Hotkey shortcuts

While in a game, you can execute some shortcuts with your pad, for example, if you want to save/load your in-game state.

Shortcuts are called by pressing [HOTKEY] + a button simultaneously on player 1's controller.

You can identify the hotkey from the main EmulationStation menu: press any key on your controller and you should see a little “controller” icon appear on the upper left corner to identify your player number. When the icon turns into a different color than the other buttons, it means that you pressed the hotkey. This icon can be customized by the theme you are using, some have implemented alternative markers.

It is possible to assign the hotkey to [SELECT] or an unused button of the pad, like the Xbox Guide or PlayStation Home button.

Assigning the hotkey to any other key will cause that shortcut to trigger immediately, for instance assigning [START] as the hotkey will cause the emulator to instantly exit upon pressing [START].

See the picture below for examples with popular controllers:

Common controller examples.

Press the hotkey with… … to do:
South button (B SNES) Open emulator menu (if available)
[START] Exit emulator and return to menu
East button (A SNES) Send the reset command to the emulated system (if available)
[L1] Take an in-emulator screenshot/something specific to that emulator
[R1] Auto-translate/something specific to that emulator
[L2]/[R2] Select shader/something specific to that emulator
D-pad up/down Select current save slot
D-pad left/right Rewind (if enabled)/fast-forward (if available)
West button (Y SNES) Save state to current slot
North button (X SNES) Load state from current slot

This doesn't work with 100% of the emulators - mostly works well with Libretro emulators, but it can also depend on your architecture and options. Batocera has attempted to make the shortcuts as consistent as possible across all emulators, but not all emulators support all functions, and some will behave differently with the same hotkey combination.

Also, if you want to save/load your in-game progress through these hotkey combinations while you use RetroAchievements, make sure you haven't set your RetroAchievements settings to HARDCORE mode, as the hardcore mode prevents from using these save/load functionalities.

If you'd like to read more about navigating Batocera's frontend menus, refer to the dedicated EmulationStation overview page.

  • basic_commands.txt
  • Last modified: 14 months ago
  • by maximumentropy