Install on Android

The Android version is made for the Anbernic RG DS Plus on GammaOS (Android 14). It needs a device whose second screen Android shows as a second display; on a one-screen device it runs, but there's nowhere to put the map.

Install

1. Download the latest gba-ds-v…-android.apk from the Releases page.
2. Open it on the device and install it. Android asks once to allow installing from your file manager or browser; allow it.
3. Open GBA DS. The first time, it asks for All files access: switch it on for GBA DS and go back. It needs this to read ROMs from any folder, and to keep its files in a folder you can reach.
4. Put your ROMs in ROMs/gba on the internal storage (subfolders are fine; .gba, .zip or .7z), or pick another folder in the game list's Settings (tap it, top right, or press SELECT) → ROM Folder.

Updating: install the new APK over the old one. Everything is kept: release APKs are all signed with the same key.

Screens and buttons

The game plays on the top screen. The map (or logo, or HUD), the pause menu and the game list are on the bottom touchscreen. L2 or the pause menu's Swap Screens swaps them.

Android keeps HOME for itself, so the pause menu opens with:

• SELECT + START pressed together (the game doesn't see the pair), or
• BACK.

Everything else works as on ROCKNIX; see Playing.

The GBA DS folder

Everything except the battery saves lives in a GBA DS folder on the internal storage, laid out like the ROCKNIX install folder:

Path	What
GBA DS/states/	save states, resume points, menu settings (prefs.cfg), the game list's settings (library.cfg), extracted logos, the RetroAchievements sign-in and badges
GBA DS/cheats/	your RetroArch .cht cheat files (subfolders are fine)
GBA DS/overlays/	your own overlay PNGs (see Map screen surrounds and overlays)
GBA DS/logos/	your own logo images (<CODE>.png), used instead of the extracted ones
GBA DS/screenshots/	Take Screenshot's PNGs
GBA DS/gba-ds.cfg	optional: settings from Settings (create it; only the lines you want to change)
GBA DS/gba-ds.log	the log of the last run
GBA DS/launch.log	what frontends sent when they started GBA DS (see Launching from Android frontends)

Battery saves (.sav) stay next to the ROMs, as on ROCKNIX, so other emulators can use them.

Without All files access, these are kept in the app's own folder (Android/data/io.github.kyannon.gbads/files) instead, which other apps (and you, on newer Android) can't open.

Game list settings

Settings in the game list (tap it, or SELECT) has, on Android:

• ROM Folder: pick the folder GBA DS lists (Android's folder picker); saved in states/library.cfg.
• RetroAchievements: Sign In / Sign Out: sign in with your retroachievements.org username and password. GBA DS keeps a sign-in token, not the password, and signs in by itself from then on. See Playing.

Starting games from a launcher

GBA DS can be started straight into a game by GammaOS's own launcher, Daijisho, ES-DE and others: see Launching from Android frontends.

Known limits

• Coming back from the home screen (experimental): leaving GBA DS saves the game's resume point (Android may close apps in the background). Coming back, the game should be paused with the menu open; GammaOS on the RG DS Plus doesn't switch between apps reliably enough to test this.
• Performance: in testing on the RG DS Plus, games run at full speed (about 60 frames a second) with the occasional single slow frame. Frame Buffer (pause menu → Game) smooths those out at the cost of one frame of input delay. gba-ds.log lists slow frames with what took the time.