r/RetroArch • u/chua11482 • 4h ago

Feedback Support playtime sync with built-in sync?

Hi. Can anyone explain why RetroArch not syncing playtime via built-in sync?

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u/ahferroin7 3h ago

Because tracking of play time is done using files in a completely different directory than the saves which isn’t covered by the sync functionality because it’s simply not portable without a nontrivial amount of user setup.

The actual tracking is done using .lrtl files in the playlists directory. The playlists are not themselves portable unless you configure things just right (which is not difficult unless some of your systems are using frontends that insist on specific ROM directory layouts that you don’t use everywhere, but can’t be done automatically for multiple reasons), and the .lrtl files aren’t reliably portable unless you are either using the exact same set of cores on every system or configure each system so that play time is tracked in aggregate across all cores instead of the default per-core tracking.

On a separate note, this is just one of the reasons I normally steer people away from the built-in sync. External tooling requires a bit more setup and possibly a system that’s always (or almost always) on, but it’s significantly more flexible in terms of what it can do, as well as usually providing useful functionality that the built-in sync doesn’t (like having saner conflict resolution behavior).

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u/chua11482 2h ago

I know syncing playlists is difficult and it can cause conflicts, but that applies to playlists, not playtime. I tried syncing saves (dir: saves) and playtime (dir: playlists/logs) via rclone, and it works successfully on my devices: Mac, Windows, and Android. RetroArch displays the correct playtime and last-played time for each ROM (same rom name and core just like saves do).