Library overview

OpenBoxGL presents imported games in a searchable grid or list. Select a card to open its detail pane, where metadata, artwork, launch, saves, and history stay together. The Web UI keeps one top bar of actions: Library, Add Game, Import Folder, Import Steam, Import Heroic, Import Lutris, Import Arcade, Emulators, Settings, Big Box, Running, History, Themes, Save Filter, Save Preset, Playlists, Achievements, Plugins, Discovery, Storefronts, Media, Health, Bulk Edit, Backup, Fullscreen, Queue, Tags, Notifications, and Webhooks.

Browse and search

The sidebar offers, from top to bottom: a Search field, a View selector, an ESRB filter, Categories, Platforms, Playlists, Filter presets, and Explorer. The View selector includes: All games, Favorites, Recently played, Never played, In progress, Completed, Installed only, Owned / not installed, Has saves, Hidden, and Missing files.

Search supports field-targeted terms, quoted values, and negative terms. Prefix a term with - to exclude it:

• title:hollow matches names, sort titles, and alternate names.
• platform:"PlayStation 2" matches a literal platform value.
• -tag:demo excludes games carrying a demo tag.
• dev:team matches developer, pub: publisher, series:, genre:, region:, notes:, source:, store:, progress:, rating:, favorite:, installed:, hidden:, broken:, portable:, controller:, and tag: all work.
• installed:yes / installed:no and favorite:yes / favorite:no filter booleans.

Bare terms search name, sort title, alternate names, platform, genre, developer, publisher, series, region, notes, source, play mode, status, progress, controller support, and tags.

Sort options are Title, Rating, Recently played, Recent activity, Play time, Date added, Platform, and Genre. The arrange bar on the right edge jumps through the current sort's groups; it appears once the view has at least four groups. The Surprise me button picks a random game from the current view.

The image group dropdown changes which artwork shows on cards: Box fronts, Backgrounds, Screenshots, Clear logos, Fanart, Banners, Box backs, Box spines, 3D boxes, and Title screens. The choice can be remembered per platform or per playlist from the dropdown's save action. List view shows Title, Platform, Genre, ESRB, Progress, Plays, and Rating columns.

Select multiple games by holding Ctrl or Shift while clicking cards. This enables Bulk Edit, which can change platform, genre, progress, rating, favorite, hidden, and ESRB on every selected game at once. Right-click any card for the context menu: Play, Toggle favorite, Edit metadata, Mark progress, Add to playlist, New playlist from game, and Remove from library.

Game details

The detail pane shows a hero with background art, name and platform, a PLAY button (or INSTALL for owned-but-uninstalled Gameyfin entries), favorite toggle, Edit metadata, Find metadata, Use Steam data (for Steam entries), Capture screenshot, Download bezel, Remove game, and Gameyfin Uninstall where applicable. Below are Information facts (release date, developer, publisher, ESRB, source, category, custom fields, max players, controller support, disc count, play time, launches, last played, progress, rating, region, play mode, Wikipedia, video URL), description and notes, extras (applications, alternate versions, documents), video and music players, a screenshot gallery, extended artwork groups, Related Games, RetroAchievements, and Save management with save discovery, backups, Ludusavi and Hoard actions.

A platform selected in the sidebar shows a platform panel with statistics (games, completed, play time, launches, favorites, missing files), Play random, Last played, Most played, and an Edit platform documents list of manuals and reference files.

Organize safely

Use Importing, Organizing, and Queue, tags, and notifications for focused procedures. The Health button runs a Library Audit that flags duplicate identities, missing game files, missing box fronts, missing extras (applications, versions, documents), missing save paths, and ROMs without an emulator profile. Audit issues list each entry with its problem; click one to jump to that game. Remove duplicate entries inside the audit deletes only the duplicate library entries, never game files.

Media opens the Media Manager with a per-platform audit (games, database matched, missing box front, missing background, missing screenshots), bulk downloads for matched games, and Find duplicate media, which separates a dry-run from Delete duplicate media. Duplicate detection hashes cover, background, and screenshot files; deletion only touches files inside the OpenBox data directory, never symlinks.

Removing a game asks twice: first to confirm the library entry removal, then whether to also delete the game's listed media files. Game files are never deleted. Settings also offers Remove all imported Steam games, which removes only Steam entries and keeps files and media.

Source and status

Capability status belongs to the parity matrix, maintained from PARITY.md. Library data lives in ~/.local/share/openbox-game-launcher/library.json unless OPENBOX_DATA_DIR points elsewhere. State is schema version 4, written atomically with a .bak last-known-good copy beside it; recovery is covered in Data and recovery.