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RetroDECK Path Migration

If you move your RetroDECK installation to a different location — for example, from internal storage to an SD card, or vice versa — Tender detects the change and helps you migrate your downloaded files so everything keeps working.

How It Works

Every time Tender's backend starts, it compares the current RetroDECK home path with the path it had stored from your last session. If they are different folders, Tender flags a migration — two ways of writing one folder are not a move, so a system that reaches your home through a link (/home is a link to /var/home on Bazzite and other image-based distributions) does not raise a migration for the spelling alone. This typically happens after you use RetroDECK's built-in move tool or manually relocate your retrodeck/ directory. The current home is the one RetroDECK's own settings name; while its settings file does not name the home, the BIOS folder or the saves folder — the file is missing, unreadable or damaged, leaves one of them out, or RetroDECK has not been set up yet — the folder Tender would read is only RetroDECK's usual place, so it detects no move then and moves nothing.

Tender does not move your RetroDECK files — RetroDECK handles that. What Tender migrates are the files it manages: downloaded ROMs, BIOS files, and save files that it tracks for sync purposes.

Moving Again Before Migrating

You do not have to migrate right away, and you will not lose anything if you move RetroDECK a second time before you get around to it. If you go from A → B and then B → C without running the migration in between, Tender remembers every home you left behind (A and B), not just the most recent one. When you finally migrate, it collects your files from whichever home each one actually lives under and brings them all to the current home (C) in a single pass.

  • The banner always reads "From: A → To: C" — it names the oldest pending home and your current one, so you can see the full span of the move at a glance.
  • Reverting is handled. If you move straight back to the home you just came from (A → B → A), Tender recognizes it, drops the pending migration, and the banners disappear — there is nothing to migrate. Note that reverting only clears the pending migration; any files you created under the home you visited (for example, saves written while playing under B) are not automatically pulled back and stay where they were written.
  • Missing files are reported, not hidden. If a file Tender tracked can no longer be found at any of the homes it knows about (for example, you deleted it manually), the migration completes and its result tells you how many files were missing rather than silently declaring success.

Warning Banners

Until the migration is completed, a yellow warning banner appears in two places:

  • QAM main page — at the top, alerting you that a path change was detected
  • Game detail pages — on every RomM game, reminding you that file paths may be out of date

These banners persist until you run the migration or the paths are resolved.

Migrating Files

To perform the migration:

  1. Open the QAM panel and go to Connection Settings
  2. A Path Migration section appears when a migration is pending
  3. The section shows a summary of what needs to move: e.g. "12 ROMs, 3 BIOS, 8 saves"
  4. Tap Migrate Files to start

Tender updates its internal tracking to point to the new paths and moves any files that need relocating.

Migrate Files moves nothing while RetroDECK's settings do not tell where its folders are: while its settings file is missing, unreadable or damaged, leaves its home, BIOS folder or saves folder out, or RetroDECK has not been set up yet, the button answers with the main panel's notice for that, and where Tender could not ask RetroDECK about its folders it says RetroDECK's folders could not be established, so Tender downloads into and removes from none of them. Without RetroDECK it says Moving needs RetroDECK, which is not installed. The migration stays pending in every case, so you can press again once RetroDECK is back in order.

Conflict Handling

If files already exist at the destination (for example, you copied some files manually before migrating), a popup appears with three choices:

  • Overwrite — Replace the existing files at the destination with the ones being migrated
  • Skip — Keep the existing files at the destination and just update Tender's internal path references to point to them. The copy left at the old location stays there, and later save syncs leave it alone rather than carry it over the one you kept. Two exceptions: if no emulator installation was found when the migration finished, or if Tender could not note a game's new save folder after it (the failure is written to its log), the old copy can still be moved across the next time Tender touches that game's saves. Neither copy is lost: where both exist, the older one is moved into a .romm-backup folder beside it.
  • Cancel — Abort the migration entirely; no files are moved and no paths are updated

What Gets Migrated

The migration covers three categories of files:

  • ROMs — All ROMs Tender tracks (the ones you downloaded through it)
  • BIOS files — Both files Tender downloaded and untracked files that one of your installed emulators asks for (e.g. files you placed manually that Tender recognizes). A link to Tender's firmware store moves as a link, and Tender's record of it follows the next time it brings its links up to date; the firmware store itself lies in Tender's folder and does not move
  • Save files — Recursively scanned from the save directories, excluding hidden directories (like .git or .tmp)

Files that Tender doesn't know about — ROMs you added outside Tender, for instance — are not affected. RetroDECK's own move tool handles those.

Previous: BIOS Management | Next: Save Sync