Game Library Manager (v4)

PySide6 desktop app for organising large Windows game libraries represented by shortcuts. It tracks sources, versions, archives, and health, while keeping a fast, dense grid for everyday browsing — now with sharper icons and clearer scan summaries.

What it does

• Library grid: Comfortable/Compact densities, responsive card scaling, quick pills (All / Missing / Updates / Source), tag chips to filter, sorting by Title / Last Played / Rating / Launch Count / Last Checked, focus mode to hide Details.
• Metadata editing: Status, 1–10 rating, tags, notes, source URL, installed version, archive folder + compressed archive paths (pick/open), launch stats, and backup target info per game.
• Scanning: Reads the top level of a shortcuts root for .lnk / .url / .html, resolves targets, and merges into the library while preserving user edits. Detects duplicate shortcut sets (Game.lnk, Game (1).lnk, …) and can quarantine extras before import. Shows a scan summary (new/updated/icons refreshed) and keeps the progress dialog responsive.
• Icons: High-quality pipeline pulls the best available source (shortcut → resolved target → archive) at 1024px and downscales once, so cards stay sharp even after resizing; scanning primes icons for newly touched games.
• Launching: Opens the stored shortcut; falls back to resolved target/args/working dir; updates launch count and last played.
• Collections: Manual lists plus smart collections (presets: Low confidence, HTML only, Backlog, Unplayed). Sidebar shows live counts; create/rename/delete; add selected game with one click.
• Update tracking: Background fetch + parse with retries/cache (6h TTL); f95zone-specific parser; Updates view shows Update / Up-to-date / Unknown / Newer local; optional “Open sources only” mode; mark installed from source; bulk source URL import with fuzzy matching and optional overwrite.
• Health checks: Flags missing shortcuts/targets/source URLs/archive folders/files/game folders and version mismatches; quick Fix/Open/Remove actions; per-issue resolve/ignore; density + severity filters; hinting focuses the right Details field.
• Appearance & UX: Theme system (dark, light, neubrutalism, neumorphism, glassmorphism), font family + scale, responsive typography buckets, details toggle with size guard, splitter persistence, focus mode, guarded top-level windows (debug).
• Storage & logging: Library/settings in %APPDATA%/GameLibraryManager (library.json, settings.json). Rotating manager.log with fallbacks and a one-time toast when the log path falls back.

First run

1. pip install -r requirements.txt
2. python src/main.py
3. Click Scan and choose your shortcuts root (top-level only). Duplicate shortcut groups can be quarantined automatically if you accept the prompt.
4. Select a game, set Source URL, and optionally archive paths/installed version in Details.
5. Press Check Updates (dropdown has “Open sources only”). Results land in Updates; mark installed from source if desired.
6. Open Health Checks to fix or ignore flagged items.

Running & packaging

• Source run: python src/main.py (ensure src is on PYTHONPATH; Windows required for .lnk resolution).
• Requirements: see requirements.txt (PySide6, pywin32, lxml).
• Packaging: see packaging.md for the PyInstaller command that bundles the external scanner.

Bundled scanner

Tools > Scanner launches the included external/scanner/GameShortcutMaker project without blocking the UI. It can generate the shortcut root that this manager consumes.

Known limits

• Only the top level of the shortcuts root is scanned.
• Generic HTML parsing may miss versions on heavily customised pages; status falls back to UNKNOWN rather than guessing.
• Tests are lightweight scripts (src/tests) rather than a full runner.