How to play games from the external SD card without rooting android

RetroArch Android devices
#1

Hi there. Pretty much what the title says: I’ve found how to play games from the external SD card without rooting android. First, although I’ve been using emulators all my life, I’m just a user, I’m not a programmer, so I’m not entirely sure if this will work perfectly. I’ve just found it last night, played for about an hour, and, so far, it works great. It’s actually pretty simple:

  1. First, install Retroarch in the internal memory of the android.
  2. Then, make a folder for the emulator in the internal memory too (outside the directory of installation of Retroarch). Then, inside of it, make three folders, one with the BIOS, one for the memory cards of the games, and one with the savestates.
  3. In the directory setup of the emulator, set the folder with the BIOS for the BIOS, the folder with the Memory Cards for the memory cards, and the folder with the savestates with the savestates.
  4. Save the current configuration of Retroarch.
  5. Run the game from the external SD card! All the memory cards will be in the directory you created, all the savestates in the savestates directory, and the emulator should detect the BIOS in the directory always, because it’s always in the same directory. This way, every configuration file the emulator needs to use will be in the internal memory of the Android, but the game images, which are by far the biggest files, will remain in the external SD card.

If you also put memory cards and savestates from before, they should also work, they worked for me. Like I said, I just discovered last night, but it seems to work so far. If anyone finds that this may not work, please let me know.

Good luck to everyone!

Need help to play games from the SD card
#2

nice post, But why would you want to go through so much trouble? just change the directory for your file browser to your external SD where you keep your roms. and the directory for the bios to the bios folder on your SD

the SD is usually located onder /mnt (older android) or /storage

the only thing you have to make sure it that your saves and states are on your internal memory cause standard android permission doesnt allow an app to write on a SD

I never had any problems this way on samsung s7/GPD XD

#3

Actually, I wanted to make a guide easy to understand for people with little experience, but also I wanted to keep things organized, so no one would loose track of where is everything located.

#4

Is there any chance that Retroarch adds external sd write permission on Nougat? Not sure if it’s difficult, but many apps have it nowadays.

#5

No, all of that stuff has to go through the Java interface, which RetroArch doesn’t use. That is, it’s written in native C and Google doesn’t provide any interface for those permissions in the native activities. So, not only do they change their permission model each release, they provide no way for native programs to interact with their model.

#6

Oh, that’s a bummer. Thanks for the info! Finally I understand why some apps have this permission and some not :slight_smile: