Step 0 : what you need
- A fusée gelée vulnerable Switch
- A SD card of at least 2Gb, formatted in FAT32
You will be able to check if Lakka works on your hardware, without altering your PC’s hard drive or partitions. You can keep your USB pen and boot it on several PCs around you, it will keep your ROMs and your saves as expected, but it’s not the subject of this tutorial. To setup Lakka on your target PC, type installerand hit Return. However, unless explicitly configured otherwise, partitions on the SD card will be ignored. For example, usually on the Pi the boot partition is configured to be mounted, even though it is not used except for updating the contents (kernel, firmware, etc). To see what partitions are available on the card: ls /dev grep mmcblk0.
Step 1 : preparing the SD card
- Make sure that your SD card is FAT32 formatted, exFAT will not work
- Download the latest stable archive from here (use your brain to grab the latest)
- Extract the content of the directory in the archive and copy the
lakkaandbootloaderfolders to the root of your SD card- Windows users can use 7-Zip
Step 2 : booting Lakka
To boot Lakka, you need a working installation of hekate 4.0 (or later) on the Switch. We won’t cover this topic here, as there are multiple guides already existing.
Here are some softwares you can use :
- Windows : TegraRcmSmash, fusee-launcher
- Linux, Mac OS : fusee-launcher
- Android : NXLoader, Rekado(don’t use the Lakka launcher)
- iOS : NXBoot
Once hekate is running on your Switch, you can boot Lakka by going to Launch > More configs > Lakka.
Autoboot
If going through the menu each time annoys you, you can ask hekate to autoboot Lakka by going to to Launch options > Auto boot > More configs > Lakka.
Now what ?
I suggest you read the FAQ, especially on how to access the storage partition and copy games. Actually, while you’re here, read everything. Enjoy !
It is necessary to access the Lakka filesystem in order to accomplish tasks such as adding ROMs or BIOSes. Access to the filesystem also makes it possible to content like screenshots or savefiles from Lakka. There are two overall approaches to gaining access to the Lakka filesystem:
- Network access
- Attaching the Lakka drive to another system
Lakka can also be configured to use ROMs that are served from a NAS for users who are comfortable working in a Linux shell environment.
Filesystem layout
The editable portions of the Lakka system can be found in the following folders. Note that these the only folders which are made accessible via SAMBA – accessing other areas of the filesystem requires a different approach.
- roms - ROMs, films, music, and other content
- savefiles
- savestates - ‘quicksave’ states, as opposed to savefiles
- screenshots
- shaders - to override shaders
- system - to store BIOSes
- update - copy update files here to update Lakka
- playlists - to access the playlists
- joypad - joypad autoconfiguration profiles which are specific to your Lakka system
- thumbnails - the place where game thumbnails are stored
Transferring files via a network connection
File transfer via Samba
Samba is a service that you can enable in Settings->Services which allows other computers on the local network to transfer files to Lakka via the CIFS/SMB protocol. Only the most important folders are accessible via Samba.
Windows, OS X, and most Linux distributions should be able to navigate directly to Lakka’s Samba share by entering lakka into their file browser. If you cannot reach the Lakka system by name, it may be possible to reach it by IP. Once you have determined Lakka’s IP, enter that address in the file browser as with the Lakka name earlier, such as FULL.IP.ADDRESS.HERE.
File transfer via SCP
This method requires that SSH be enabled in Lakka, but it is faster than SAMBA. It will also require that you have and be familiar with operating SCP-enabled file transfer software or an SSH client capable of managing SCP file transfers.
You may be able to connect to Lakka via the name “lakka” in your SCP client. If not, you will need to find the IP of your Lakka box.The credentials for SCP are the same as for SSH: username root and password root.
SCP on Linux and Mac OS X hosts
In a terminal, copy the files over network using the scp command:
SCP on Windows hosts
Download the free software FileZilla or WinSCP, and connect to Lakka using the SCP protocol (port 22). They will expose the directories of Lakka, you can transfer files by dragging and dropping.
Direct drive access
This method consists of mounting the SD card, flash drive, or hard drive where Lakka is installed on a host workstation running Windows, Linux, or OS X. It is not convenient if you have installed Lakka on a device with internal storage, since you would have to connect the drive to another PC. But it works well for ARM boards, where the storage media is an SD card most of the time.
Direct drive access on a Linux host
If you’re on Linux, you can mount the second partition of your SD card/USB pendrive, and access the files on this partition. This way, you don’t need network connection, and you can access all files on your drive, including RetroArch configuration files located in .config/retroarch/.
Direct drive access on a Windows host
Accessing ext4 partitions from windows is not supported natively but you can install a driver.
Direct drive access on an OS X host
Mac OS X does not allow users to mount ext4 partitions natively. Paragon’s ExtFS driver is paid software. OSXFuse is free software. We have not tested either of these yet.
Using an external USB drive
Lakka offers the possibility to store your ROMs on an external USB drive.
Your USB drive must be formatted as FAT, NTFS or ext2/3/4. Store some ROMs on it, and plug it in your Lakka Box. The partition will be mounted automatically in a new folder under /storage/roms/, and your ROMs will appear in the menu. Please note that installing Lakka itself to an external USB hard drive is also an option.
Lakka For Pc
Note: If you are using Lakka for PC in live USB mode, you should be able to access the hard drives of the host computer.