Feature Request: faster navigation to sleep/wake PC in Big Box in a console-like setup

[Cameron Pittman]

User story

As a living room gamer who treats Big Box like a console, I would like to have a quick way to put my PC to sleep and wake it with minimal navigation.

Background

My Big Box machine is attached to my living room TV. I operate it with an Xbox controller. Big Box is basically the OS of a console for me. Throughout the day, I repeatedly wake the “console” to play and then put it to sleep when I’m done.

When I’m done playing and exit to the Big Box interface, I have to press ‘B' repeatedly to back all the way out from Game Details to the top level menu to find the option to put the PC to sleep. When I wake the PC, the “Sleep” button is still highlighted, and I have to back out to the Platform view to get back to my games.

Because the “Sleep” button is still highlighted when the PC wakes, I (and others who have used my machine) have accidentally put the PC right back to sleep after waking it because I mashed the 'A' button by mistake while the TV was still turning on.

Potential solutions

• Controller mapping to put the PC to sleep. Not sure if this is a good idea as it might make cause users to accidentally put their machines to sleep mid-game
• A console-like “quick menu,” ala hitting the Home button on the Switch or the PS button on PS4. It could be a slide out similar to the current generation of console quick menus. It could also be an expanded version of the current pause menu that shows over the Big Box UI and includes a “Sleep” button. (Ideally, the “Sleep” button wouldn’t be highlighted when the PC wakes back up.)

Just wanted to finish by thanking you all for such an amazing piece of software!!! Launchbox / Big Box have wildly exceeded my expectations

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[Christian]

There is a “View System Menu” binding that you can set up to immediately open the system menu so that you don’t have to back out to it like that.

[Cameron Pittman]

Thanks! I didn’t realize the option was there. I’ll give it a shot when I get home from work.

[Cameron Pittman]

I tried the “View System Menu” binding. It doesn’t solve my problem because it changes navigation history. It put it me in a navigation loop that felt broken. Here’s what happened.

1. If I’m in a Game Details Menu and hit my binding for “View System Menu”, I am indeed taken to the System Menu.
2. If I try to go back from the System Menu, I’m taken back to the Game Details Menu.
3. If I try to go back from the Game Details Menu, I’m taken back to the System Menu. I was expecting that hitting “B” in the Game Details Menu would take me back to the Game List.

The loop between 2 and 3 can only be broken by selecting, say, “View Platforms” from the System Menu. The end result is just as much effort to sleep / wake the machine as before, except with navigation that’s more confusing.

[Cameron Pittman]

Updated title and use case to reflect need to minimize navigation upon waking too