When launching icarus, directly or by picking “Import ROM Files …” from higan’s Library menu, the main icarus window appears. This window allows you to bulk-import ROM files into higan’s game library, and also to access icarus’ settings.

Bulk importing ROM files

icarus’ main window is a filesystem browser, with customisations:

  • The filesystem browser only lists files with extensions typically used for ROM dumps from consoles higan emulates, plus .zip files since ROM dumps are often compressed.
  • Each matching file has a check-box next to it.
  • You can tick the check-box next to every file at once by pressing “Select All” in the bottom-left.
  • You can un-tick all the check-boxes by pressing “Unselect All” in the bottom-left.

Pressing “Import …” in the bottom-right will close the filesystem browser then try to import all the files whose check-boxes are ticked into the Game Library. icarus displays a progress dialog during the import process, and a result window if any errors occurred.

Note: Some games require extra steps to import correctly; see Importing and playing games for details.

The icarus Settings dialog

Pressing “Settings …” in the bottom-right corner of the main icarus window opens the settings dialog.

The icarus Settings dialog contains the following settings:

  • Library Location determines where icarus puts the games it imports. See Moving the Game Library for details.
  • Create Manifests causes icarus to include a manifest file inside the game folder for each imported game. See Ignoring manifests for details.
  • Use Database causes icarus to use manifest information from its database of known-good manifests, if it’s importing a game it recognises. For unrecognised games, and for all games if this box is unticked, icarus guesses the manifest data. This option is still relevant when “Create Manifests” is unticked: higan uses icarus to generate a manifest when a game is loaded, not just at import-time.