External Programs - Category or Grouping
Asked by wetware0 on October 24, 2026 - 2 replies
G’Day all,
I have a few hundred programs set up under External Programs: games, pokies, utilities, and a few other odds and ends. At that size the Programs center gets hard to browse. Everything sits in one long list, and if I turn on Show on the front page for the ones I use most, the front page fills up with tiles fast.
My suggestion is a Category field when adding or editing a program, which can then be used to group and filter, much like artist and genre work in Music. For example:
Pokies, Arcade, PC games, Utilities
or by year or era, like 2001 or 2020, whatever makes sense for a given setup
Some ways it could work:
Grouping in the Programs center. Similar to “Grouping at start → By artist” in Music Videos, the center could open with one card per category, and you tap into a category to see its programs.
A category as a front-page tile. Instead of a tile for every program or one shared Programs tile, you could put a single Pokies tile on the front page that opens straight into that category. That would keep the front page tidy.
Themes and Party Mode. If Themes could filter External Programs by category, you could show only the Games category at a kids’ party, for example, while leaving the utilities hidden. Admin-only already covers some of this, but categories would allow more than “everyone or admin only”.
Even just the first one, grouping within the Programs center, would make a big difference with a large list. Letting a program sit in more than one category would be a bonus but isn’t essential.
Thanks for considering it. Happy to test if it gets picked up.
2 replies
wetware0 - October 24, 2026
G’day,
Also, External Programs seem to be shown in the order they were added.
It would be handy to either move them around in the list in Admin, or have a predictable display order, such as alphabetical or by category.
Thanks
Peter
Mark Norville - October 24, 2026
Good job I am English and speak fluent Australian,
The vast majority of the World would not know what Pokies is, so try and say it in English not Aussie slang.
It sounds like you are having each PC game or fruit machine as one external program.
Your set up so you should have it any way that you wish.
However, I have my external programs set up so it launches separate programs
So Arcade it launches Launchbox/Big Box and then I can navigate arcade to my hearts content
Utilities? Why would you want Microsoft Paint to load from Zenpoint?
You should simplify your life and have one main launcher.
So as an example, I do not use Zen for movies, I launch Kodi and browse my movie library.
You only really need basic set ups, but it sounds like you have over complicated your set up.
Just my point of view
Regards
Mark