Your game library

Every Punktfunk host keeps one game library — a single list of titles that every surface reads from. It has three sources: the launchers the host scans on disk, entries you add by hand in the web console, and titles a plugin syncs in.

Whichever source a title came from, it looks the same everywhere: a poster, a name, and a stable id like steam:570 or custom:9f2a1c…. Pick one on a client and the host launches it into the stream.

Where your games come from

The host reads your launchers' own local files. There are no accounts to connect and no API keys — nothing leaves the machine to build the list. Each scanner is best-effort: a launcher that isn't installed simply contributes nothing. Cover art is the one exception, and it needs no account either — see Cover art.

Which scanners exist depends on the host's operating system:

Every scanner is on by default.

A few things are deliberately left out. Steam's tooling — Proton, the Steam Linux Runtimes, Steamworks Common Redistributables, SteamVR — is filtered out, so your grid holds games rather than plumbing. A non-Steam shortcut you have hidden inside Steam stays hidden here too. On Windows, an Xbox game installed outside the default XboxGames folder isn't found, and a Microsoft Store game that isn't a GDK title isn't listed at all.

To see exactly what the host resolved, run punktfunk-host library on the host: it prints the whole library as JSON. That answers "does the host see my games?" without involving a client.

Turning a source off

The console's Library page has a Game sources card with one chip per scanner this host supports. A chip is highlighted when the host scans that launcher; click it to turn the scanner off.

Turning a source off hides its titles from everywhere at once — the console grid, every native client, the Moonlight app list, and launching. Nothing is deleted, the change needs no restart, and turning the source back on brings the titles straight back on the next read.

The list of chips is built from what the host can actually do, so a Windows host never offers you a Lutris toggle. Your hand-added entries are not a scanner and have no chip — they are always shown.

The choice is stored per host in library-scanners.json, next to the rest of the host config (~/.config/punktfunk/ on Linux, %ProgramData%\punktfunk\ on Windows). Only the sources you turned off are written down, so a scanner added by a future release starts enabled.

Adding a game by hand

Anything your launchers don't know about — an emulator, a ROM, a DRM-free build, a tool you want on the couch — goes in by hand. On the console's Library page, click Add custom game.

Title is the only required field. Launch command is the command the host runs for this title; leave it empty and the entry is a poster the host has nothing to launch from.

Under Details (optional) a title can carry:

Every field is optional and free-form; the host doesn't normalize the values. A poster tile shows the platform badge only when it isn't PC, since that would be true of everything scanned.

Manual entries live in library.json in the host config directory. That file drives commands the host runs, so it is locked down to the host user (0600 on Linux, a SYSTEM+Administrators ACL on Windows) — treat what you type there as operator-level configuration.

Editing replaces the whole entry. The console form re-sends every field it knows about, so nothing you can see is lost. Fields the form has no input for — prep/undo steps in particular — are cleared when you save an entry through the form.

Cover art

The form takes four artwork URLs: Portrait art URL (the 2:3 poster, best for a grid), Hero, Header and Logo. The console grid falls back from portrait to header, and to a plain text tile when a title has neither.

Use a full http:// or https:// URL. A Windows-style absolute path (C:\art\cover.jpg) or a UNC path also works: the host reads the file itself and serves the bytes to clients, so a path only the host can see is fine. A plain Linux path like /home/me/cover.jpg is not recognized this way.

Scanned titles need no art. Steam covers come from your local Steam cache, falling back to Steam's public CDN. On a Windows host, GOG and Xbox covers are the one thing the library looks up over the network: a background pass asks GOG's and Microsoft's public catalogs for them when the host starts, and repeats every five minutes for any title it hasn't resolved yet. Neither needs an account or a key, the answer is cached on the host, and a lookup that fails just leaves a title-only tile.

Games from a plugin

A plugin can own a slice of the library and keep it in sync — this is how the ROM Manager and Playnite plugins get your collection into the grid, box art and all.

Entries a plugin owns are read-only to you. The host refuses a hand edit or a delete of one, because the next sync would overwrite it anyway — change the title at its source and let the plugin sync again. Only the plugin can remove its own entries, and it removes every one of them at once. Your hand-added entries are never touched by a sync.

The console grid can't tell you which entries those are: a plugin's titles carry the same Custom badge as your own and still show Edit and Delete on hover. The form and the delete confirmation open as usual, but the host refuses the change and the entry stays exactly as it was.

Launching a game

Whatever the surface, the client sends only an id. The host looks that id up in its own library and runs what it already knows about the title, so a client can never hand the host a command to run.

• Native clients — the browser is a per-device setting in Settings → Library, and it needs a paired host. It is off by default on the Linux and Windows clients ("Show game library", or "Show game library (experimental)" on Windows) and on by default on macOS, iOS, iPadOS, tvOS and Android. Turn it on and a paired host's card offers Browse library… (Browse Library… on Apple); pick a title and the stream starts with the host launching it. See Client settings.
• Android — the library lives only in the controller-optimized home, which a TV always uses and a phone or tablet switches to when a controller is connected. Press Y on a saved host, or open its options and choose Library.
• Steam Deck (Decky) — the plugin's per-host Games picker lists the library and lets you Pin titles; a pinned game becomes a one-tap row under Pinned Games in the Quick Access Menu. The picker itself doesn't launch anything — either tap a pinned row, or use Open library on screen to browse the host's games full-screen on the Deck and launch from there. See Steam Deck.
• Moonlight — when the host runs with --gamestream, your library appears in Moonlight's app list beside Desktop, with covers served by the host. A title keeps the same app id across host restarts, so Moonlight's cached tiles stay correct. Titles with no launch recipe are left out. See Moonlight.
• A link — a punktfunk:// link carries the id in a launch= parameter, so a desktop shortcut, a browser bookmark or a home-automation rule starts the stream with the title already launching: punktfunk://connect/couch-pc?launch=steam:570.
• The command line — the client's own punktfunk command, which ships with the Linux and Windows clients. punktfunk library <host-ref> prints id, store and title as tab-separated lines, then a count (--json for tools); punktfunk launch <host-ref> --game <id> starts a stream that launches the title. A <host-ref> is a saved host's name, id or address, and both commands need it paired.

punktfunk library couch-pc
punktfunk launch couch-pc --game steam:570

How the game is actually started differs by host:

• Linux runs the resolved command — steam steam://rungameid/…, lutris lutris:rungameid/…, heroic://launch…, or your own command line. A title with no runnable command can't be launched from a client at all.
• Windows starts the title in the interactive desktop session once capture is up, using the right mechanism per store: Steam's steam:// URI, Epic's launcher URI, the GOG game's executable, an Xbox game's package activation, or the command you typed on a hand-added entry.

Where the game lands — your live desktop, an existing gamescope session, or a dedicated headless one — is display policy, covered in Dedicated game sessions.

When a game or the session ends

The host tracks the game it launched, so quitting the game can end the session and stopping the session can close the game. Both switches live on the console's Virtual displays page — see When a game ends, and when a session does.

Prep and undo steps for one title

A custom entry can carry prep steps that run before it launches and undo steps that run when the session ends — an HDR toggle, an audio-sink switch, a VRR tweak. They are documented with the rest of the automation surface in Events & hooks.