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Apps

Apps is where the other programs on your card live: emulators, Game Boy Interface, tools, any GameCube homebrew. They go in their own folder, /apps, and show on their own face of the cube as posters, the way the Library shows games, so they never mix in with your games.

Apps: four programs as posters. Starfield, in front, fills its card with its own picture, a night sky and a triangle; beside it Pixel Painter's small icon sits in the middle of its card, Toolbox shows its Homebrew Channel banner, and Arcade, which has no picture, has a poster of its name. Starfield's name and file are underneath, and the controls read Browse, A Start, B Home.

Set up the apps folder

Make a folder called apps at the root of the card (or of whichever device you chose on Source), next to games, and put the programs in it:

apps/
  gbi.dol
  gbi.png
  gbihf.dol
  gbihf.png
  igr.dol
  Genesis Plus GX/
    genplus_cube.dol
    icon.png
  • A program is any .dol, .dol+cli or .elf file, in /apps or in a folder inside it. Folders inside those folders aren't read.
  • An app is called by its file name without the extension: gbihf.dol shows as gbihf. Rename the file to rename the app.
  • Apps are in alphabetical order, and up to 256 of them show.
  • Left out: a file called boot.dol or boot.elf, which in the Wii's Homebrew Channel layout is the Wii program; hidden files; and names that start with a dot, such as the ._ copies a Mac leaves on a card. Swiss's layout for a card shared with a Wii keeps both in one folder: the Wii's boot.dol and the GameCube's program under another name, and Apps shows only the GameCube one.

The Apps face appears on Home as soon as the card has an app, one turn left of Library. To keep it off Home, set Settings › Setup › Console › Apps Face to Off; the programs stay where they are, and the file list still starts them.

Home on the Apps face: the glass cube shows four rounded squares, two by two, and APPS is written underneath.

Real downloads

Most GameCube programs drop straight in:

  • Game Boy Interface's download already has apps/gbi, apps/gbihf and apps/gbisr, and a GBI folder: copy both to the root as they are. Each video setup is a program of its own (gbihf-ossc, gbihf-direct-hdmi and so on), so Apps lists every one; delete those you don't use to keep the list short.
  • Snes9x GX, FCE Ultra GX, Visual Boy Advance GX and others that also come for the Wii: put the GameCube .dol in the Wii download's apps/<name> folder, and the Homebrew Channel's icon.png there becomes its poster. The Wii's boot.dol beside it is left out.
  • Swiss, Genesis Plus GX and other single .dol files: drop them in /apps; without a picture, each gets a poster of its name.

Programs that take options

Apps starts a program the way Swiss's file list does, so the files Swiss reads beside it still work: a .cli file with the program's name (gbi.cli for gbi.dol) gives it its command line, one argument a line, and a .dcp file lists choices to pick from before it starts.

Give an app a picture

Put a PNG beside the program, with the same name: gbi.png for gbi.dol. An app in a folder can use the folder's icon.png instead, the Homebrew Channel's icon file, and every program in that folder without a picture of its own then shares it.

  • Any size up to 2048 × 2048 pixels, and up to 2 MB.
  • Any PNG, with or without transparency, but not interlaced. Most programs save PNGs that way; if a picture doesn't show, save it again with Interlace off.
  • A picture shaped like a poster (3:4, such as 600 × 800) fills the card. Any other shape, like a square icon or the Homebrew Channel's wide 128 × 48 banner, sits whole in the middle of the card, over a backdrop in its own colors. A small picture grows to at most four times its size.

Indigo turns each picture into a poster on the console the first time it's shown, so there is nothing to convert on a computer and no pack to build.

An app without a picture, or with one Indigo can't read, gets a poster of its name: the name in big letters, a line for each part where it has a -, _ or space, so gbihf-direct-hdmi reads GBIHF, DIRECT, HDMI. Its colour comes from the first part, so a program's variants (every gbihf- of Game Boy Interface) share one and stand apart from the rest.

Use Apps

On Home, turn the cube to Apps and press A. The apps show as posters in the layout you chose for the Library (Settings › Setup › Library › Library Layout), and move the same way:

To move Horizontal Vertical Grid
To the next or previous app Left, Right Up, Down Left, Right
To the app above or below Up, Down
A page at a time Up, Down, L, R Left, Right, L, R L, R
  • A starts the app. Its card rises into the launch screen, as a game's does, and the program takes over.
  • B goes back to Home.

Apps opens on the app you were on last time. An app that can't start because its file can't be read, is damaged or is too big says so, and you're back on its card. A program made for the Wii can't run on a GameCube at all: it stops on a black screen, and the console needs a restart.

Started apps join your recent list, like anything Swiss starts, when Settings › Setup › Library › Recent List is on.

When Apps doesn't look right

  • No Apps face on Home. Check that Settings › Setup › Console › Apps Face is On. Otherwise the device has no app Indigo can show: check that the folder is called apps, sits at the root, and holds a .dol that isn't boot.dol. After adding apps to a device that stays connected, such as a network share, use Source › Refresh Library.
  • An app is missing. It is named boot.dol or boot.elf, it is hidden, its name starts with a dot, or it is two folders deep.
  • An app has no picture. The PNG must have the program's name (gbi.png for gbi.dol, in any case) or be its folder's icon.png, be no larger than 2048 pixels a side and 2 MB, and not be interlaced.

← Posters · Troubleshooting →

From docs/guide/apps.md in Indigo v2.1.0, rendered for the web. Spotted a mistake? Suggest an edit.