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

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

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, or an installed app, 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 three tabs -- Games, Collections, Apps -- 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.

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.

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.

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
• Remove from grid -- takes the tile off the page. The game itself stays on the device.
• 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.

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. A grid fills the screen with covers, so there is nothing behind it for those rows to tune.
• 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