Dual Screen

Dual-Screen

Some emulation handhelds have a secondary display (a top screen, a companion mini screen, a stacked second display). Argosy can use that second display while you play.

What the second screen does

• Library browsing on the second screen while a game plays on the main screen — you can queue up your next game without pausing the current one.
• Game detail view on the second screen for reference during play.
• The console's own second screen for DS, DSi and 3DS games on the built-in emulator, touch included.

Behavior varies by handheld. Argosy detects available displays on startup and enables the matching features.

Enabling dual-screen

Argosy enables dual-screen support automatically on supported handhelds. There is no manual "turn it on" toggle — if your device is recognized and a secondary display is connected, the relevant features appear.

The 2.0 companion experience

2.0 rebuilt both screens around a showcase-and-control split:

• Top screen: a large showcase for the selected game — box art (3D when available), artwork, and playtime stats. Menus and pickers you trigger from the bottom screen open here.
• Bottom screen: the interactive home, collections, and library grid, driven by touch or controller.
• During play: the companion screen shows session info with touch quick actions — save state, screenshot, and load state — without opening the in-game menu.

The lower screen's home

The lower screen currently runs the same home as a single-display device: it follows whichever layout you picked in Settings > Interface > Home Screen, with the same options and the same controls. There is one layout setting shared by both displays, not one per screen. See Home Screen Layouts.

On top of that it adds the app bar along the bottom for launching installed apps. Collections and the library grid are reached from the nav drawer rather than from buttons on the screen itself.

The companion home shows the same sections as the main screen — Continue, Picks, Favorites, Android, Steam, each platform, and your pinned collections — with a breadcrumb across the top for moving between them. The breadcrumb is not drawn under the custom grid, which navigates by page rather than by section.

Swapping displays

Which physical screen is "main" vs "companion" is configurable:

• Settings > Displays > Display Roles — Auto, Standard, or Swapped.
• The R3 quick settings panel has a Swap Displays toggle for switching on the fly.

Emulators can also target a specific screen per platform via the Display Target option in platform settings, or per game via Per-Game Settings on the game's detail page. The dual-screen game detail OPTIONS tab exposes the same Display Target row, plus a Save Path row for viewing or resetting a per-game save path (setting a custom path is done from the main screen). The STATES tab lists that game's save-state slots with their screenshots; A on a slot offers copy-to-slot and delete.

Apps on the top screen

On the Apps screen, Y launches the focused app on the top screen (leaving the bottom free), and the Select context menu offers the same plus reorder. The dual-screen home app bar behaves the same way.

Pinning a game to the second display

From a game's detail page, you can pin the game to the secondary display so launches target that screen instead of the main one. Useful for:

• Nintendo DS / DSi — so the top and bottom screens show on their respective physical displays.
• Running a secondary game (emulation) on one screen while using Argosy on the other.

Pinning is per-game.

The console's second screen

DS, DSi and 3DS games played on the built-in emulator put the console's lower screen on your second display, with the top screen on the main one. It covers melonDS (DS, DSi) and Azahar (3DS), and needs no setting of its own: if dual-screen is active and a second display is present, the split happens on launch.

Touch the lower display and the game receives it, so DS stylus input and 3DS touch controls land where you expect. While the split is running Argosy sets the core's screen layout itself, so a layout you picked in Core Options is not used for its duration. Single-screen games are untouched and keep whatever layout you set.

This is separate from pinning a game to the second display, which sends an external emulator's whole output to the other screen.

Known limitations

Dual-screen launch has a few rough edges tracked for fixes:

• The standard loading interstitial and launch sound may not play when a game launches on the secondary display — the dual-screen path bypasses the regular launch screen.
• Detecting when an external emulator (like RetroArch) has closed is less reliable across displays, so Argosy may take longer to notice you've exited a game on the secondary display.
• Nintendo DS touch is tied to the DS bottom screen. melonDS only accepts stylus taps when the bottom screen is part of the active layout, so a single-screen "top only" layout disables touch - even after you swap which physical display shows it.

If you hit odd behavior on a dual-screen device, report it at GitHub Issues with your device model — dual-screen support is maintained per-device.