ARC Browser

Turn your Android TV or handheld into the emulation station it was meant to be!

Game info

Version :

1.26.1

Category :

Arcade

Update :

February 11, 2024

Installs :

26,814

Developer :

LDX Technology

Price :

$7.49

Requires Android :

Android 4.2+

Content Rating :

Everyone

Game description

Android App Analysis and Review: ARC Browser, Developed by LDX Technology. Listed in Arcade Category. Current Version Is 1.26.1, Updated On 11/02/2024 . According to users reviews on Google Play: ARC Browser. Achieved Over 27 thousand Installs. ARC Browser Currently Has 644 Reviews, Average Rating 3.8 Stars

ARC Browser is a rom collection browser and emulator frontend that maintains a database of all your games, presented in a user friendly way, and let's you play them using your favorite emulators. Suitable for both phones and tablets (provided you have a gamepad), Android-powered arcade cabinets and of course Android TV!

FEATURES
* A searchable database of all your games, indexed by systems and categories
* Automatically scrape data about your games and download boxart and background images
* Integration with RetroAchievements - View the achievements available for your games and track your progress
* Support for native Android games
* Roms with the same filename (excluding text in parenthesis or brackets) are automatically grouped and presented as a single game. When you press Play you can choose which version to load. Useful not only when you have different versions of a game, but also for multi-disc games
* More than 200 configuration templates for different emulators and RetroArch cores
* Can be used as default launcher
* Support for Android TV channels

IMPORTANT
* Gamepad highly recommended - Touch screen navigation works, but has some issues. If you need to use the app without a gamepad, Arcade is the recommended layout mode for that.
* Screenshots in the Play Store have been blurred or otherwise altered to avoid copyright and trademark infringement
* This application does not include any emulators or games
* Artwork and metadata scraping from online databases may require the availability of third-party services. The developer of this app is not responsible for the availability of such services

SCRAPING
Your roms should be named as close as possible to the original game name. There are however multiple settings that you can use to fine-tune the scraping process. For example, converting ", The" in a filename to "The " and ignoring text withing parenthesis and brackets. If no match is found, it will also try replacing any instance of " - " in the filename with ": " automatically.

BOX ART, BACKGROUNDS, THEMING AND MORE
All of the images in ARC Browser, including but not limited to box art and background, can be customized. For example, if you don't like the automatically scraped box art, you can use your own. You can also further change the look and feel of the app with themes.

LANGUAGE
The app is in English only. Support will be given in either English or Swedish.

MORE INFORMATION AND RESOURCES
Documentation is available at https://arcbrowser.com
If you're having issues and need help, feel free to send an e-mail to [email protected]

What's New

* Support for custom input mapping
* Support for .arcmeta files to customize launch parameters for individual games
* Option to delete scraped media for single game
* Setting for whether to search in hidden systems
* Improved music playlist randomness
* Bugfixes
* Switched to Android API 33

Full release notes at https://arcbrowser.com/releasenotes

Rate and review on Google Play store

3.8

644 total

5 59.8

4 8.1

3 9.7

2 1.6

1 20.9

Total number of ratings

Total number of active users rated for: ARC Browser

Total number of installs (*estimated)

Estimation of total number of installs on Google Play, Approximated from number of ratings and install bounds achieved on Google Play.

Recent Comments

C May

App displays odd behaviour jumping around when using touch to scroll games in classic view, using physical controls works fine. There is no theme installer, themes are created manually which is not user friendly. You can add music which most other front ends can't, thumbs up there. It's a good app with few niggles. It has plenty of options and a good system list, better than other popular front ends but no vita3k just yet, it's listed but no option to select. Android games aren't listed either.

A Google user

(Pardon the formatting, Google will not allow for page breaks for me). I do like this frontend, quite a bit, but there are a few reasons I'm not using it any more, using DIG instead: 1.) The reliance on controller support to the detriment of using it via just the touchpad. This is a requirement for me now that I'm on a tablet rather than my old GPD XD. 2.) Visually, you can't do as much as you can with DIG. I like each system having its own screen with its own wallpaper and music track. You also get more icon layout options with DIG. 3.) All scanned images are contained in a not-so-easy to access format, that, when you have enough images, can increase instability with the application. Using your own images can help with this. With those aside, I will say that this is likely the better emulator for support - you can choose what file types to include and ignore, and create custom systems if you so choose. I heartily recommend this frontend, especially to those who exclusively use controllers.

A Google user

Update Review: I want to let you guys know that while I initially had issues (see my review below), I have fixed the issue and it was definitely my error and not the Arc Browser. This app really is great and i really now want to give it 6 stars because not only is it great but the service and attentive email support i received in order to find out that it was me who is the idiot definitely deserves the extra stars. Thank you Kim and thank you Arc Browser. Original Review I really want to like this app but its incredibly frustrating if you are the owner of 16gb Nvidia Shield you cannot tell Arc Browser to put the scraped data on externally connected storage. Especially if your collection is large. Please can you deliver and update to resolve this? Its the deal breaker for me (and perhaps others) I probably wont use this now.

Emile Garcia

This app is excellent! I was able to turn my Android TV box into a fantastic emulation machine. May I make a request? I would very much appreciate it if you could add the Android version of the Duckstation PS1 emulator as an option for the PS1 systems. Also, is there a way to have a single, consistent backgroud? Preferably, one of my choosing?

Solo59

I gave 5 stars, despite my issue described below, this is THE best front end for android! The only front end that reminds me of launch box and retropie. MY ISSUE: since buying a google tv chromecast device, Arc Browser will not open any of my roms from retroarch. I've installed everything correctly and spent hours this past weekend trouble shooting to no avail. Retroarch is so dumb easy to use all in one app, I refuse to do without it. Currently using Dig front end for now. Email sent to devs

Vince Millar

Arc Browser is the best Android front end. It scrapes games quickly and efficiently, it is highly flexible and it is easy to add custom game and platform images and videos to make it look amazing. I am able to launch close to 100 systems with it and setting those systems up was a breeze. Also, it is important to add that the developer is highly responsive and will listen to your suggestions. This app is a bargain for all the hours/years of enjoyment you will get out of it with its ease of use, stability and frequent updates. Why haven't you bought it yet?

Mad Page

Without anyway to select an SD Card for Arc Browsers artwork media storage, it's unusable as a front end for anyone with a small internal memory. Have tried formatting SD Card as internal memory, but the real internal memory still fills and won't allow anymore downloading of artwork files, also rendering the "SD Card as internal memory" option completely useless... Such a shame, this would have been perfect... However, if you have large internal storage, this front end is amazing.

A Google user

Works pretty well, though there are some bugs sometimes when entering game details view with the animations. As well as a bug when viewing an artwork from a game and returning to the details view the artwork disappears from the background Some suggestions: 1) An option to have boxarts resized to fit the system aspect ratios instead of cropping them, it looks unpolished when some of the box art is cut off. Perhaps also use these resized thumbnails in the oreo channels as well since the issue persists there. 2) Improve the loading screen. Just showing the box art in full screen for x amount of seconds looks kind of weird. Perhaps look to how Gamestream presents it's loading screen for inspiration. ie smaller box art with blurred background. Adding an progress circle would help as well even if it is arbitrary since it's for a predefined amount of time. It at least gives the sense that something is happening. 3) Allow us to manually select / rearange the artwork/boxart since sometimes the scrapper grabs a less than ideal one. 4) Add a kiosk mode that hides the bottom database/settigs/etc row. Perhaps with key combination to re-enable bottom row: L+R+A+B or something