Best emulator front ends

comicstar100

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Anyone who runs emulators on their windows PC, what Front end do you recommend. I've used Launchbox years ago. I've gotten so many suggestions; retrobat, playnite emudeck. I'd like something that is fairly simple to and easy to use. It's going to be on my laptop which I plug into my TV to game on full screen. But I need to be able to go back to my main desktop easily to still use it to write papers and surf the web.
 

Adamsann

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I can share what I've tried! First, there's LaunchBox. It's great because you can change how it looks, it works with many emulators, and it helps with things like getting game info and fixing images automatically. Then there's RetroArch. It's cool because it works with different emulator parts and has extra stuff like fancy graphics, online play, and saving your game at any point.
 

Scarlet

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I've always used Playnite personally. I quite like the playtime tracking on games, and it having both a desktop and full-screen controller mode makes it ideal for moving between a larger screen and your regular seutp.

Can't really say if it's the best though, since it's the only one I've really used.
 

Latiodile

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I've always used Playnite personally. I quite like the playtime tracking on games, and it having both a desktop and full-screen controller mode makes it ideal for moving between a larger screen and your regular seutp.

Can't really say if it's the best though, since it's the only one I've really used.
i used playnite once, it didn't agree with how big my library is and it was kinda clunky no matter what theme i used

i did use it to combine all of my libraries into one UI though and i don't think it was meant to handle 2000+ games, and i don't think it was made with 100% controller support in mind, like the replacement to big picture mode i was trying to treat it as (this was before the steam deck UI replaced big picture mode)
 

Marc_LFD

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es-de.org

ESDE is im my view the best its smple, easy to setup and can be set as a portable installation
Sounds like a translator from Spanish (ES) to German (DE).

Anyway, ES-DE looks very nice although I still prefer individual emulators as it just works as it should. I used RetroArch and it was a mixed bag.

https://www.es-de.org/
 

Scarlet

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i used playnite once, it didn't agree with how big my library is and it was kinda clunky no matter what theme i used

i did use it to combine all of my libraries into one UI though and i don't think it was meant to handle 2000+ games, and i don't think it was made with 100% controller support in mind, like the replacement to big picture mode i was trying to treat it as (this was before the steam deck UI replaced big picture mode)
Ahhh that's fair, I think I had around 200-300ish when I used it and it was fine, but I'm by no means a power user and I kept it strictly to retro games withgout bringing in my PC library.
 

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