# Hotkeys Hotkeys are controller or keyboard shortcuts, that are used to perform several operations while in-game, such as saving game progress (savestate), pausing the game or rewinding, the more frequent usage will be to quit games/emulators by pressing **HOTKEY** + **START** The Retrobat team has defaulted keyboard and controller hotkeys for multiple emulators, the default hotkey buttons for Gamepad are the following: {% hint style="info" %} To trigger a hotkey action, you need to press and hold the "Hotkey enable" button, then press the second button that corresponds to the action to perform. {% endhint %}

Hotkeys (Gamepad)	Keyboard key	Action
Hotkey +	CTRL+F12	Game Control Center
Hotkey +	F1	Emulator Menu (or Pause if emulator has no menu)
Hotkey +	F4	Load State
Hotkey +	F2	Save State
Hotkey + START	Esc	Quit emulator/game
Hotkey + L1	F11	Eject Disc
Hotkey + R1		AI Translation Service
Hotkey + L2	F9	Select Disc Index -
Hotkey + R2	F10	Select Disc Index +
Hotkey + D-PAD UP	F7	Select Save Slot Index +
Hotkey + D-PAD DOWN	F6	Select Save Slot Index -
Hotkey + D-PAD LEFT	Backspace	Rewind
Hotkey + D-PAD RIGHT	Hold: F Toggle: Space	Fast Forward (can be changed from Hold to Toggle)
Hotkey + R3 (right stick)	F8	Screenshot
	F	Toggle fullscreen
	K	Frame Advance
Hotkey + L3	P	Pause (if emulator has a menu and Hotkey + is used for it)

The following list of emulators are currently aligned on this shortcut model, with some variations based on emulator capabilities:

Emulators with aligned hotkeys

* RetroArch * Ares (uses PadToKey) * BigPEmu * Bizhawk (uses padToKey) * Cgenius (only save/load state) (uses Pad2Key) * Citron * Demul * DesMume (uses Pad2Key) * Dhewm3 * Dolphin * Duckstation * Eden * Flycast * Hatari * Jgenesis (uses Pad2Key) * MAME * Mednafen * MelonDS (uses Pad2Key) * Mesen * Mupen64(RMG) * OpenMSX * PCSX2 * PPSSPP * Project64 (uses Pad2Key) * Raine (uses Pad2Key) * Snes9X (uses Pad2Key) * Sudachi * Suyu * Yuzu

## Customizing hotkeys RetroBat offers the ability to modify the default hotkeys assignment for several emulators, both for keyboard and gamepad. Modifications need to be performed inside a file located in the `\system\resources\inputmapping` folder of your RetroBat installation: * **kb\_hotkeys.yml** : to modify standard assignment for keyboard * **controller\_hotkeys.yml** : to modify standard assignment for controller hotkeys {% hint style="info" %} It is also possible to modify hotkeys only for one emulator, this can be achieved by prefixing the file with the emulator name, for example "`pcsx2_controller_hotkeys.yml`". {% endhint %} The following list of emulators allow modification of hotkeys:

Emulators with assignable hotkeys

* RetroArch * Ares * BigPEmu * Bizhawk * DesMUME * Dolphin * Duckstation * Flycast * JGenesis * Mednafen * MelonDS * Mesen * PCSX2 * PPSSPP * Project64 * Raine * Snes9X

{% hint style="warning" %} The file uses the RetroArch naming for hotkeys, even for other emulators. {% endhint %} ### Remap controller hotkeys Copy the file **controller\_hotkeys.yml** to the `\user\inputmapping\` folder of your RetroBat installation. Open the file with your preferred text editor:

The file is a yml-formatted file, **by default all values are commented**. The first thing to do is to uncomment the actual section where the buttons are defined, as well as the container section, this is done by removing the # character on all lines after the `#default:` line, including the latter:

In this example, we will replace the **fast-forward** and **rewind** hotkeys with R1 and L1 buttons, and move the **disk\_eject** and **ai\_service** to the d-pad: to do this, just assign the **rewind** feature to pageup (L1) and the **hold\_fast\_forward** to pagedown (R1), and then assign the **disk\_eject\_toggle** and **ai\_service** to their respective d-pad buttons (left & right):

Now save the file in the `\user\inputmapping` folder of your RetroBat installation:

In addition, it is also possible to perform a specific hotkey mapping for a specific core (in case emulators have multiple cores: Ares, Bizhawk, RetroArch...), in this example, the mapping is different between the flycast core, by using toggle instead of hold for fast forward:

### Remap keyboard hotkeys Copy the file **kb\_hotkeys.yml** to the `\user\inputmapping\` folder of your RetroBat installation. Open the file with your preferred text editor:

Now save the file: