How to Show Retroarch Snapshots instead of Boxarts?

1 min read

2 years ago Team Cook

Once you have downloaded Thumbnails and Boxarts for MAME in Retroarch, you will notice that only the Boxarts are displayed. This guide will show you how to display the in-game Retroarch Snapshots instead of the boxarts.

Personally, I don’t care about the Title screen or the Boxart.

retroarch-boxarts-in-game-list — Retroarch shows boxarts in game list by default, that’s not telling about the game

When I want to play Arcade games, I want to see what the game actually will look like, right away:

retroarch-snapshot-in-game-list — A snapshot of the game in Retroarch game list is more telling

When you download the thumbnails within Retroarch, it will download only the necessary for the games that you have, under:

RetroArch-Win64\
- thumbnails\
  - <SYSTEM>\
    - Named_Boxarts
    - Named_Snaps
    - Named_Titles

Retroarch will show the Boxarts only, no way to change that.

How to show Snapshots instead of Boxarts in Retroarch

Very simple:

under RetroArch-Win64\thumbnails\<SYSTEM>\ : swap Boxarts with Snaps or Titles if you prefer:
- rename Named_Boxarts to Named_Snaps
- rename Named_Snaps to Named_Boxarts
restart Retroarch

And voila!