PicoCover

Automatically download and convert Nintendo DS cover art for Pico Launcher

Cross-platform tool to fetch GameTDB cover art, convert to 8bpp BMP format, and organize for Pico Launcher by LNH-team

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✨ Features

• 🖥️ GUI Mode – Intuitive interface with automatic drive detection and tabbed view
• Collapsible game lists (skipped/failed) for quick review
• Overwrite toggle
• ⌨️ CLI Mode – Full scriptable control for automation
• 🔄 Auto-update – Built-in update checker with one-click updates
• ♻️ Auto-refresh – Detects new drives without restarting
• 🌍 Multi-region support – Tries EN, US, JA, EU until a cover is found
• 🚀 Fast processing – Parallel downloads with CPU-core adaptive threading
• 📦 Native packages – DMG for macOS, DEB for Linux, EXE for Windows

📋 Requirements

• Rust 1.81+ for building from source
• Network access to GameTDB art server
• Write permissions to target drive

🚀 Installation

Option 1: Download Pre-built Package (Recommended)

Download the latest release for your platform from the Releases page:

• Windows: pico_cover-windows-x64.exe – Standalone executable
• macOS: pico_cover-macos-x64.dmg (Intel) or pico_cover-macos-arm64.dmg (Apple Silicon) – Disk image
• Linux: pico_cover-linux-x64.deb – Debian package

Installation instructions: - Windows: Download and run the .exe file - macOS: 1. Download .dmg and open it 2. Drag PicoCover to Applications folder 3. First launch: Right-click PicoCover.app → Open → Click Open in the dialog 4. If you see "damaged" error: Go to System Settings → Privacy & Security → Scroll down and click Open Anyway - Linux: sudo dpkg -i pico_cover-linux-x64.deb or run the standalone binary

Option 2: Build from Source

git clone https://github.com/Scaletta/PicoCover.git
cd PicoCover
cargo build --release

The binary will be in target/release/pico_cover (or pico_cover.exe on Windows).

Build native packages:

# Install cargo-bundle
cargo install cargo-bundle

# macOS .app bundle
cargo bundle --release --target x86_64-apple-darwin     # Intel
cargo bundle --release --target aarch64-apple-darwin    # Apple Silicon

# Linux .deb package
cargo bundle --release --target x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu

🎯 Usage

GUI Mode (Recommended)

Simply run the executable:

./pico_cover  # or double-click pico_cover.exe on Windows

What the GUI does: 1. 🔍 Auto-detects all drives with _pico folder 2. 🎉 Update notifications when new versions are available 3. 🔄 Refresh button to detect newly connected devices 4. 📊 Real-time statistics showing processed/saved/skipped/errors 5. � Tabbed view – Switch between: - 📄 Output Log – Color-coded logs with detailed per-file status (green for saved, yellow for skipped, red for errors) - 📋 Game Lists – Collapsible sections showing skipped and failed games for quick review 6. ⚡ One-click processing – just select drive and click Start 7. ✅ Overwrite option – Checkbox to control whether to overwrite existing covers

Auto-Update: - The app automatically checks for updates on startup - When a new version is available, a notification banner appears - Click "Update Now" to download and install (app restarts automatically)

Covers are saved to: <selected-drive>/_pico/covers/nds/<GAMECODE>.bmp

CLI Mode

For scripting, automation, or advanced control:

pico_cover --cli --root /path/to/roms \
  --regions EN,US,JA,EU \
  --overwrite \
  --timeout-secs 15

CLI Options:

Option	Description	Default
--root	Base folder or drive containing NDS ROMs	.
--regions	Region codes to try (comma-separated)	EN,US,JA,EU
--url-templates	Custom URL patterns (semicolon-separated)	GameTDB default
--overwrite	Overwrite existing BMPs	false (skip)
--timeout-secs	HTTP request timeout in seconds	15
--threads	Number of parallel download threads	CPU core count

Example:

# Process D: drive, overwrite existing covers
pico_cover --cli --root D:\ --overwrite

# Custom regions priority
pico_cover --cli --root /media/sdcard --regions JP,US,EN

# Use 4 threads for slower connections
pico_cover --cli --root /media/sdcard --threads 4

🔧 How It Works

graph LR
    A[Scan .nds files] --> B[Read game code]
    B --> C[Fetch from GameTDB]
    C --> D[Resize to 106×96]
    D --> E[Place on 128×96 canvas]
    E --> F[Quantize to 256 colors]
    F --> G[Save as 8bpp BMP]

1. 🔍 Scan – Recursively finds all .nds files
2. 📄 Extract – Reads 4-byte game code from NDS header
3. 🌐 Download – Tries GameTDB URLs with each region until successful
4. 🖼️ Convert:
5. Resize to 106×96 pixels (Lanczos3 filter)
6. Center on 128×96 black canvas (22px right padding for Pico Launcher UI)
7. Quantize to 256 colors using NeuQuant algorithm
8. Export as 8bpp paletted BMP
9. 💾 Save – Store to _pico/covers/nds/<GAMECODE>.bmp

📝 Notes

• ✅ Output directory is auto-created if missing
• ✅ Errors are logged per-file; processing continues
• ⚠️ GUI mode always overwrites; CLI respects --overwrite flag
• ⚠️ Files without valid game codes are skipped
• ⚠️ Only works on Pico Launcher filesystem

🙌 Credits & Shoutout

Huge thanks to LNH-team for creating Pico Launcher! 🎉

This tool is built for Pico Launcher by the LNH-Team. Without their amazing work on bringing a modern, fast & good-looking NDS Launcher this cover downloader wouldn't exist.

Key projects from LNH-team: - Pico Launcher – The launcher this tool supports - Pico Loader – The firmware loader

Special thanks to GameTDB 🎨

A massive shoutout to GameTDB for providing and maintaining a comprehensive database of high-quality game cover artwork! Their free website makes this tool possible by giving us access to thousands of Nintendo DS covers.

🤝 Contributing

Contributions welcome! Feel free to: - Report bugs via Issues - Submit feature requests - Open pull requests

📜 License

This project is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0).

You are free to: - ✅ Share and adapt the software - ✅ Use for personal/non-commercial projects

Under the following terms: - 📛 Attribution – Credit the original author - 🚫 NonCommercial – No commercial use permitted

See LICENSE for full details.

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Made with ❤️ for the Retro-Gaming community

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