A retro handheld console comes out of its box in English, sometimes in Chinese, with brightness at maximum, badly set sound and no game resume. None of that is a fault: manufacturers ship a neutral configuration, and alternative firmware even more so. Half an hour of settings changes day-to-day use, especially on two points almost nobody touches: sleep mode and automatically resuming the game in progress. Here is what can be set, where, and what can't.
Setting the menu to French, firmware by firmware
French isn't available everywhere: firmware derived from Batocera is translated, minimalist interfaces not at all.
| Firmware | Where the setting is | French |
|---|---|---|
| KNULLI, Batocera, ROCKNIX (EmulationStation) | START, then System Settings, then Language | Yes. These three systems share Batocera's EmulationStation, whose French translation is complete. |
| muOS | Configuration, then Language | Yes. A French pack exists. The translation is community-made, updates from the console with the X button if the network is active, and its coverage depends on the version. |
| ArkOS | No documented language option | No. The interface stays in English. |
| Onion OS (Miyoo) | No documented interface language setting | No. The interface stays in English. |
| MinUI and NextUI | Not applicable | No. These launchers mostly display file names; NextUI handles Japanese and Chinese characters in titles, but its interface is in English. |
| Stock firmware (Anbernic, TrimUI, Powkiddy) | System menu, Language entry. On a TrimUI Brick: R, then System, then Language | Varies by model and revision: check on your own machine. |
| Android consoles (Retroid, AYN, Anbernic Android) | Android settings, System, Languages and input | Yes for Android. Manufacturer launchers and many emulators stay in English. |
RetroArch is translated separately
A frequent source of confusion: translating the console menu does not translate RetroArch, which keeps its own language. The setting is in Settings, User, Language, and French is on the list. Then enable saving the configuration on exit, otherwise the choice may not survive the next launch.
RetroArch's translation is uneven: the main menus are in French, some of the advanced options and core descriptions stay in English. And if you look for online help on a specific setting, English gives far more results.
Sleep mode and game resume
This is the most useful and least known setting. Configured properly, it means you switch the console back on and pick the game up where you left it, without going through a menu.
What sleep mode does
On minimalist launchers, the behaviour is locked down and effective. MinUI goes to sleep after thirty seconds of inactivity, or immediately when the power button is pressed, then shuts down completely after two minutes of sleep. NextUI distinguishes between a light sleep, which turns off the screen, and a deep sleep after two minutes.
On muOS, two settings matter, under Configuration then Advanced Settings. Display Suspend cuts power to the panel during sleep; the documentation warns that some panels don't come back correctly afterwards, so test it on your model. Device Lid Switch triggers sleep when the lid is closed, on clamshell machines such as the RG35XXSP or the Retroid Pocket Flip 2.
Automatic resume under KNULLI
KNULLI offers the most polished feature of the lot. From START, go to Game Settings, enable Auto Save/Load, then Quick Resume Mode. The console remembers the last game launched, saves on shutdown and relaunches that game at the next start-up, at the exact point where you stopped.
Two limits. Not every emulator handles automatic saving: in that case the game relaunches, but from the beginning. And RetroAchievements' Hardcore mode blocks the feature. If the console goes into a reboot loop after you enable it, the documented fix is to edit system/knulli.conf and delete the global.quickresume, bootgame.cmd and bootgame.path lines.
On muOS, the partial equivalent is called Device Startup, under Configuration, General Settings: it chooses what the console shows when switched on, including the last content played.
Inactivity timers are set under KNULLI in START, Device Settings, Power Management: Mode, Extended Mode, Disable Battery Saving When Charging, Aggressive Battery Saver. The principle is a two-stage one, sleep after a first delay, shutdown after a second.
The button combinations to know
Each firmware defines a modifier button, held down while you press another: MENU on muOS and on Miyoo devices, FUNCTION on KNULLI, sometimes SELECT or START on stock firmware. The combinations below are the defaults from the respective documentation.
| Firmware | Default combinations |
|---|---|
| muOS | MENU + X: RetroArch menu. MENU + START: quit. MENU + R2 and MENU + L2: save and load state. MENU + R1: fast forward. MENU + Y: frames per second. MENU + volume: brightness. |
| KNULLI, Batocera | FUNCTION + START: quit. FUNCTION + volume: brightness. FUNCTION + L1: screenshot. Quick menu, states and rewind follow the same pattern; the full list is in the built-in manual, reachable with SELECT from the home screen. |
| Onion OS (Miyoo) | MENU short press: game switcher. MENU held: save and quit. MENU twice: relaunch the last game. MENU + volume: brightness on the Mini Plus, SELECT + L2 or R2 on the Mini V1 to V4. Both volume buttons together: mute. |
| NextUI (TrimUI) | START + volume: brightness. SELECT + volume: colour temperature. MENU: in-game options. MENU + SELECT: game switcher. |
Display: brightness, scaling, filters
The backlight is the biggest power draw on these machines. Going from maximum to a comfortable indoor level shows in battery life, and tires the eyes less in the evening. On muOS, two settings save you redoing it at every start-up: Brightness On Boot fixes brightness at start-up, Brightness Increment sets the step for each press.
Scaling
The original consoles didn't share the same aspect ratio. A 4:3 screen like the one on an RG35XX Pro or a TrimUI Brick shows a SNES image with no black bars, but will leave some on a Game Boy Advance image, which is wider. A 16:9 screen does the opposite.
Two options turn up everywhere under similar names. Integer scaling doubles, triples or quadruples each original pixel: the pixels stay regular, at the cost of a smaller image with borders. Full-screen stretching fills the panel but makes the pixels irregular. On a three-and-a-half-inch panel, integer scaling is often cleaner to the eye.
Filters and shaders
RetroArch's filters imitate the look of a CRT screen or of a Game Boy panel. A matter of taste, with two caveats: they cost frames per second on modest machines, and their effect becomes hard to make out on a small, very dense screen. The settings are covered in our guide to essential RetroArch settings.
Sound: volume, headphones, latency
The speaker on these consoles is small and distorts quickly. On muOS, Volume On Boot fixes the level at start-up and Volume Increment the adjustment step. The same page offers an Audio Overdrive of up to 200%: the documentation itself warns of the risk of distortion.
Audio latency
Crackling sound isn't always a hardware fault. In RetroArch, the setting is in Settings, Audio, Output, Audio Latency, in milliseconds. You raise it in steps, typically 64, then 96, then 128, testing at each stage: higher latency gives stable sound, at the cost of a growing delay. Leave audio synchronisation enabled. If the problem affects only one game, the lead is no longer the sound but the emulation, and our article on games that won't start reviews the usual causes.
On the output side, wired headphones cut the speaker and use less power than a pushed volume level. Bluetooth adds a structural transmission latency, independent of your settings, which shows up in action and rhythm games: for those genres, wired remains the safe choice.
Battery life, in two settings
On a retro handheld console, brightness and sleep mode weigh more heavily than everything else. Turn down the backlight, set a short inactivity timer, switch off Wi-Fi and Bluetooth when unused. 8- and 16-bit games barely tax the processor; on Android machines emulating PSP or GameCube, it takes over again and battery life drops sharply.
Backing up your configuration before changing firmware
Redoing thirty settings after every system change is the surest way never to touch them again. Three levels of backup.
-
muOS. A dedicated module sits in Configuration, Customisation, Device Backup. It selectively backs up around twenty categories: collections, saves and states, themes, RetroArch configurations, overlays, shaders, network profiles, personal scripts. The archive goes into a
BACKUPfolder on the main card, the second card or a USB stick, and can be reinstalled on another compatible machine. -
KNULLI and Batocera. The interface settings live in the system configuration file,
system/knulli.confon KNULLI, and user data in theuserdatatree. Copying them to a computer before the operation is enough to get the essentials back. -
RetroArch. The
retroarch.cfgfile carries the general configuration. Settings specific to a core or a game are saved from the quick menu, per core, per content folder or per game; the files land in theconfigfolder, in a subfolder named after the core, and button remaps separately as.rmp. Careful: once the override is created, any later change has to be re-saved from that same menu, otherwise it is lost.
Before any reinstallation, also make a full image of the microSD card: it is the only backup that covers the hidden partitions. The procedure is in our custom firmware installation guide, and the firmware compatibility table shows which systems accept your model. Your saved games follow a different logic: we set out where they live in the article on retro handheld console saves.
Frequently asked questions
My menu is in Chinese, how do I get back to a language I understand?
Find the system menu entry, often recognisable by its icon, and look for the line whose value shows language names in the Latin alphabet: that is almost always the language setting. On Batocera-derived firmware, it is under System Settings.
Is French available on every firmware?
No. KNULLI, Batocera and ROCKNIX have it, muOS has a community pack whose coverage depends on the version. ArkOS, Onion OS, MinUI and NextUI stay in English. On Android consoles, the system is in French but the emulators aren't always.
Does sleep mode use battery?
Yes, always a little, and sometimes a lot depending on the machine: KNULLI's documentation warns explicitly about this. Minimalist launchers get around the problem by shutting down completely after a few minutes of sleep. For a short break, sleep is perfect; for several days, switch off.
Why does the sound crackle on some games and not others?
Crackling appears when the emulation doesn't feed the audio buffer regularly enough, on the games that are most demanding for the machine. Raising audio latency in steps of 64, 96 then 128 milliseconds fixes most cases. If the delay becomes annoying, the game is beyond the console's capabilities.
My settings disappear after every restart, what should I do?
In RetroArch, enable saving the configuration on exit, or save it explicitly from the menu. If the problem persists, the cause is often the microSD card: a read-only, worn-out or badly formatted card accepts changes on screen without ever writing them.
Will I lose my settings when changing firmware?
Yes, unless you back them up first: one firmware's configurations can't be read by another, and going from muOS to KNULLI means redoing everything. Back up your RetroArch files and your saves at the very least, and make a full image of the card before the operation.
A well-configured console is recognisable by what you no longer do: no more menus to cross to pick a game back up, no more brightness to correct at every start-up. If you are still unsure about which machine to get, our retro handheld consoles section states, for each model, its condition on delivery, ready to play or to configure.