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Managing Games

After syncing, each game in your Steam Library that came from RomM has an injected RomM Sync panel on its detail page. This panel handles downloads, artwork, BIOS status, save sync, and more.

The Game Detail Panel

When you open a RomM game in the Steam Library, you'll see the RomM Sync panel below the standard Steam content. It shows:

  • Status badge — "Installed", "Downloading", or "Not Installed"
  • Platform name — which system the game belongs to (e.g. "Game Boy Advance")
  • BIOS status — whether required BIOS files are present (see BIOS Management)
  • Save sync status — last sync time, conflict count, and playtime (see Save Sync)
  • Action buttons — Download, Uninstall, Cancel, or Refresh Metadata depending on state

Game detail page showing the RomM Sync panel for an installed game

Downloading ROMs

Games appear as shortcuts in your library even before the ROM file is downloaded. To download:

  1. Open the game's detail page in the Steam Library
  2. In the RomM Sync panel, tap Download
  3. A progress bar shows download status with bytes transferred
  4. When complete, the status changes to "Installed" and the game is ready to play

You can also tap Cancel to abort a download in progress. Partial files are cleaned up automatically.

Downloaded ROMs are stored in your RetroDECK roms directory (e.g. ~/retrodeck/roms/gba/).

Multi-Disc Games

Multi-disc games (e.g. multi-disc PS1 titles) are downloaded as a single ZIP from RomM, extracted automatically, and an M3U playlist file is used for disc switching. This is handled transparently — just download and play.

Uninstalling ROMs

To remove a downloaded ROM file:

  1. Open the game's detail page
  2. Tap Uninstall in the RomM Sync panel
  3. The ROM file is deleted from disk
  4. The shortcut remains in your library so you can re-download later

This only removes the ROM file — the Steam shortcut, artwork, and metadata are preserved.

Refreshing Artwork and Metadata

Tap Refresh Metadata in the game detail panel to:

  • Re-fetch hero banner, logo, wide grid, and icon from SteamGridDB
  • Re-fetch game metadata (description, developer, genres, release date) from RomM
  • Update the native Steam display with the latest information

This is useful if artwork was missing on first sync (SteamGridDB may have added new images since) or if metadata has changed on your RomM server.

When you tap Refresh Artwork, the plugin asks your RomM server which SteamGridDB game the ROM maps to and applies the hero banner, logo, wide grid, and icon for that game. RomM is the source of truth: whenever your server has a SteamGridDB id for a game, that id wins — on both sync and refresh. If RomM has no id, the plugin tries to derive one from the game's IGDB id. Only when neither resolves a SteamGridDB game does a picker open, where you search SteamGridDB by name and choose from the results (with thumbnails). A name pick is applied immediately but is not permanent — once your RomM server has a SteamGridDB id for that game, that id takes over. Because a manual pick isn't stored as the resolved id, you can change it any time: just tap Refresh Artwork again and the picker reopens. To pin a specific match for good, set the SteamGridDB id on the game in RomM.

The full set of per-game actions — refresh artwork, refresh metadata, sync save files, download BIOS, and uninstall — is available from the RomM Actions menu in the game detail panel.

RomM Actions context menu with Refresh Artwork, Sync Save Files, Download BIOS, and Uninstall entries

Download Queue

The Downloads page (accessible from the main QAM panel) shows all active and completed downloads:

  • Active downloads with progress bars and cancel buttons
  • Completed, failed, and cancelled downloads with status details
  • Clear Completed button to clean up the list

Launching Games

Select any installed game in the Steam Library and press Play. The plugin's launcher script:

  1. Looks up the ROM file path from the plugin's registry
  2. Launches RetroDECK with the correct ROM
  3. RetroDECK auto-detects the system from the ROM's directory path and uses the appropriate emulator

If the ROM is not downloaded, the launcher will request a download — you'll get a toast notification and can play once the download completes.

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