Home Screen Layouts

Home Screen Layouts

The home screen is no longer only the carousel. Argosy ships three layouts -- Carousel, Auto Grid, and Custom Grid -- and each one has its own options.

Everything on this page is new in v2.6.0 and has had limited testing on hardware. If a layout misbehaves, report it.

Choosing a layout

Settings > Interface > Home Screen > Layout opens with a live preview of the current layout, and below it a row of three tiles: Carousel, Auto Grid, Custom Grid. Move to the row and press Left/Right (or tap a tile) to switch; the preview updates as you go.

Two things worth knowing before you start:

• There is one layout setting, not one per screen. On a dual-screen handheld both the main and the companion home use whichever layout you pick. See Dual-Screen.
• Each layout keeps its own options. Switching to Auto Grid and back to Carousel does not discard how you had the carousel set up.

The rows underneath the selector change with the layout, so you only ever see the options that apply to the one you're using.

Carousel

The original home screen: one rail of covers per section, with the focused game enlarged.

Option	Values	What it does
Row Position	Top / Center / Bottom	Where the rail sits vertically
Focus Anchor	Leading / Center	Whether the focused cover sits at the start of the rail or in the middle of the screen
Resting Size	50%-100%, in 10% steps	How large unfocused covers are next to the focused one. The focused cover always fills the rail's height, so this is the only size knob
Push Neighbours	On / Off	Whether the covers beside the focused one are pushed aside by it
Platform Badge	On / Off	Show the platform badge on covers
Reverse Order	On / Off	Reverse the reading order of the rail
3D Box Art	On / Off	Draw games that have a spine as a box, and the rest as flat covers

Left/Right moves between games, Up/Down between platforms and sections.

Auto Grid

A grid that fills itself from your library, one home section at a time. Nothing to arrange.

Option	Values	What it does
Scroll Direction	Vertical / Horizontal	Which way the grid scrolls
Columns / Rows	2-8	How many lanes run across the axis you are not scrolling along. The row is labeled Columns when scrolling vertically and Rows when scrolling horizontally
Show Titles	On / Off	Show the focused game's title above the grid
3D Box Art	On / Off	Draw games that have a spine as a box, and the rest as flat covers

3D Box Art needs both a front cover and spine art, which comes from ScreenScraper box media. If no game in your library has spine art the row says so, since the toggle still turns on and still changes nothing. See RomM Integration for the scan settings that supply it.

The D-pad moves within the section. The shoulder buttons switch sections, and so does pressing past the last lane on either side.

Custom Grid

A grid you arrange yourself, in pages of cells. A cell can hold a game, a collection, an installed app, or a piece of media, and a tile can be grown to cover more than one cell.

Options

Option	Values	What it does
Cells across	2-8	How many cells run across a page's short side. The count along the other side follows the shape of the display, so a page keeps its proportions on a tall handheld and a wide TV
Show Blank Slots	On / Off	Outline the cells nothing sits on
Auto-fit Cells	On / Off	Move or shrink tiles a placement lands on, instead of refusing it
Keep Blank Pages	On / Off	An added page stays even while it holds nothing
Add New Downloads	Off / Automatically / Ask First	What happens to a game the moment its download finishes. Automatically appends a tile to the last page; Ask First offers it and waits

Filling a page

Move the cursor to an empty cell and press A to open the Add to Grid picker. It has four tabs -- Games, Collections, Apps, Media -- switched with the shoulder buttons. Y opens search, A places the entry on the cell you came from, B closes.

Only installed games are offered. A grid you curate is somewhere you reach for something to play rather than something to fetch.

The Media tab appears once you have connected a media server, or on a device that can play a video file you already have. See Media.

What a tile does

Pressing A on a filled tile depends on what it points at:

• Game -- launches it.
• Collection -- opens that collection.
• App -- launches the app.
• Media -- takes hold of the tile so it plays with sound. See below.

A tile whose target has since been deleted stays where it is and shows as missing rather than quietly closing the gap on a page you arranged by hand.

Media tiles

A media tile is at least two cells by two, and plays where it sits: silently, on a loop, as part of the page. Every media tile on the page you are looking at plays at once, and turning the page lets them go.

You can point one at:

• a single video or GIF on the device
• a film from your media server
• a show, played as a random episode, in order, a chosen season, or episodes you pick

Pinned media is played from the device, not streamed, so anything you choose that is not already downloaded is fetched when you place it. The picker says so before you commit, and warns you with a total size when you have chosen more than a few. A tile set to walk a show only plays the episodes you actually hold, and loops back to the first of them at the end.

Pressing A on a tile that is playing takes hold of it: sound comes on, and the D-pad belongs to the tile until you let go. On a tile with nothing on the device yet, A opens the title instead.

• A pauses and resumes
• Left/Right seek
• X opens it in the full player, for anything from your library
• B hands the grid back

Where a tile had reached is remembered, so turning the page and coming back picks up where you left rather than starting again.

Select and Move or resize still work as they do on any other tile, whether or not it is playing.

Moving and resizing

Hold A on a tile to pick it up, or press Select and choose Move or resize. While a tile is held:

• The D-pad moves it, or resizes it if you're in resize mode.
• X switches between Move and Resize (a tab on the tile shows which you're in).
• A places it, B cancels and puts it back.
• Pushing a tile past the left or right edge carries it onto the next page over.

Overlap is allowed while you drag. When you place the tile, anything underneath is pushed clear, then shrunk, then moved to the first free cell -- in that order. With Auto-fit Cells off, a placement that lands on another tile is refused instead.

By touch: tap a cell to move the cursor there, tap again to act on it. Long-press a tile to open its menu, then drag the held tile to move it, tap it to switch between Move and Resize, and double-tap to place it.

The tile menu

Select opens the menu for whatever the cursor is on:

• Move or resize
• Change what it plays -- offered on a media tile, to repoint it without rebuilding it.
• Remove from grid -- takes the tile off the page. The game itself stays on the device.
• Make game queue, Set the active game and Finish/skip game -- offered on a collection tile, to play it one game at a time.
• Backdrop for this page and Music for this page -- see Page backdrop and music.
• Delete Page -- offered on any cell, since it acts on the page rather than the tile. The same action sits at the bottom of the Add to Grid picker.

Pages

Dots below the grid show how many pages there are and which one you're on. The shoulder buttons turn pages, as does running the cursor off the left or right edge. Swipe left or right by touch.

The last position in the set is an Add a page stub; confirming there moves you onto a new page. The page becomes real once something is placed on it, unless Keep Blank Pages is on. The last remaining page cannot be deleted.

Page backdrop and music

Each Custom Grid page carries its own backdrop and its own music, so a page of racing games can look and sound different from a page of RPGs. Both are set from the tile menu and both follow the page rather than its position, so reordering pages keeps each one's decoration with it.

Backdrop for this page offers:

Choice	What it does
Artwork from a game	Pick a game, then pick which of its artwork to use
A file on this device	Any image you have
No backdrop	Clears it

Music for this page offers:

Choice	What it does
Launcher music	The global background music, same as everywhere else
This page's video	The audio from a video tile on this page, if one is placed
Your soundtracks	Any track from your soundtrack library

Options that depend on the layout

Not every row on the Home Screen settings page applies to every layout:

• Background and Video Wallpaper (game artwork, custom image, blur, saturation, opacity, playback delay, mute) only appear under Carousel. An Auto Grid fills the screen with covers, so there is nothing behind it for those rows to tune. A Custom Grid page sets its backdrop per page instead, from the tile menu.
• Content > Installed Games Only is hidden under Custom Grid, because you place every tile yourself and the picker already lists installed games only.

See Customization for the background rows themselves.

Known rough edges

The layouts rewrote how the home screen is built on both displays. Reports are especially useful for:

• tiles not staying where you put them
• the custom grid behaving differently on the companion screen
• the two displays disagreeing about the layout