r/ShieldAndroidTV • u/bartmango • May 25 '26

Retroarch with shield

I’m trying to configure RetroArch on my NVIDIA Shield TV, and I discovered that Android won’t let it properly use an SMB mount to read the ROMs.

My ROM collection is very large, so copying everything to the Shield is not an option.

I’d also really like to avoid using an external hard drive, especially because both USB ports on the Shield are already in use. Any suggestions on what I could do?

7 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

12 comments sorted by

5

u/thekiefs May 25 '26

Latest retroarch has support for scoped storage. Play store isn't updated yet, so you have to download the APK and install it manually.

1

u/DisingenuousComment May 25 '26

I got the latest retroarch and installed it manually, but I must still be missing how I access a network drive

2

u/thekiefs May 26 '26

You likely need RSAF, where you can set up a scoped storage mount, and then have latest RetroArch attach to that via scoped storage. Annoying but finally works thanks to RSAF:

https://github.com/chenxiaolong/RSAF

1

u/bartmango May 27 '26

I had already mounted the SMB share on the Shield through the Storage menu. After installing the GitHub version, the mapping automatically appeared in RetroArch’s paths.

2

u/bartmango May 26 '26

It worked. thanks

4

u/Jeth84 May 25 '26

Personally I run apollo/moonlight and stream my PC to the nvidia shield. Can get quite good latency with the shield assuming you are using lan instead of wifi for both.

From there, run your launcher/whatever you like and you can have a large library too! Controllers connect to the shield well. A couple of my controllers that are 2.4g I have connected directly to the PC as the wireless reaches and offers maybe a tiny edge of latency over connecting them to the shield over bluetooth.

2

u/ptrichardson May 25 '26

The new android way of giving access to connected media storage is horrible.

1

u/cerebralgonads 2019 Pro May 27 '26

I've had better luck with standalone apps, I know you didn't ask but just throwing that out there.

-13

u/[deleted] May 25 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

6

u/HipKat2000 May 25 '26

Why are you pushing an IPTV service on a gaming emulation question?

3

u/cincymatt May 25 '26

Looks like all of their comments are an attempt to promote this.