Syncing Your Library

Syncing fetches your RomM game library and creates Non-Steam shortcuts in Steam for every game. After syncing, your games appear in the Steam Library with cover art, metadata, and organized into collections.

How Sync Works

1. The plugin fetches all ROMs from your RomM server (filtered by your enabled platforms)
2. For each ROM, a Non-Steam shortcut is created in Steam via the SteamClient API — no restart required
3. Cover art from RomM is applied as the portrait grid image
4. If you have a SteamGridDB API key configured, hero banners, logos, and wide grid images are also fetched
5. Metadata (description, developer, genres, release date) is cached and displayed in the plugin's custom game detail panel
6. Steam collections are created per platform (e.g. "RomM: Game Boy Advance (steamdeck)")

Starting a Sync

1. Open the QAM and navigate to the plugin
2. Tap Sync Library on the main page
3. A progress bar shows the sync status
4. When complete, a summary appears (e.g. "Added 42 games from 5 platforms")

You can tap Cancel Sync to stop mid-sync. Games already added will remain.

Per-Platform Toggles

Not every platform in your RomM library needs to be synced to Steam. Use the Platforms page to enable or disable individual platforms.

1. From the main page, tap Platforms
2. Each platform shows its name and ROM count
3. Toggle platforms on or off
4. Use Enable All / Disable All for bulk changes
5. Only enabled platforms are included in the next sync

Collections

The plugin automatically creates Steam collections for each synced platform. Collection names include your machine's hostname to avoid conflicts if you run the plugin on multiple devices:

• RomM: Nintendo 64 (steamdeck)
• RomM: Game Boy Advance (steamdeck)
• RomM: PlayStation (htpc)

Collections appear in Steam's library sidebar and can be used to browse games by platform.

Syncing RomM collections

The Collections page splits collections into three sub-tabs plus a dedicated top-level toggle for RomM favorites:

• Sync RomM favorites (top-level toggle) — the user collection RomM auto-manages as your favorites. Always exactly one per account, so it sits above the sub-tabs as a single switch.
• My sub-tab — your other user-created collections
• Smart sub-tab — filter-based collections that resolve membership at query time, so syncing always picks up the current matches
• Franchise sub-tab — auto-generated franchise groupings (IGDB)

Each sub-tab shows its visible count in the section header (e.g. MY COLLECTIONS (4)) and lets you toggle individual collections, or use the paired Enable All / Disable All buttons to bulk-toggle just that sub-tab. The global Show collection games in platform groups toggle controls whether games pulled in via a collection also get added to their platform's Steam group.

Artwork

Each synced game gets up to five types of artwork:

Type	Source	Where It Appears
Portrait Grid (cover)	RomM	Library grid tiles, collections
Hero Banner	SteamGridDB	Game detail page background
Logo	SteamGridDB	Title overlay on hero banner
Wide Grid	SteamGridDB	Recent games shelf, list view
Icon	SteamGridDB	Taskbar, small UI elements

Cover art is always applied from RomM. The other four types require a SteamGridDB API key. Games without a SteamGridDB match will show Steam's default placeholders for those slots.

You can refresh artwork for any individual game from its game detail page.

Re-Syncing

Running sync again updates your library with any changes from RomM (new ROMs, removed platforms, etc.). Existing shortcuts are updated rather than duplicated.

Removing Shortcuts

To remove synced games, use the Danger Zone page. See Troubleshooting — Danger Zone for details on the available removal options.

---

Previous: Configuration | Next: Managing Games