appears in the Favorites tab and survives restarts.
In the three file explorers — SD Card local, SD Card disk image, and the NextSync local pane — copy/cut/paste work across all of them and exchange with your operating system's clipboard (copy in Windows Explorer, paste into the disk image, and the other way round):
| Key | Action |
|---|---|
| Ctrl+C | Copy the selected file(s)/folder(s) |
| Ctrl+X | Cut the selection (moved on the next paste) |
| Ctrl+V | Paste into the selected or currently shown folder |
| F2 | Rename the selected item |
| Delete | Delete the selected item |
In the full-screen item viewer:
| Key | Action |
|---|---|
| Esc | Close the viewer |
| ← / → | Previous / next screenshot |
| What | Where |
|---|---|
| All your settings |
hdfg.cfg, next to the app — delete it to reset everything |
| Downloads from the online tabs | the downloads/ folder next to the app |
| Diagnostic log |
zx-next-unite.log, next to the app (or %TEMP%) |
| NextSync bookkeeping |
syncpoint.dat and syncignore.txt in your sync root |
Next: pick a tab from the table above, or start with the SD Card Utility tab if you use an emulator, or the NextSync tab if you have real hardware.