Customization

Dashboard, overlay, preferences, and runtime paths.

This page groups the user-facing controls that shape how the app behaves after configuration is complete.

Dashboard

  • Open the game grid with Show Dashboard.
  • Use search to filter games quickly.
  • Filter by platform and sort by name, progress, or last update time.
  • Click a game card to load its config.
  • Right-click selected achievement rows to use the manual unlock, lock, and backup actions.
  • Use Ctrl + Click or the card context menu to select multiple games, then ignore, delete, or clear the selection from the action bar.
  • Enable Show blacklisted games to inspect and restore ignored games.
  • The platform filter includes PC Ports, Xbox 360 Recomp, PS3 Recomp, PS4 Recomp, and KytyPS5 after their configs are generated.
  • Use the play button for games with configured executables.
  • Background polling can auto-select the active game when its process starts.
  • Esc or the close button restores the main UI and input state.
Dashboard navigation and overview

Manual achievement changes and backups

Apply local achievement overrides, reset supported local unlock records, or restore the most recent matching safety backup.

Select achievements and open the actions

  1. Load the game config, then select one or more achievement rows. Use Ctrl + Click to select individual rows or Shift + Click to select a range.
  2. Right-click the selection to open the available achievement actions. The menu supports mouse, keyboard, and controller navigation.
  3. In the overlay, first enable interaction mode, then right-click an achievement. Confirmation remains inside the overlay and does not activate its window.
  4. Review every confirmation carefully. Leaving interaction mode, hiding the overlay, or switching configs cancels an open confirmation.

Mark as Manually Unlocked

Adds a local manual unlock without editing the game's original achievement file. Use Clear Manual Unlock to remove that override.

Mark as Manually Locked

Resets only the selected records in a supported local unlock file and updates the app cache. Close the game first. The confirmation lists every affected achievement and file, and a backup is created before editing.

Restore Last Achievement Backup

Available when a backup matches the selected config, source, and profile. Restoration replaces the affected files and cache with the backed-up state, including changes made after that backup. Close the game and review the confirmation first.

Supported local state formats

Local source Supported state formats
Steam, Uplay, GOG, and Epic emulators Recognized achievement JSON and INI layouts, Tenoke user_stats.ini, RUNE Uplay achievements.cfg, and Steam stats.bin.
RPCS3 Selected trophy records in TROPUSR.DAT.
shadPS4 Trophy state in the selected user's XML or legacy TROP*.XML files.
Xenia Selected achievement flags and timestamps in GPD files.
KytyPS5 The selected user's trophy JSON and service label.
Xbox 360 Recomp ReXGlue TOML, EOTACH1 TSV, earned-only INI, achievement-state JSON, GPD, and validated ACH-DATA records.

Safety and recovery rules

  • Availability depends on the detected state format. Unsupported or ambiguous sources are never edited. Official account unlocks and log-based ports are outside this feature.
  • Unselected records, definitions, images, game saves, and shared stat counters are preserved.
  • Locking an achievement does not reset the game's own progress. A game may unlock it again when an existing save already meets the achievement condition.
  • Manual locking and backup restoration do not produce unlock notifications, screenshots, or recordings. A later real unlock follows the normal notification flow.
  • Backups are separated by config and source/profile identity in %APPDATA%\Achievements\achievement_backups. If an edit fails, the app attempts to roll it back and records the recovery details in the logs.
  • A file changed externally during the operation is preserved rather than overwritten by recovery.

Dashboard Collections

Group configured games into reusable collection cards without moving or duplicating their config files.

Choose the Dashboard view

  • Configs Only displays individual game cards.
  • Collections Only displays collection cards.
  • Collections and Configs displays both in the same Dashboard.

Create and customize

Select Create Collection, enter a unique name, choose its colour, and optionally choose a local image. Without a custom image, the collection uses its colour and default folder icon. The preview updates before the collection is created.

Add games

Select one or more game cards with Ctrl + Click, or open a game's context menu, then choose Add to Collection. Apply the membership changes to add the selected games to one or more collections.

Browse and manage

Open a collection card to view its games, or use the collection filter. Manage Collections and the collection context menu allow you to rename it, change its colour, choose or remove its image, manage membership, or delete the collection. Deleting a collection does not delete its game configs.

Collections store references to configs by config name, AppID, and platform rather than moving or copying the underlying configs.

General preferences

  • Choose notification preset and screen position.
  • Choose Native Windows to use Windows toast notifications instead of an animated preset.
  • Select notification sounds and language.
  • Select which achievement schema languages are generated from Settings - Advanced - Achievements Schema Languages.
  • Adjust UI scale from 75% to 200%.
  • Adjust achievement duration and sound volume.
  • Toggle hidden descriptions when available.
  • Enable Close to Tray.
  • Configure overlay shortcut and interaction key.
  • Configure Notification Click Action to open the matching achievement in the non-focusable overlay or in the main application. Opening the main application moves focus away from the game.
  • Native Windows notifications retain independent navigation routes in Action Center, allowing each available notification to open its own achievement.
  • Enable or disable overlay controller support from Settings → Advanced → Rendering.
  • Enable or disable achievement screenshots, achievement records, progress notifications, playtime notifications, and startup behavior.
  • Mute progress notifications independently for the active game config.
  • Use Start with Windows to create or remove the Task Scheduler entry for the current executable.
  • Disable the native process watcher to use executable-name fallback detection through ps-list. Command-line arguments are unavailable in fallback mode.
General settings section
Notification settings section
Advanced settings section

Settings → Customisation

Theme Customisation

Create an application theme from any installed theme while keeping the original theme unchanged.

Start and preview

  • Choose a theme under Start from, then enter a unique Custom theme name.
  • Every colour, transparency, and corner change is shown in the live preview before it is saved.
  • The preview includes cards, inputs, dropdown states, badges, panels, and a modal dialog so contrast can be checked across the interface.

Backgrounds and surfaces

Customize the application background, secondary surface, panels and modal dialogs, raised panels, cards and card footers, inputs, image fallbacks, and the window backdrop. Transparency can be adjusted independently for each colour.

Text and accents

Set primary and secondary text, primary and secondary accents, and the colours used for success, warning, error, attention, and highlighted content.

Controls and states

Customize borders, hover and focused-input states, plus the background, border, text, hover, selected, focused, and disabled states used by dropdown controls and their options.

Corner shape

Adjust corner radii independently for small controls, buttons and inputs, cards, large cards, panels and modal dialogs, and pill-shaped controls.

Reset and save

Reset reloads the selected base theme and discards the current draft. Save Theme creates the custom theme, selects it as the active App Theme, and makes it available with the other themes.

Custom themes are stored in %APPDATA%\Achievements\Themes. Saving from the editor creates a user theme; it does not overwrite the bundled base theme.

Settings → Customisation

Notification Customisation

Build a reusable notification preset with the actual Achievements or SAN renderer, then select the saved result from the Notifications tab.

Create or edit a preset

  1. Choose Achievements presets or SAN presets under Preset format.
  2. Select Existing preset to customize a local preset, New to begin from a template, or Random to generate a starting design.
  3. Choose the source preset, enter a preset name, and edit only the controls needed for the new design.
  4. Check Normal unlock, Rare unlock, and Platinum in Live notification preview. Replay, pause, or resume its animation as needed.
  5. Use Test Preset to open the real notification renderer with the values currently selected in Customisation.
  6. Save the design. A user preset is added to the Notifications tab; opening one of your saved presets again allows it to be updated.

Achievements preset: colours and layout

Set primary and secondary colours, title and description colours, border colour, a solid, gradient, local-image, or game artwork background, cover transparency, blur, gradient angle, width, height, scale, padding, content gap, corners, border width, opacity, animation speed, and display time.

Achievements preset: images

Resize, round, reposition, offset, replace, or hide the achievement image. A custom logo and decoration can be chosen, resized, positioned, offset, or hidden; installed preset logos can also be reused.

Achievements preset: text and rarity

Control title and description sizes, title weight, alignment, casing, description line count, font family, custom font, and description visibility. Rarity badges can be disabled, limited to rare unlocks, or shown whenever rarity exists, with custom placement, offsets, colours, and transparency.

SAN preset: background and timing

Choose solid, gradient, local-image, or game-artwork backgrounds; adjust three colours, angle, opacity, brightness, image brightness, blur, masking, and use of the achievement image as the background. Scale, corner shape, transition time, and display time are preset-owned settings.

SAN preset: artwork and text rows

Customize the achievement image, game image, logo, decoration, image border, Bronze and Silver borders, Platinum image, and hidden-achievement indicator. Arrange the unlock message, title, and description rows; use default, custom, or game-name text; and set shared or per-row fonts, sizes, and colours.

Effects, rarity, and points

Configure borders, glow style and animation, glow offsets and timing, text outline, and text shadow. Rarity can control icon animation, glow, image borders, percentage text, and badges by Bronze, Silver, or Gold. SAN points are calculated from rarity and are not the game's actual XP or Gamerscore.

The Normal, Rare, and Platinum previews are separate states. The Rare Notification Threshold changes which unlocks use the Rare style but does not change a platform's native trophy type. Custom images and fonts are copied into the saved preset, so keep their licensing and file size in mind.

Achievements user presets are stored in %APPDATA%\Achievements\presets\Users Presets; SAN presets are stored in %APPDATA%\Achievements\SANpresets. Bundled presets are used as sources and are not overwritten by the editor.

Settings → Backup & Restore

Profile Backup & Restore

Move the complete portable Achievements profile to another installation or Windows account.

Export a profile

  1. Open Settings - Backup & Restore.
  2. Select Export Backup and choose where to save the archive.
  3. Wait for the saved-path confirmation before closing the application.

The archive is streamed as a TAR payload compressed with Zstandard, so the complete profile does not need to be loaded into memory first.

Included data

Backups include configs, custom collections and their images, achievement cache, covers and other images, notification presets, sounds, themes, playtime, preferences, account-import metadata, and the Dashboard summary.

Inspect and restore

  1. Select Import Backup and choose the archive.
  2. Review its creation date, application version, config, cache, and preset counts, and uncompressed size.
  3. Select Restore and Restart only after confirming that the current profile can be replaced.

Restore behavior

The restore is prepared in staging and applied before file watchers start on the next launch. Achievement notifications remain suppressed during migration. Internal profile paths and Dashboard fingerprints are refreshed when the archive moves to another Windows account or PC. Missing game save paths do not prevent restored cached achievement data from being displayed.

Restoring replaces the current Achievements profile and restarts the application. Export an up-to-date backup before restoring if the current profile may still be needed.

Backup archives are not encrypted and can contain sensitive settings, including the Steam Web API key. Store and share them securely. Encrypted authentication-token files are intentionally excluded, so Xbox PC, RetroAchievements, or other connected services may require sign-in again after restoration.

Trophy Mode and platform notifications

  • Optional Trophy Mode classifies achievements as Gold below 20% rarity, Silver from 20% to below 50%, and Bronze from 50% upward.
  • Completing every achievement continues to use the dedicated Platinum notification profile.
  • Trophy Mode colors the border around achievement icons in notifications, the main achievement table, and the overlay. Bronze, Silver, and Gold notifications use the Rare profile.
  • RPCS3, ShadPS4, KytyPS5, PS3 Recomp, and PS4 Recomp retain their own preset, sound, position, timing, and native trophy grades regardless of Trophy Mode. Platinum keeps its dedicated profile.
  • Xenia, Xbox 360 Recomp, PC Ports, and other achievement-based platforms follow the Trophy Mode preference.
  • Configure Xbox 360 Recomp, PS3 Recomp, PS4 Recomp, and KytyPS5 through their dedicated sections in the Notifications tab. Notification tests use demonstration percentages.
  • Use Refresh Rarity on supported configs to retry platform metadata and rarity percentages. Missing percentages do not disable local unlock monitoring.

Xbox Game Bar notifications

  • The optional Xbox Game Bar companion Achievements Overlay by JokerVerse can deliver native Game Bar notifications.
  • Delivery includes achievement unlocks, rarity or platinum metadata, click navigation, and textual progress in current / maximum • percentage format.
  • The companion is optional. If it is not installed or connected, the Electron application remains independent and uses the configured notification fallback.

Achievement records

  • Enable achievement recording to save a short clip around each unlock.
  • Select 30 or 60 FPS.
  • Choose a total duration from 10 to 30 seconds, divided equally before and after the unlock.
  • Recording captures the default Windows output mix. If system audio is unavailable, recording safely falls back to video only; microphone input is not captured.
  • Optional GPU HDR-to-SDR conversion keeps H.264/MP4 clips compatible with standard SDR players.

Changelogs

  • Settings - Changelogs lists GitHub releases with version, release type, publication date, and release notes.
  • Release data is cached for 30 minutes. Refresh requests current data while the last valid cache remains available offline.
  • Release links open GitHub in the default browser. Remote release text is displayed as text and is not executed as HTML.

Live logs

  • Settings - Logs lists known application logs and discovers additional .log files in the logs directory.
  • The selected file is followed in real time across replacement, truncation, and normal log rotation.
  • Search and DEBUG, INFO, WARN, or ERROR filters affect only the displayed lines.
  • Pause pauses UI updates, Clear View clears only the in-memory view, and Open Logs Folder opens the source files.
  • The initial view contains at most 1,000 recent lines and the UI retains at most 2,000. Monitoring runs only while the Logs tab is active.
  • Logs can contain local paths or account identifiers. Review them before sharing publicly.

Runtime data locations

  • %APPDATA%\Achievements\configs
  • %APPDATA%\Achievements\configs\schema
  • %APPDATA%\Achievements\images
  • %USERPROFILE%\Pictures\Achievements Screenshots
  • %USERPROFILE%\Videos\Achievements Records
  • %APPDATA%\Achievements\ach_cache
  • %APPDATA%\Achievements\achievement_backups
  • %APPDATA%\Achievements\ach_cache\github-releases.json
  • %APPDATA%\Achievements\ach_cache_meta.json
  • %APPDATA%\Achievements\logs
  • %APPDATA%\Achievements\playtime-totals.json
  • %APPDATA%\Achievements\collections.json
  • %APPDATA%\Achievements\collection-images
  • %APPDATA%\Achievements\Themes
  • %APPDATA%\Achievements\presets\Users Presets
  • %APPDATA%\Achievements\SANpresets
  • %APPDATA%\Achievements\preferences.json
  • %APPDATA%\Achievements\preferences.json.bak
  • %APPDATA%\Achievements\xbox-pc-microsoft-auth.enc
  • %APPDATA%\Achievements\xbox-pc\titles
  • %APPDATA%\Achievements\retroachievements-auth.enc
  • %APPDATA%\Achievements\retroachievements\titles

Keyboard and controller highlights

Shortcuts and controller settings

Global

Settings: F1 / Ctrl+O. Dashboard: F2 / Ctrl+D. Play: P / Ctrl+Enter.

Overlay

Toggle visibility with the configured overlay shortcut. Toggle interaction mode with the configured interact key.

Overlay controller mode

Xbox: View + Menu toggles overlay, hold LB + RB for control mode. PlayStation uses Share + Options and L1 + R1.

Main screen

Create New Config with Ctrl+N. Toggle options with F3. Navigate with arrow keys or controller D-pad.