Filter and Hide Unavailable Games

📋 Summary

Add the ability to filter or globally hide games that are marked as unavailable because their ROM or game file is missing.

❗ Problem

LaunchBox can detect when a game's ROM or application is no longer available and display that status accordingly.

However, there is currently no easy way to exclude these unavailable games from normal browsing.

This creates issues for users who:

• Maintain backup collections across multiple drives

• Archive metadata without keeping all ROMs locally

• Move portions of their collection to external storage

• Intentionally keep game entries without the associated files

While users may want to preserve metadata, media, playlists, ratings, and other customizations, they may not want unavailable games cluttering their day-to-day browsing experience.

Unlike the Installed field, which is often manually maintained (or tied to storefront integrations), Availability is automatically determined based on whether LaunchBox can locate the associated game files.

💡 Proposal

Add support for filtering based on game availability.

Potential options:

Global Visibility Option

Under View > Hide Games:

• Hide Unavailable Games

This would function similarly to:

• Hide Hidden Games

• Hide Broken Games

and persist throughout LaunchBox and Big Box.

Playlist Filter Support

Add Availability as a playlist filter condition:

• Available = Yes

• Available = No

This would allow users to build playlists such as:

• Installed and Playable Games

• Missing ROMs

• Archive Collection

• Games Stored on External Drives

🧩 Use Cases

• A user creates a smaller backup build that only contains part of their ROM collection

• A user stores games on removable drives that are not always connected

• A user keeps metadata for games they intend to restore later

• Big Box only displays games that are currently playable

• Users create maintenance playlists for missing content

📦 Benefits

• Cleaner browsing experience

• Better support for archival and backup workflows

• Makes use of existing availability detection

• Preserves metadata without requiring deletion

• Enables more powerful playlist and collection management

⚠️ Considerations

• Should be distinct from the Installed field, as the two serve different purposes

• Availability checks should remain performant in large collections

• Global hiding should behave consistently across LaunchBox and Big Box

• Could potentially be expanded to support advanced storage management workflows in the future