Dreamspace President PC games and utilities you haven't seen before

DirTreeTagger - a file/self organizer you haven't seen before

download v[3, 2019-06-20 08!00 UTC] (~1.1 MB) No setupPut into a separate folder. Needs Java 8 or newer. Displays correctly on 100%, 200%, etc. scaled desktops with Java 8, Java 9, etc. needed.

So, you have a tree (or several) of nicely organized files and folders on your desktop PC. Congrats for being able to cope. Now add DirTreeTagger so that you can ...:

simulate also having the alternative tree structures you had in mind but couldn't have, because obviously you had to pick one . Tagging makes this possible, because subtrees/files spread out in various places become one.

tree structures you had in mind but couldn't have, because obviously you had to pick . Tagging makes this possible, because subtrees/files spread out in various places become one. add tags Example: You have something going on that you can't complete just now. Tag it with e.g. "TODO". If that's a folder tag, every last item in the entire subtree will inherit this tag, so if you click "TODO" in the tag list to green, your file/folder list will only show this subtree.



How to tag something?



Yeah sorry, this is the painful part - but also where you suddenly gain ridiculous power. You have to manually rename files and folders , but DON'T PANIC because at least in the case of folders you can instead place additional files that effectively tag their folder.



"WTF this sucks!" ... I worked over a month on DTT (so far) and have been using it ever since. I KNOW what I'm talking about:



The incredible power you gain IS WORTH THE EFFORT.



I unleashed it on the server tree in our department and thus, almost accidentally, introduced a support ticket system. If I select a coworker's tag, I see the tickets they dealt with. When a customer calls, I can click their name in the tag list and see all their files, even if they'd be spread out on the server instead of being all in one subtree. to your files and folders. Tags can even be grouped into topics. Powerful and comfortable



Folder tags are inherited by everything in the entire subtree - exactly in the spirit of a folder tree, because what applies (name-wise) to the root, should also somehow apply to everything down the tree.



In addition to the tag list, there's also a file extension list with the same features.



You can type a text to filter the tag list, the file extension list, and the file/folder result list itself. The more text snippets (separated by space, "quotation marks" supported) you type, the less results you will see, because every part needs to occur in an entry. Using the control characters ! and # and = at the beginning of a snippet, you can define that this text must NOT occur, must (not) occur AT THE BEGINNING of the text, or must (not) occur with that exact UPPER/LOWER CASE. Just like in SlaloM , a tag can AND-filter (Green. Only entries with this tag will be shown.), OR-filter (Yellow. Show these in addition.), NOT-filter (Red. Entries with this tag will definitely not show up.). The tag list GUI has been spiced up since SlaloM. Try clicking and dragging, optionally with holding Shift.Folder tags are inherited by everything in the entire subtree - exactly in the spirit of a folder tree, because what applies (name-wise) to the root, should also somehow apply to everything down the tree.In addition to the tag list, there's also a file extension list with the same features.You can type a text to filter the tag list, the file extension list, and the file/folder result list itself. The more text snippets (separated by space, "quotation marks" supported) you type, the less results you will see, because every part needs to occur in an entry. Using the control characters ! and # and = at the beginning of a snippet, you can define that this text must NOT occur, must (not) occur AT THE BEGINNING of the text, or must (not) occur with that exact UPPER/LOWER CASE. filtering Tag instructions are at the bottom!

to your files and folders. Tags can even be grouped into topics. Powerful and comfortable work with meaningful folder dates Your options:



Newest item in entire subtree. Or oldest.



Newest item (excl. folders) in folder. Or oldest.



Or just the classic rather useless folder date provided by the system. This, by the way, changes when objects are added or deleted, but not if you save e.g. a text file again so that it is now changed. Yeah. Don't use this option. and sizes Your options:



Sum of entire subtree.



Sum of folder content.



Or just no size at all, like you're used to. .

folder and . sort by name, size, date created/ changed The file/folder list shows a date column. This is always the date of last change - except if the sort order has been set to date created or date last accessed, only then the column will show that respective date instead. The date of last change is just the most useful one, and DirTreeTagger is already options-heavy as it is. /lastaccessed, amount of folder items, amount of subtree items, amount of tags.

/lastaccessed, amount of folder items, amount of subtree items, amount of tags. group folder content or show a flat list instead. Folders can be listed first, last, mixed in as if they were just files, exclusively, or not at all.

focus on subtrees / search results, because you can use the currently shown result list as the basis for further filtering (incl. ability to "delete" entire subtrees). This is a feature you will like a lot!

All this without worrying the program's database could become inconsistent.

Because it doesn't have one.The program scans the defined tree(s) on startup and whenever you issue a rescan. The scan process is rather slow, at least it's light-years away from the basically instant recan of the (Essential!) file organizing tool "Everything" linked further down.



60,000 items may take from 5 to 30 seconds. Shouldn't overall be more than, say, a million, because filtering and displaying may become very inconvenient. Unlike the awesome "Everything", DirTreeTagger was made for managing user-built file/folder trees (not just listing everything ever) in ways that are just beyond what "Everything" can do.



It also uses considerably more memory resources: I see ~650 MB used overall, incl. program and Java, in Task Manager with a tree of ~60,000 items. But, while idle, it uses no processing time. Again, weigh cost and benefit: The power you gain over your data is incredible.

WARNING: DirTreeTagger, while 100% harmless and stable, is still quite rough around the edges. Some essential preferences can not be set via the GUI, among which even the folder trees you want to scan! (Sue me.) So: Start the program. Quit the program via the system tray icon menu. Now edit the created prefs.txt file. It contains instructions for every key. This will eventually be improved, but I've been working on this thing for a month and really believe the people should have it! It's a revelation. It single-handedly significantly improved the organization of our entire department. And I wouldn't know how to keep track of all the ongoing banking and subscription activities without it.

DirTreeTagger features comfortable highlighting: Hovering over a tag will highlight all files/folders with this tag, so you don't even have to activate the tag first. Same for hovering over a file extension list entry. Hovering over a file/folder will highlight the file extension and all tags that apply. Additionally, and that's ridiculously useful, all tags and file extensions that do not apply to the current result list will be grayed out, so you immediately see the logical connections, the network formed by the tags. If you freeze a search result, so that it becomes the basis for your filtering, all tags and file extensions that are not part of this basis will be hidden.

But that's not all. In addition to files/folders, you can also use tags inside of TXT files! (To speed up scanning, you have to explicitly mark those files for scanning, e.g. via a tag used on a folder(tree).) Not only can you filter for those in the file/folder screen, but there's an additional screen for dealing just with those files. It lists the tagged paragraphs and allows to view that part of the file or to open the file in your default editor (which should at this point really no longer be Notepad but instead Notepad++ as linked below).

And finally ... APPOINTMENTS! A tag anywhere (folder, file, text paragraph) can define an appointment, incl. pre-warn duration and event duration. A non-intrusive (... well ... compared to Aceistant) popup window will appear that doesn't steal the focus and stays transparent until you hover over it. It also refuses clicks for 2 seconds if it was opened automatically. Appointments can even repeat, as long as that repetition is every minute/hour/day [of month X [of year Y]], etc. because instead of a full date like "2019-06-20 14!00", you can say "2019-xx-15 08!xx".

And finally, there's the progress bar clock, in the spirit of the rest of the program: Gain a new level of awareness of your situation. Shows you the millisecond-precise %-progress of the current minute, hour, day, week (region for first-day-of-week can be set in preferences), month, quarter, year, decade, century, millennium, and of your life (assuming a duration of 100 years, birthday can be set). Additionally, shows %-progress of different phases (currently sleep, free, commute, work) of the current day. The whole week can be defined.

Tag instructions

There are 3 kinds of tags: Standard tags (which are inherited by the entire subtree, if applied to a folder). Command tags. Date tags.

Standard tags: To tag the file/folder "support tickets.txt" with "support", rename to "support tickets {support}.txt". You can instead also write the tag at the beginning. DirTreeTagger will optionally hide the tag portion of a file/folder name in its list, but you will usually not activate that option. The {} characters can be changed in the preferences file ... but make up your mind properly. Once you have started naming things, you obviously don't want to start over.

To tag a folder without renaming it, place a file with a special name inside it. The file's content doesn't matter, can e.g. be 0 bytes. (Btw. 0-byte files will be highlighted in yellow in the list. For convenience. "But why?" Because. Now move on.) Or could be a .txt file with essential notes for that folder, this has turned out to be quite convenient. The file's name would be: ".{} {support}" The prefix ".{}" is necessary but can be configured in the preferences file. Again, make up your mind properly. A file beginning with "." will classically be treated as invisible by several operating systems, so a prefix starting with "." is a good idea. In any case, DirTreeTagger will by default set the hidden-flag of these tag files. Optionally, you can hide these files even inside the program, but that's usually undesirable. You can have as many tag files per folder as you want, each can have as many tags as you want, and you can also give them additional name text, which will just not be evaluated.

There's additional syntax for standard tags: "{something=somethingelse}" or even "{something=somethingelse=bla}" etc. is supported. This has not yet been utilized in a special way, except the tag list will show it as "something | somethingelse". This will probably eventually become a category feature where you can unfold the topic "something" and then see all tags (and sub(sub)categories) that are contained within. This is NOT the topic feature mentioned above!

Standard and date tags can have topics: You can filter the standard tag list and the appointment system by topics, so if you work together as a group on a server tree, you can still have isolated tagging and appointments from each other. The syntax is simple: After the first element in the "=" chain (If there's a = at all.) write a comma and then the topic name. And another comma and topic. Etc. Example: "{support,supportstaff,infrastructure}" The tag is "support", the rest is two topics.

Command tags: Rename a file/folder to "whatever {!DTT!=noscan}" to invoke the noscan command. The "!DTT!" prefix can be changed in the preferences. There are currently two commands: "noscan" and "scantxt". "noscan" can only be used on folders: It effects that the entire subtree will NOT be scanned, but the folder itself will be listed. It will be highlighted in red. "scantxt" is used to make DirTreeTagger scan .txt files for tags. This command tag can be used on folders, too, so .txt files in the entire subtree would be scanned - careful with that one. Very useful in case you have a customer tree with customer folders in which you have ticket subtrees. Instead of marking every ticket for scanning, just mark a folder on the appropriate hierarchy level.

Date tags: Example: "{2019-06-20 15!00}" (You can also use : instead of ! while in text files, but obviously you can't use that in file/folder names.) This will make the appointment window pop up at 15:00 on that day. And 5 minutes before that, because that's the default pre-warn time that you can define in the preferences file. This appointment has no duration, so it turns from bright gray (future) into green (pre-warn) and then straight into red (past) without going through yellow (ongoing) first. Here's an appointment with pre-warn and duration and topic, the topic is just information for you that you should supply, else you'll be wasting time deciphering the still quite crude interface of DirTreeTagger: "{2019-06-20 15!00 1w 2h=example appointment}" This warns you 2 weeks in advance (m, h, d, w supported) of an event that will go on for 2 hours. If you want to skip the pre-warn information, replace it with a space, so there would be TWO spaces between the date and the duration. You can also skip the time and only write a date. This will assume midnight in the morning of that day.

You can replace any part of the date/time information (but not individual digits) with "x" or "X". Btw., the format is always the same: 4 digits for year, 2 for everything else. So, an example with placeholders: "{xxxx-xx-05}" will notify you about every 5th of every month of every year at midnight.

SlaloM - Steam launcher and library organizer Messiah

2019-02-24: v39 download available.

▼ screenshots ▼ downloads ▼ system requirements ▼ features Your PC games sortedBy purchase date, duration played, date last played, price paid, price per hour, by longest session or even randomly (persistent) ...



Well over 40 sort criteria, explicitly usable in a 5 level sort hierarchy, individually ascending/descending, directly accessible from the table header.



The complete column, sort, and filter situation can be saved to presets and is also persistent between program sessions.



Some criteria have multiple variants, e.g. instead of precise date last played, it can be set to time-before-now in weeks, months, 3 months, 6 months, and years resolution. Imagine adding duration played as the secondary criterion here, or price per hour ...



Since this will likely make you pull old games to the front (regarding date last played), SlaloM records every single session (played via SlaloM), so later there can be features to display meaningful history information regardless. And a feature is planned to derive historic sessions from the file date of screenshots. :) An example for how outside-the-box the SlaloM project is. and filteredFreely create and assign tags. Clicking a tag (de)activates it and switches it through 3 filter states: "And" (Game must have this tag to be listed.), "or" (Will be listed in addition.), "not" (Any filter result so far that does not have this tag will be excluded.)



Create name search tags that function in the same way, except they are not assigned, they just filter by name, exactly like the filter box. E.g. click "truck" to green (=and) and "simulator" to red (=not), listing truck games that "are" not simulators. The name search tags are certainly a source of management inspirations.



Both tag types can be assigned to groups and even to sub-groups which can individually be collapsed.



The filter box, like you know it from Steam, is very powerful: Every word (separated by space) has to occur in a name. If a word is preceded by ! then it must not be in a name. "Quotation marks" combine several terms into one. Can search for beginning of name and also for Steam's appIDs. - manage your game library like a pro! FreeNo payment, no subscription, no ads, no collecting your data, and no server dependency: Once you've downloaded it, you're autonomous. SlaloM's exclusive purpose is to get things done. After all, I am its primary user. launcher for all PC game clients and manually installed gamesThe concept is simple: Tell SlaloM about root folders (e.g. via drag&drop) where you or your non-Steam clients install games or applications. (Steam is handled automatically.)



Whenever SlaloM starts, a background process will look for new folders in those folders. If any are found (that are not on the ignore list), they will recursively be scanned for executables (Windows: exe, com, jar, bat, lnk; Linux: desktop, sh, jar, x86, x86_64) and documentation files (pdf, txt, doc).



The games will "permanently" be added to the library using the folder name. (You can rename the games freely.) You can easily define a launch menu for each of these from the scanned files. A streamlined tool for just defining one executable pops up automatically on first launch attempt. All this may sound crude and too much of a hassle, but in practice it's very easy and, most of all, it gets the job done just fine!



No game client has this feature because it is not newbie-friendly. I say: Just because there are people who have to roll over ramps, this must not mean that the rest of us will be denied the existence of stairs! Now you know what kind of user SlaloM was created for. Yes, noobs can make use of it to some degree, but to go all the way, you have to be a bit sophisticated.



Face it: You will finally have ALL your PC games in one library! That is worth the price of admission. with renaming, tags, big screenshot display, sorting by purchase date, install size, etc., with special Steam features.The list of your owned Steam games is read automatically from local Steam files. This includes DLC items, a game's list of available DLC, and more obscure stuff like "tools" (e.g. servers). This scanner is not 100% correct, but you can add the automatic download of your owned Steam games list into the mix (which you should because it also has the total time played per game). This local scanner brings a feature that no Web based solution can give you, namely the date you last played a game, by which you can of course sort.



Supports Steam family sharing and multiple library folders.



Local Steam screenshots are shown whenever you select a game that has any. Screenshots are a rather central feature of SlaloM, so it's finally time to take some. "Selecting a game in a game client shows me what it actually looks like right away? Preposterous!"



You can also open a game's Steam store page in the client or browser, you can also open a game's news and achievements page and your Steam review of the game, if you made one already. While we're at it: You can also go to a game's PCGamingWiki page, search it on GOG, isthereanydeal.com, steamdb.info, or Google.



You can also trigger the (un)installation of Steam games and comfortably open an installed game's appmanifest file. And you can open Steam's activate-product-key dialog (hotkey [F9]) which even does the initial two Enter-presses automatically, so you can paste your key right away.



But there's more: You can download the transaction data of all games bought via the Steam store, allowing you to sort by price actually paid, by discount at that time, purchase date, etc., and for other Steam games, there's a >70% precise importer via the copied text from your Licenses and Key Activations Steam page.



But there's still more, e.g. you can get the list of Steam games you and some other people have in common so that you can make meaningful LAN party decisions. Forget the sad normality of torn apart PC game libraries, it's OVERCaveat: You still have to consider the games in your other game clients that you didn't yet show to SlaloM by having them installed, which of course includes games you buy in the future.



But regarding choices like "What should I play next?" and "What's my gaming history?", you can focus entirely on SlaloM with its superior management&filtering features and its awesome screenshot display(s).! No adware, does not install crap, etc. - this is just a hobbyist product that makes it irrelevant for which game client (if any) a PC gamer bought their games, wrapping all libraries into one and adding sorely missing features like e.g. showing a screenshot when selecting a game. It's not just for occasional sorting/searching, it's meant for permanent use. The filtering / sorting is far more powerful than you've ever experienced in any game client. I can pretty much guarantee that you've never had this much of a grasp of what's in your game library and what kind of gamer you are. Now you can bring order into the chaos and even change the way you make purchase decisionsFor example, I'm much more aware of the amount of good unplayed material I still have lying around, so I'm much more strict, stopped falling for the permanent "But it's discounted!" carrot.



Let's do the experiment .... click click click ... ok, everything listed but non-game entries (e.g. DLC hidden) ... 2881. Of these, played for longer than 20 minutes ... 565, which is about 20%. Of the rest (2316), only 2156 are on Steam (can't download purchase information for other types), and for only 497 of those I could download the transaction info - most probably because the rest are keys that came via bundles and are therefore not recorded by the Steam store. When I select those, SlaloM automatically displays the sum: About €1200 actually paid but (basically) never played. Plus all the unknown prices (probably dirt cheap, but still ...). It also displays the money spent per day: €0.5755 (Those summary currency calculations use BigDecimal, and the downloaded prices are stored as text right away - no floating point errors.)



That money is not wasted - it's just a far too large backlog. The confidence I gained via SlaloM makes it easy for me to boldly sail past the siren islands of all those great discounts. Hence: Less spending, more gaming and coding.



Btw., when I select all games in SlaloM that I have price information for, I get a spent daily amount of €1.6963 - and I also see the average discount: -68% See, I was talking about actual data and control. That's what you can have with SlaloM. And it's still mainly about playing games! Even more so than other clients since you see screenshots right away and have all games under one roof!! You should think of SlaloM as a Swiss army knife and of yourself as someone who has never seen one before: You might judge it by the color of its casing and by the fact that you have to fumble a little to get your screwdriver. Best defer your judgment. SlaloM is more about features/ functionality than appearance. Wait until you have discovered the bottle opener. And the blackjack table. And the hookers. Whirlpool is somewhere on the loooong to-do list. Stick around, the average release cycle from v18 to v36 was 5 days! (90 day span) So, I took a long hiatus from March 7th 2017 until now, February 24th 2019. I don't consider it to have ended, I just felt like fixing and improving a few things. Don't expect new versions anytime soon (only fixes if I find out I just botched something.)

what it is what it isn't game client A launcher and organizer. It can start games of any game client (Steam: via the official protocol; other clients and standalone games: via simple file access), it can rename/ sort/ filter beyond anything you've ever seen in any game client, and it can hold all your PC games in one library while keeping your effort to achieve and maintain this state absolutely minimal. That is something that has never existed before, and thus, for lack of examples in the world, you may not see the high importance of this feature. Caveat: Games SlaloM never sees as installed won't be added automatically, so some trace of "Have to keep my non-Steam clients in mind." remains. For now, at least. A game store, game downloader, game installer, or game/ savegame backup system. It also has no community features (forum, chat, friends list). But it can make the Steam client (un)install a game or open its store/ news/ achievements pages. screenshots It immediately shows a big screenshot (optionally from favorites you can designate) of any game you select, if local screenshot files exist. For Steam games this works automatically, and for other games this can be achieved with a bit of effort. Ultimately, you'll be at home in a place that gives you an immediate proper taste of your games, and you can even surf your library in screenshot tiles mode where you see your screen filled with 2x2, 3x3, 4x4, or 5x5 games in the form of a screenshot each. There is no Direct3D etc. overlay, so you can not use SlaloM to take screenshots from the majority of games, but it can take screenshots for some games that don't have any screenshot feature. target audience The most basic features (e.g. playing your Steam games and showing a screenshot) work instantly. For other features, you need to (easily) configure some downloads, point to some folders, make some settings, input some data etc. - the more sophisticated the user, the more they will get out of SlaloM.



SlaloM is somewhat for the casual gamer, since you can easily get ALL your games under one roof and use powerful search&filter features on them - but SlaloM is mostly for people who are willing to also work on the library itself instead of just playing its games. SlaloM is not for those who expect that all features work right away and that they work without exception - there are quite a few features that only go 3/4 of the way. SlaloM is also not for those who desire to parade their game library in front of their Steam "friends" and such, e.g. the Steam game time adjuster and game renaming is only visible inside the program. And SlaloM is not for those who expect a polished interface, instead the GUI's purpose is not just to serve its user but also to aid its relatively rapid progression, hence it's somewhat rough around the edges. game time etc. To record the game time of Steam or other games, you have to click on the launch screen once you're done, which shows a dialog with the recorded time (which you can even edit) and the question if this session should be recorded. Steam game time is also downloaded directly (if you enable this, which is hotly recommended), but SlaloM does something other clients don't do: It records every single (confirmed) session! This will (probably) lead to interesting evaluation tools later, e.g. sorting might be more stable even if you "pulled games from the past into the present", and there might be graphs showing which game was in your focus at a given time. Game time and other data is not recorded in a fully automated way but requires user participation. On the other hand, it works in all cases, no matter the game or game client, and a hanging task won't rack up hours that aren't real and that you're henceforth stuck with helplessly. But you can not play more than one game at once with SlaloM, at least you can't record this. SlaloM is intended for single-instance use, which is the normal use case for playing games. (That's not a strict "Do it like this!" decision, instead it's a remnant of SlaloM's evolution. The amount of work involved making this all happen is ginormous.) privacy No features transmit any information to me except the update checkers (Both off by default.) for the program and for the extra Steam data file (You never actually need either of these checkers.), which transmit an unnecessary UUID containing "install" date and then purely random numbers so that I get some idea if there are users out there, which so far (2017-03-04) I sadly don't have. Any other requests are sent only to Steam servers. And you can explicitly cause Google searches and such. "If it's free, you are the product." Nope, not here. There are no ads and also no collection or distribution or sale of personal data. Nothing. SlaloM is also entirely independent. Once you have it, you're autonomous, ignoring the optional but recommended Steam data download. security For additional (Not basic.) Steam data download, a Steam Web API key is needed, which - while to be kept secret - is no security issue for a private user account at all (and it's only sent to Steam, and only via HTTPS): Whenever you request one from Steam (which takes like 3 clicks), you get a new one, so it's transient. I'd use mine, but I can't ensure it staying secret (like Steam's agreement requires) when putting it into the program, so you have to use your own for these extra functions. You will not be asked to enter any confidential information (e.g. Steam password). SlaloM will also not scan RAM or look for session cookies of your browser(s) or of Steam. And SlaloM's browser remote-control feature, which you can explicitly invoke for downloading your Steam game purchases, just needs a logged-in browser, not your login credentials. IN SUMMARY It is a very powerful library manager that is willing to compromise for the purpose of achieving the unachieved, for example the unification of all PC game libraries under one roof and letting you decide by screenshot what to play, not by the stylized graphics used for advertising.



There are a lot of features to be discovered with some digging, and its evolution is quite fast, even disregarding that I'm just one guy, not a billion dollar company that would really have to do more to live up to the market dominance it has acquired. It is not the usual game downloader/ installer/ shop with comfortable and visually polished user interface with animations and fading that on the other hand contributes to further library segmentation, and it is not for people with a short attention span. "13yo"s on Steam who make post titles like "helppppppppppp" (Actual quote.) in the "Help and Tips" forum are not SlaloM's target audience.



SlaloM is also not a piece of software developed as a product, by people who do not use it themselves, an impression you can easily get when looking at Steam, various web services, or Windows itself. I'm not coding SlaloM and then testing it a bit, instead I am using it, all the time.

Screenshots ▲ SlaloM is a standalone Windows / Linux application (English only.) meant to be used instead of the Steam Library screen (but mixed use is no problem). Its features make it vastly superior. Examples: Tag-filtering, radically powerful sorting (e.g. by when last played, for how long, price paid, your best games in half-year steps, ...), automatic adding of games, screenshot display with various options, surf library as screenshot tiles. For Steam, the key information is automatically read locally - so, just run and done. But it can also download additional information, adding features and precision. To un"install", just delete the folder.







Make sure you join the 350+ members SlaloM users Steam Group or at least subscribe to its moderator-exclusive comments thread, because it announces new releases (incl. what's changed). Full disclosure: Most members seem to only be there for the free game keys I keep dropping on keygiveaway.com

Features ▲ Hover for details. Easily get all your local PC games into one library! While you can manually add games, applications, batch files, folders, shortcuts to SlaloM (e.g. via drag&drop), it's much more wise to make use of the automatic feature:



Again with simple drag&drop, you can define root folders (e.g. where GOG Galaxy, Uplay, Origin etc. install their games, or where you do that manually). SlaloM will find new games in those places on every start, with a proper background scan that does not obstruct you, and will permanently add them, all combined under a dedicated "game client" tag.



You can define as many root folders per "game client" as you want. E.g. create a set called "applications" and add your two "Program Files" folders to it. What, there's a sub-folder called "Adobe" with more programs that doesn't make sense in this form? Then just delete the automatic "Adobe" entry from your library, which optionally adds it to the ignore list, and add the folder itself as yet another root folder to the same set.



This is a unique feature that you can hardly over-estimate: The mental hurdle of having to remember to add new games e.g. to Steam entirely falls away! So - without this nagging feeling that you probably forgot to add some games, and also that you have to keep adding new ones you buy in the future - for the first time you'll have it all under one roof, and it will feel SO natural and normal, you won't believe it until you've lived with it for a while! (Speaking from experience.)



You probably subconsciously experienced it already: You're quasi addicted to your main game client (probably Steam), you rarely buy games for other clients and rarely use those other clients to play games. Because having multiple libraries requires you to basically decide what you will play before you have even opened the respective library whose job it is to ... help you decide what to play. This is all wrong!



It's obvious that game client companies are asleep at the wheel: No screenshots when you select a game? No renaming, only rudimentary tag systems? But in my opinion, this rabbit hole goes a lot deeper: I believe that the best a relatively small store / client like e.g. GOG can do is to build an awesome client that can easily manage and launch all your PC games, like SlaloM does it, except polished.



Because then people are extremely likely to use it since all their games are in there. And said company would always be in direct contact with the player. And since that client would solve "Steam addiction" and such, they would sell more games, because people have a strong reason less to not buy their games. I even suggested this to GOG, but it landed in corporate talk-to-the-hand hell. - With small reservations You can only add games that are placed / installed on your PC. (Well, if you absolutely insist, you could create a shortcut to a Flash game or something like that and then manually - not via root folder feature - add this to SlaloM.)



For automatic adding, the games need to exist as folders/ files, so if you have games in your non-Steam clients that you haven't installed, they will not show up in the SlaloM library until you install them, after which they will stay for good. So, you have to still keep an eye on those individual libraries, but in practice, you trigger an install and forget about it. And next time you start SlaloM, a green blinking message will tell you about new games that have been found. And if those are ever not installed, well then you go through the necessary motions in those other clients.



That's of course far from ideal, but given the simplicity of the concept and how versatile it simultaneously is, plus you just don't have this ability in any other game managers, it's worth a lot. It would be nice to be able to also add games that haven't been installed yet, and more importantly, to be able to join duplicate game entries with full control over what happens with each data field. (For the latter, something is planned, but I'm reluctant to implement it, because it would add yet another dimension to all changes/ extensions to the App class.)



What I'd actually like to happen eventually is that we, the PC gamers whose purchases drive this billion dollar industry, create a heavily plugin-driven game library manager that only uses crude solutions like root folders as last resort fallbacks, but which otherwise directly and automatically supports all available game clients. Weird that this hasn't happened yet. Also weird that almost all game volume sliders are broken. And that most FieldOfView sliders have too low range or are even absent. And a gazillion other things. Almost as if we have to plug some holes in the world first through which Light is draining out before we can really have nice things.



There's another reservation: When SlaloM automatically adds games from root folders, it can not decide which executable (or batch file etc.) to use, it can only create a list of candidates. So these games will show up as red entries in the list until you have either defined one or more executables (or even documentation files) via the launch menu editor, or, which is much more straightforward, until you just try to launch them, which will give you a list of only the executable-type files. Pick one, which launches (hopefully) the game and also "permanently" defines this as the executable to use. In most cases, this works just smoothly. .

- With small . rename games



These are YOUR games! You paid for them, but you aren't even in control of their name!? What are you, a guest in your own home?



The changed name will only be visible in SlaloM. You can switch display back and forth from the default name (aka the name you decided for) to the original name by just middle-clicking on the name column header, or you can choose this and some more options by right-clicking on the name column's checkbox for a menu. Sorting will not be affected by this, but starting v39 you'll have the option to sort by original name, too, so you'll be able to enjoy the great improvements your renaming caused. Give any game or DLC any name you want. Here are some examples from my library. Take advantage of the alphabetical sorting and add numbers to a series of games or years to a series like X-COM. Remove ™ ® © etc. and RENAME ALL UPPERCASE games to something that integrates better.You paid for them, but you aren't even in control of theirWhat are you, a guest in your own home? Take the damn power back already! The changed name will only be visible in SlaloM. You can switch display back and forth from the default name (aka the namedecided for) to the original name by just middle-clicking on the name column header, or you can choose this and some more options by right-clicking on the name column's checkbox for a menu. Sorting will not be affected by this, but starting v39 you'll have the option to sort by original name, too, so you'll be able to enjoy the great improvements your renaming caused. games

Screenshots everywhere! When you select a game, you'll see a big screenshot in a dedicated part of the GUI. Merely hovering on the screenshot switches it to fullscreen temporarily. You can set a duration for automatic change of the screenshot for both these situations, so lean back and enjoy! And when you toggle the narrow game list to fullscreen, the screenshot is even overlaid over the whole list (adjustable transparency).



Clicking on the screenshot opens a fullscreen grid view (1x1, 2x2, ..., 5x5) with a random screenshot for each game of your current filter result list. Clicking on a game here opens said grid view with all screenshots of that game in chronological order, scrolled to the random screenshot you clicked before.



You can mark screenshots as favorites and show those exclusively, preferred, not at all, or without special treatment.



The Steam client writes a local image file with every screenshot you take, and those files stay until you move to a new computer. SlaloM shows these automatically, just like it shows your local Steam games automatically with no setting up required.



Some non-Steam games have their own screenshot feature, or they are maybe on a client (e.g. Uplay) which also has a screenshot taking overlay like Steam. You can assign a custom screenshot path for every (non)Steam game, and images in that folder will be shown in addition to whatever other screenshot sources SlaloM may have.



And finally, you can create a folder called "(screenshots)" with an application. Images in that folder will be shown in addition, so if all else fails, you could download screenshots (automatism for Steam games is on to-do list).



SlaloM creates this folder automatically if you use it to take screenshots , which only works for a very limited amount of games, but has often enough lead to results where no other means were available. SlaloM also makes sure that screenshots that consist of almost entirely the same color won't be saved, so as opposed to Steam which happily takes all-black screenshots, SlaloM doesn't do that. On the other hand, you may take a screenshot with SlaloM and later realize that all you got was the game's launcher screen etc. - well, it's very limited.



Just in case you didn't see this - you can use SlaloM as a general purpose application launcher, showing screenshots for all of those, so in case you wonder "WTF was this program again?", just look at it in SlaloM.

Play Memory with your screenshots! But SlaloM-style, so there's something extra. Yes, you can just play good old memory where you have cards lying on their faces with pairs of image cards (all from the same game) and then click/guess/remember.



But how about this: Have the cards revealed right away, but the pairs don't have an identical image, the pairs are just from the same game.



Or play "guess the game name" by having one card being an image, the other being the game's name. Or the game's price you paid, or the date you bought it, amount of screenshots, genre, publisher, release date, install drive, etc.!



But you don't have to play with images at all, or with only two cards, for that matter. It's all freely configurable.

permanently hide games You can (un)mark a game as hidden with a dedicated feature at any time. All other program functionality will obey this setting, so you can easily hide games for good.



It's very easy to take a look at all the hidden games (with full availability of all the other features), but they won't show up unless it is your decision.

assign and filter by various types of tags There are about six types of tags. Simply left-clicking one will change it from inactive to green (AND filter - a game must have this tag, else it won't be listed), then yellow (OR filter - these games will be shown in addition), then red (NOT filter - no matter what, these games will not be shown). Right-clicking gets you to inactive immediately.



You can switch as many tags to as many different states as you want. The effect is always immediate. You can also define what the default state of any individual tag is (incl. inactive) and set all tags to said state with the "reset tags" button, but you'll mostly use the "clear tags" button which sets them all to inactive. There's also a "clear visible" button that only sets all to inactive that are visible in the current list: Tags in collapsed (sub)groups or in other tabs won't be affected by this.



The tag types:



1. your tags - You can freely create and assign these to games. They can also be put into groups and even sub-groups. Example: Make one called \"completed\" and assign it to all games whose end credits you reached. Or make several of this kind (just completed versus 100% and such) and put them into a group.



2. name search tags - Yon can create but not assign these, because they just search the games' names using the exact same name filtering scheme as the game list's text filter box. Can also be (sub-)grouped.



3. Steam properties and Steam user tags - They allow to filter by things like "Multi-player" and "Story Rich", but they are only available for the majority of games and are also fairly outdated. (It's on the to-do list.)



4. status tags - They refer to a game's status like whether it's installed, whether you own it, if it's renamed, if it has screenshots, ...



5. game clients & root folder tags - Each of these refer to a group of folders (A group name being e.g. "Origin" or whatever you want.) in which SlaloM automatically on every start finds new installed apps/games. Steam (for Steam games) and SlaloM (for manually added games) exist by default.



6. Steam type tags - For the majority of Steam items, SlaloM knows whether they're DLC, a game, an application, a demo, a video, etc.

sort like a maniac Choose from 30+ optional columns with well over 50+ sort and data display options, e.g. purchase date, price actually paid, price per hours played, date last played (optionally in (half) year steps etc.), randomly, install-drive / install-size, Steam user reviews (outdated and not for all games, but also has genre, developer, publisher, release date). The settings (columns, their options, sorting, filtering) are all saved between sessions and can also be stored as presets.



As opposed to most other applications, in SlaloM you can explicitly define and see what your primary, secondary, ... sort criterion is (up to 5, with alphabetically ascending as the (invisible) final word), incl. individual ascending/descending, and you can do this with a click directly from the table header.

powerful text filter Every word that you enter in SlaloM's little box atop the game list has to occur somewhere in the game's name so that it's listed.



If you directly precede a word with ! then that word must not occur.



If you wrap a few words in "" then they will be treated as one word.



If you precede a word with # then it has to occur at the beginning of a name.



You can combine all these (but have to adhere to a certain order).



All these features can be used in the name search tags.

freely edit play time Per Steam game, you can enter a HHHH:MM:SS offset and even a factor (applied before the offset) in case this somehow suits your offset-entering habits for that game better. The result is how you'll see that Steam game's time in SlaloM. So, wiping hundreds of idling hours or hung tasks off the table is easy. Nobody on Steam will see the change - SlaloM was made for people who want to be the master of their own game library, not for people who need to pun here.



Steam duration played is imported via an automatic Internet download that you have to activate (with your profile set to public). Btw. Steam date last played is read locally, the only way to obtain this information. Web-based solutions can't give you that!



Game time for any non-Steam games can be edited freely. It is recorded via the rather crude but 100% compatible-with-everything method of "Click here when done.", which opens a dialog with the measured time, which you can edit right then and there, and you can also dismiss it, not recording this session/time (good for taking screenshots).



SlaloM records every single play session of every (non)Steam game (date/time, duration), but so far this data has not yet been made use of - that's on the to-do list.

Take notes for each game and tag. Personally, I have the date/shop/transaction/key page URLs and the copied game-key list of (some of) my purchased bundles stored as notes stored in the tag I made for that bundle, a tag that's of course in the sub-group for the respective store and in the group "bundles".



You could also draft your Steam reviews as game notes in SlaloM. Also useful in case your Steam review gets lost, though I've never heard of such a thing.



Or take note of known bugs or things to do (e.g. "still have to do Emily low-chaos / stealth playthrough"), though these might often be better expressed in the form of tags (e.g. "uninstall", "write review").

open Web pages like PCGamingWiki For Steam games, you can open the store, news, achivements pages in the client and again the store page and your review page (If you've reviewed the game already.) in the browser.



For all games, you can open their PCGamingWiki page (that's the place where you get a nice overview with facts and solutions for common problems). And you can search the game on GOG, isthereanydeal.com, steamdb.info, and Google.

great easy review scoring You know when you're pondering if a game should get 4 of 5 stars or only 3, 50% or 60%, 71% or 78%? You're doing it wrong. Instead of imprisoning yourself in a strict review system that you henceforth have to live with at all times, instead of ignoring that little voice in your head that tells you that you're not quite all that certain about the score you gave ... make a statement about the score AND about your certainty!



Sounds complicated? Isn't. By default, every game has a SlaloM user review score of 0%-100% (~50%) because you've got only one step in your scale, which is selected, because one always is. This score means that you're perfectly undecided.



If you've checked the game out a bit, you might have the impression "This is at least on the positive side.", so you increase the available range by 1 and select the higher of the two: [0 | *1*] = ~75% (50%-100%), or if you're certain that it's bad, select the lower: [*0* | 1] = ~25% (0%-50%).



The more certain you are, the more you can increase the scale and pick the appropriate level, e.g. increase it to 3 steps right away and choose the middle one: [0 | *1* | 2] = ~50% (33%-67%). But maybe it is not all that mediocre. Maybe it is a wee bit better than that. So, now you have no choice but to increase the scale even more (by 1 or 2, which toggles back and forth between the availability of a perfectly-mediocre score, logically).



See, using a scoring system that scales with your certainty means that your statement about a game's score is more true than if you're forced to always express the same certainty - which you most probably do not have! This also increases the stability of your judgment over time.

and review scoring for pros Like for example game magazines. Here, you define aspects of all games at once (e.g. graphics, how well the graphics are used, ambient sound quality, simulation quality ... it's entirely up to you), the score range for these aspects (e.g. from -5 to 0, or from 1 to 3), what each individual level means (in text) for each individual aspect, and then you take a game and define the importance of each of these aspects for the game, so in a jigsaw puzzle game, drag "physics" to 0%. And then score each (of the non-zero%) aspects. SlaloM will calculate the resulting score.



Note: There may be a bug somewhere in there, I am not sure, so if you note an odd score that does not compute - that's the reason. I'll hopefully get around to that problem eventually.

figures out if you own games You can copy text from any game store Web page and let SlaloM analyze it for game names. You'll get a list with games you probably don't own or do already own, etc. - the quality of the results varies, of course, but the tool is still a time-saver.

import Steam categories and custom apps They are imported automatically on first start (when there are no categories yet), but you can also call this manually.



SlaloM also imports apps you manually added to Steam, but this only works for apps without arguments. If you have defined arguments for an app in Steam, the import of that app will fail. (It's on the to-do list.)

import Steam purchase date and price paid For game keys unlocked on Steam, SlaloM can read through a clipboard-copy of your Licenses and Product Key Activations list with >70% correctness (The appIDs are not in there.) and probably very few false positives. This records the purchase date.



For games bought directly on Steam, SlaloM can read precise purchase date, price actually paid, undiscounted price at that time, discount percentage, discount amount, tax paid, and transaction method directly from your logged-in Web browser with some help from you, but no extensions etc. required. This is >95% correct. (SlaloM can't handle refunds.)



Price actually paid and the purchase date can also be entered manually, which has an overriding effect: Removing this information will return to whatever other information you already had.



For a long time SlaloM user, it's of course easiest to just run SlaloM (or trigger Steam data update) after purchasing games, so that SlaloM records this date of first seeing the games as owned. That's how I always did it.

data export Since the Steam transaction data with precise date, price paid, tax etc. could be pretty interesting for people who like to toy with Excel and banking software, you can export this data to a CSV file.



You can also just select some entries from your current list (with all the current columns, sorting, data display options) and copy them to the clipboard. E.g. you can make SlaloM display the game name in the form of a Reddit link incl. the two spaces at the end, so you can paste directly into Reddit comments, effecting a text list with links. The link goes to the Steam store or, for non-Steam games, to a Google search.



Or export the shown list to a file incl. info about active tags, amount of (hidden/selected) entries, and sort orders.



Or export a list of all Steam games with sub-lists about which DLC you own, don't own, and unknown (therefore probably not owned).



Or export the game list in the form of URLs, which is similar to the simple copy&paste method, except it only uses the name column, and two of the three lists (URL name, Steam link, Reddit link) have bullet points.





The data file, by the way, is (kind of) human readable, so if you really know what you're doing, you may adjust missing or incorrect data. While that format is wasteful, who cares about that extra half gigabyte (with all backups and thousands of games)? When you install one of those newfangled 20GB game monstrosities, do you look for every GB? And this isn't just an arbitrary shovel of game textures, this is your game library!



Due to the high similarities between the files and the wasteful format, the data compresses well if you use an archiver that supports solid archives (meaning that all files are compressed as one data block instead of individually, so don't use ZIP for this), like e.g. RAR or, what I'd recommend, Not only are SlaloM's files written as safe saves, so only once a file has completely been written, the intended target file will be replaced with it, but there's also an automatic backup of your database with a 100 file rotation! (Settings only have 1 backup.) Plus the rotation is not shifted before "tags.bak01" (The second backup.) is at least 15 minutes old, letting "tags.bak99" drop into oblivion. So, even with ferocious saving, you'll have at least 24 hours of backups.The data file, by the way, is (kind of) human readable, so if you really know what you're doing, you may adjust missing or incorrect data. While that format is wasteful, who cares about that extra half gigabyte (with all backups and thousands of games)? When you install one of those newfangled 20GB game monstrosities, do you look for every GB? And this isn't just an arbitrary shovel of game textures, this is your game library!Due to the high similarities between the files and the wasteful format, the data compresses well if you use an archiver that supports solid archives (meaning that all files are compressed as one data block instead of individually, so don't use ZIP for this), like e.g. RAR or, what I'd recommend, 7z which for some odd reason has not yet become the de-facto standard. automatic data backup





Btw., some tech background: A modern application detects such desktop scaling settings automatically, but for applications that don't do that, Windows scales them automatically (as images, so it doesn't look perfect). For this, they introduced the flag "dpiAware". If it doesn't exist, or if it says "false", Windows will automatically scale the application. This can interfere with some games e.g. on 4K screen, so if you can't use the mouse or something, disable display scaling in the program's compatibility settings.



It's interesting to note that at some point this was introduced for Java, too: Every Java program, via the "java[w].exe", tells Windows that it is dpiAware without any choice for the developer. In case that's bothering you: You can actually As opposed to Steam, which is still automatically scaled by Windows. So, if your desktop is set to 200% scaling, just change the 50-400% scaling in SlaloM accordingly and restart it. Done. Actually don't, because SlaloM does this automatically on first start. (Note: You should not set too different scaling than your desktop because some of SlaloM's elements are automatically scaled by the system, and I didn't bother to deal with that).Btw., some tech background: A modern application detects such desktop scaling settings automatically, but for applications that don't do that, Windows scales them automatically (as images, so it doesn't look perfect). For this, they introduced the flag "dpiAware". If it doesn't exist, or if it says "false", Windows will automatically scale the application. This can interfere with some games e.g. on 4K screen, so if you can't use the mouse or something, disable display scaling in the program's compatibility settings.It's interesting to note that at some point this was introduced for Java, too: Every Java program, via the "java[w].exe", tells Windows that it is dpiAware without any choice for the developer. In case that's bothering you: You can actually hex -edit the java or javaw.exe, and this works (if you're careful)! You'll find " true " and just have to change "true" to "false". (Let it grow to the left, because there's a new-line character to the right.) 4K-ready! Hover for details. The following texts are from an earlier version of this site, not yet updated to the new format: Tags! Make tags for your current favorite games - and later, just activate all your favorite-tags at once, allowing only your all-time faves to pass through the filter. Or create tags for genres, or property tags like "1st person 3D", or describe the setting like "space", "cyberpunk", "urban". Or create review score tags like "graphics 4 of 5 - great", "graphics 5 of 5 - exemplary". (But that's not the ingenious review system I was talking about :P)

Make tags for your current favorite games - and later, just activate all your favorite-tags at once, allowing only your all-time faves to pass through the filter. Or create tags for genres, or property tags like "1st person 3D", or describe the setting like "space", "cyberpunk", "urban". Or create review score tags like "graphics 4 of 5 - great", "graphics 5 of 5 - exemplary". (But that's not the ingenious review system I was talking about :P) Configurable launch menu for non-Steam games: For manually added entries, you can define several launch argument strings, and if there's more than one, you'll get a menu every time you try to launch the game via SlaloM. For entries automatically added via the root folder feature: You can freely decide which of its files (Supported: exe, com, jar, bat, lnk, pdf, txt, doc) appears where in the menu, and for each of these, you can define several launch argument strings.

for non-Steam games: For manually added entries, you can define several launch argument strings, and if there's more than one, you'll get a menu every time you try to launch the game via SlaloM. For entries automatically added via the root folder feature: You can freely decide which of its files (Supported: exe, com, jar, bat, lnk, pdf, txt, doc) appears where in the menu, and for each of these, you can define several launch argument strings. Built-in help the way God intended: You just point at something (while helpmode [F1] is on), and it tells you - tool tip texts, except done right: They appear immediately, don't vanish halfway through reading, and they don't prevent you from clicking. (Seriously, someone do a brain charity drive, the world needs it. Just think volume sliders or field of view.)

the way God intended: You just point at something (while helpmode [F1] is on), and it tells you - tool tip texts, except done right: They appear immediately, don't vanish halfway through reading, and they don't prevent you from clicking. (Seriously, someone do a brain charity drive, the world needs it. Just think volume sliders or field of view.) Just select a bunch of games and immediately see how much money you spent there, or how much it would have been had the games not been discounted (which the publishers totally don't factor into their full prices :P), or how much money you paid per day!

Like in Steam, the game list shows white or gray entries depending on whether a game is installed or not, but you can easily choose a different option: Owned or not. Non-Steam or Steam. Has tags or not. Been played for at least 10 minutes. Played in the last 3 months. (These numbers will probably eventually be adjustable.)

entries depending on whether a game is installed or not, but you can easily choose a different option: Owned or not. Non-Steam or Steam. Has tags or not. Been played for at least 10 minutes. Played in the last 3 months. (These numbers will probably eventually be adjustable.) Optional auto group feature: If you click a game whose name begins with e.g. "LEGO ", this text will be put into the instant-filter box (incl. the # option) so that only games that start with "LEGO " will be shown. Press ESC to return to the full list. Since you'll often sort by something else than alphabet, this feature is great to get an overview of all entries with similar name.

feature: If you click a game whose name begins with e.g. "LEGO ", this text will be put into the instant-filter box (incl. the # option) so that only games that start with "LEGO " will be shown. Press ESC to return to the full list. Since you'll often sort by something else than alphabet, this feature is great to get an overview of all entries with similar name. Reads your Steam game info from disk on each startup instead of downloading it (incl. custom games you added yourself, but the command line options will not be imported; on the upside, you can add as many shortcuts (even to the same program) to SlaloM as you want, and the individual launch options edited into those shortcuts will work as expected, which doesn't work in Steam).

on each startup instead of downloading it (incl. custom games you added yourself, but the command line options will not be imported; on the upside, you can add as many (even to the same program) to SlaloM as you want, and the individual launch options edited into those shortcuts will work as expected, which doesn't work in Steam). Supports Steam Family Sharing : Games shared with you will show up as "owned" in SlaloM.

: Games shared with you will show up as "owned" in SlaloM. Works with multiple Steam library folders .

. SlaloM makes sure that you don't see the same images again as far as reasonably possible. (The rotation keeps going, but novelty is maximized.) Each click on the list entry (or hitting space) shows a new random screenshot from any available source, that's why double-click does not start a game: Use middle mouse button for that, or use the popup menu, or press Enter. By default, the screenshot is shown in the right top quarter of the screen, but you can also have it overlaid transparently over the whole screen instead. Additionally, since the app/game list can be maximized to replace everything else on screen, there's an option to show the screenshot as a transparent overlay only in this situation (has individual transparency setting).

instead. Additionally, since the app/game list can be maximized to replace everything else on screen, there's an option to show the screenshot as a transparent overlay only in this situation (has individual transparency setting). Tiles that don't have a screenshot are just shown by name. From here, you can launch games, open the context menu, or just select them and return to the normal list. That is how you want to surf your library! Well, maybe not the whole library, but what about the 20th favorite set that you created and that is the current focus of your gaming interest? Throw it in tiles mode and pick one for the afternoon.

is how you want to surf your library! Well, maybe not the whole library, but what about the 20th favorite set that you created and that is the current focus of your gaming interest? Throw it in tiles mode and pick one for the afternoon. Slideshow feature that keeps automatically showing a different screenshot of the currently selected game after a set time. Great in fullscreen mode! Select game, move mouse over screenshot to maximize view, lean back, feel the game. Seriously, how Valve missed to properly show screenshots when selecting a game in the library ... WTF is wrong with them. Why does everybody invest all possible effort to become the main player on the market, and once they have conquered this part in everybody's life, they become stagnant, almost an obstacle? Not true? Go look at the majority of your bank websites' password forms&rules - e.g. PayPal. For some reason, the more prominent the player, the harder they fail - on average, that's just true.

that keeps automatically showing a different screenshot of the currently selected game after a set time. Great in fullscreen mode! Select game, move mouse over screenshot to maximize view, lean back, feel the game. Seriously, how Valve missed to properly show screenshots when selecting a game in the library ... WTF is wrong with them. Why does everybody invest all possible effort to become the main player on the market, and once they have conquered this part in everybody's life, they become stagnant, almost an obstacle? Not true? Go look at the majority of your bank websites' password forms&rules - e.g. PayPal. For some reason, the more prominent the player, the harder they fail - on average, that's just true. Play Memory using screenshots - a built-in game with many configuration options, e.g. more than two cards per set, cards visible right away, different screenshots per set (so, "pair" different images of one game), text cards (with e.g. name, purchase date, date last played, duration played, installation size). More "data games" probably coming eventually, e.g. sort screenshots of a given day chronologically using Mastermind-style feedback. Or play jigsaw puzzles with screenshots, but optionally with several images at once from the same pile of pieces! Yeah, I know. Just stick around. ... Wait, you wanna hear about some more neat ideas somewhere on the much too long to-do list? How about a game name generator fed with the words from your library? Or deriving past not-recorded play sessions from the file dates of your screenshots?

- a built-in game with many configuration options, e.g. more than two cards per set, cards visible right away, different screenshots per set (so, "pair" different images of one game), text cards (with e.g. name, purchase date, date last played, duration played, installation size). More "data games" probably coming eventually, e.g. sort screenshots of a given day chronologically using Mastermind-style feedback. Or play jigsaw puzzles with screenshots, but optionally with several images at once from the same pile of pieces! Yeah, I know. Just stick around. ... Wait, you wanna hear about some more neat ideas somewhere on the much too long to-do list? How about a game name generator fed with the words from your library? Or deriving past not-recorded play sessions from the file dates of your screenshots? Shows list of available DLC for a selected game, incl. whether you own that DLC yet (but the latter only works if Steam's local database has yet picked up on the DLC, else only the appID of the DLC is shown in the list).

for a selected game, incl. whether you own that DLC yet (but the latter only works if Steam's local database has yet picked up on the DLC, else only the appID of the DLC is shown in the list). Check if you have a set of games by copying selected text from a website (e.g. Bundle Stars - Btw., you must have a very good reason not to subscribe to their email newsletter!) and invoking the function via the main popup menu (at the top). It will show you an editable/copyable text with all possible hits (incl. probability).

by copying selected text from a website (e.g. Bundle Stars - Btw., you must have a very good reason to subscribe to their email newsletter!) and invoking the function via the main popup menu (at the top). It will show you an editable/copyable text with all possible hits (incl. probability). Create list of Steam Store links from selected games. The list will contain these URLs in three flavors: Just a URL, a Steam forum URL, and a Reddit URL. In the case of non-Steam entries, a Google search link will instead be created. This comes in handy when you want to inform others about some games and don't want to go through the trouble of having to search the game on Google, click the link, then copy the URL from the addressbar, and all that again for the next game etc.

from selected games. The list will contain these URLs in three flavors: Just a URL, a Steam forum URL, and a Reddit URL. In the case of non-Steam entries, a Google search link will instead be created. This comes in handy when you want to inform others about some games and don't want to go through the trouble of having to search the game on Google, click the link, then copy the URL from the addressbar, and all that again for the next game etc. Selection presets save all current view/filter settings (apps/tags filter text incl. autogroup mode, selected tags, which tag groups are collapsed/expanded, the current gray/white coloring mode, the sort settings, which columns are currently visible, and even which list entries are currently selected) so you can save/recall the complete situation.

save all current view/filter settings (apps/tags filter text incl. autogroup mode, selected tags, which tag groups are collapsed/expanded, the current gray/white coloring mode, the sort settings, which columns are currently visible, and even which list entries are currently selected) so you can save/recall the complete situation. Anonymous feedback feature , so if you find something wrong, have a suggestion, or wanna give me the impression that anyone but me is using the program :P, drop me a note.

, so if you find something wrong, have a suggestion, or wanna give me the impression that anyone but me is using the program :P, drop me a note. Screenshot of the first of two review features:

one-click export a graph image of the review score. Examples: 1 2 These images also explain the concept nicely. Games can be sorted by this score. If scores are identical, the game with the greater certainty will be listed first. This works very well: You're more certain about a game's score if you have a more intimate relationship to it, so it's likely that you want it higher up. If this still leads to identical sort position, the next sort criterion you chose will kick in (of which there currently (2017-01-24) are 4 plus the default alphabetical ascending fallback).

one-click of the review score. Examples: 1 2 These images also explain the concept nicely. Games can be sorted by this score. If scores are identical, the game with the greater certainty will be listed first. This works very well: You're more certain about a game's score if you have a more intimate relationship to it, so it's likely that you want it higher up. If this still leads to identical sort position, the next sort criterion you chose will kick in (of which there currently (2017-01-24) are 4 plus the default alphabetical ascending fallback). Functions for any entries: launch, rename, open the game's PCGamingWiki page, search GOG.com, search isthereanydeal.com, search steamdb.info, search Google, property editor (Supports multiselect.), open installation folder, open screenshots folder, define (Additional!) custom screenshots path, scan installation size and screenshots, delete database entry.

Persistent activity log so if you wonder "WTF did I just click?", you can look it up.

so if you wonder "WTF did I just click?", you can look it up. Had multi-select before Steam :P

Functions exclusive to Steam entries: install, uninstall, store page, news page, achievements page, activate product key (Calls Steam's dialog, but goes to the key input page right away, so just hit F9 in SlaloM, CTRL+v and ENTER in the dialog, and that's it.), "Can I run it?" (Calls an obscure Steam function that supposedly answers this question.), open appmanifest file in your editor

Functions exclusive to non-Steam entries: add non-Steam app/document/folder/shortcut, edit launch menu, reset executable (Allows to select a new one on launch-attempt.)

Other functions: set Steam path, update information from Steam, set timezone, set proxy server and timeout, set SlaloM update check, set Steam data download, set telemetry, open SlaloM data folder, flush Steam download cache (helps fixing some kinds of download problems, also available from the Steam preferences window), Steam dev console, save all data, view SlaloM version history, send feedback, screenshot mode/transparency/selection/frequency, minimize, toggle fullscreen vs windowed mode (By default, SlaloM is a fullscreen window, allowing you to be completely alone with your games.), quit.

All this and more comes with SlaloM, the Steam game library manager I wrote for myself Dec2013/Jan2014 and have been using and evolving for more than 3 years. It's free, just like the rest of my stuff. Not affiliated with or endorsed by Valve/Steam. It's not flawless - but "What's the catch?" can best be answered with "Your hesitation." SlaloM is a gigantic improvement over the Steam library, and you can use it as one launcher and manager for all game clients (and manually installed games) combined, it will automatically add all those games if you tell it to. It's also heavily screenshot-focused, so get ready to take some. Yep, now you actually have a reason. Think about this: Investing in powerful graphics equipment has become such a priority, people might even forget to invest in their screen, too, and the industry focuses on letting things look good first and adding meaningful gameplay second. But the available game clients completely ignore the importance of a game's in-game graphics! Head - meet desk. And what's more, they do think about making themselves look good. I don't know if that's irony, but it's definitely like 10,000 spoons.

Usage ▲ Like in Steam, the app/game list is on the left. To run a game, just click it with the middle mouse button, or use the right button and select "launch" from the menu, or select the game and press Enter. When you select a game, a big screenshot is shown right away (if there are any) and items in the context menu become (de)activated. Some items are not available (but visible) in "use mode". Next to the app/game list, there's the tag list. Use the mouse or F5/F6/F7 to switch between the three interface modes (use library, edit library, edit tags), which will enable/disable a few functions and change the way the lists behave and whether or not external drag&drop has any effect. "use library" (blue color): Clicking in the tag lists can only change a tag's current state, but it doesn't assign them, so this is a harmless mode. SlaloM will always be in this mode when it starts.

"edit library" (red color): Clicking tags assigns/unassigns them to/from games, so you don't want to do this accidentally, hence the red color for this mode. In this mode, you can drag&drop new games/applications/folders/links into the game list (with confirmation), and all functions in the app list menu will be available. You can also rename games - check this to form an opinion on how relevant this is to you.

- check this to form an opinion on how relevant this is to you. "edit tags" (green color): Clicking tags selects them so that you can delete or rename them or set their default state to which they will be set whenever you click the "reset tags" button. You can also assign tags to groups, causing a headline that you can collapse/expand. When you run a game, SlaloM's screen goes blank except for the game's name being shown in big letters. Clicking the right mouse button will return you to the interface. Clicking the left mouse button does that, too, but only after 10 seconds to prevent accidents. Because: The duration the launch screen is shown is the duration of the current game session. (You can sort by the duration run.) The total duration run of Steam games can be auto-downloaded, and there's even a definable offset, so if you know that you have hours less in a Steam game, even with official data from Steam you still have it your way. When you click the launch screen away, a dialog will show, allowing you to edit the time that will now be added to the database, or even to cancel the update completely, which is useful for launching a few games and taking screenshots. Why would you take screenshots? Indeed, before SlaloM, there was a lot less reason to do so. Start SlaloM after you have bought new games so that it can "see them" for the first time, which will be written down. You can sort by this date. You can also edit this date, and import it for all games you bought in the Steam store, and via a different feature for >70% of all Steam games you have in your library. When you close SlaloM, you will be asked if you want to save changes to your database file, or if you want to forget about them, or if you want to cancel the quit. You can also save the data via the main popup menu at the top or by pressing CTRL+s, and you might want to do that whenever you've made a few small changes or have "seen" a few new games so that SlaloM recorded the date.

Known Bugs / Missing Features ▲ There's no way yet to join duplicate entries for e.g. when you mix manually and automatically adding games, or when you move to a new machine with changed paths, leading to the same automatic discoveries another time. It's a planned feature somewhere down the road. Once that is properly implemented, it will also make sense to make a feature that allows adding of entries that don't exist yet at all: Games you want to buy (Wishlist!), or games you have on GOG etc. but just don't want to download yet for automatic discovery. Once you do have them, those ghost entries should easily be joinable with the real thing, however it ended up in the list.

duplicate entries for e.g. when you mix manually and automatically adding games, or when you move to a new machine with changed paths, leading to the same automatic discoveries another time. It's a planned feature somewhere down the road. Once that is properly implemented, it will also make sense to make a feature that allows adding of entries that don't exist yet at all: Games you want to buy (Wishlist!), or games you have on GOG etc. but just don't want to download yet for automatic discovery. Once you do have them, those ghost entries should easily be joinable with the real thing, however it ended up in the list. All Steam accounts on the PC are treated as one. This isn't necessarily a bug, rather a missing feature (or maybe even desired for a certain use case): If there are several Steam users on the same PC, then the games of all of them will be treated as one set, the same applies to whether or not a game is owned. Obviously, if account X is logged in on Steam trying to play a game of account Y via SlaloM, Steam would say "nope". But don't worry, this can't become a problem: The API to launch games is official, all one would have to do is execute "steam://run/12345" (or whatever the AppID of the game owned by the not logged-in account is) to effect the same situation, so it's impossible that Valve would react with "DUDE! WTF!?"

Custom apps added to Steam will be imported, but custom launch options set via Steam will not be imported.

be imported. Some very few games/DLCs might not be recognized as owned by SlaloM, e.g. some Shadow of Mordor DLCs I have. No idea yet what's going on here. But I started developing/using SlaloM when I was at 400 games, am now at 2100+. The extent of this problem is far from obnoxious. (Plus the properties editor allows to override SlaloM's findings.) Due to this problem, I decided to not have SlaloM mark a game as not owned again (E.g. because you refunded it), because that could too easily end up making the problem worse. Also, any missing "owned" flags can easily be set by making SlaloM automatically download the list of your owned games on every start (which is recommended e.g. because this also obtains the duration played as reported by Steam). The download is inferior to SlaloM's local file reading because the local files have way more information, e.g. it has DLC, too, and it informs whether an item is a game, DLC, application, etc. or what DLC is available for a game (which SlaloM shows).

have SlaloM mark a game as not owned again (E.g. because you refunded it), because that could too easily end up making the problem worse. Also, any missing "owned" flags can easily be set by making SlaloM automatically download the list of your owned games on every start (which is recommended e.g. because this also obtains the duration played as reported by Steam). The download is inferior to SlaloM's local file reading because the local files have way more information, e.g. it has DLC, too, and it informs whether an item is a game, DLC, application, etc. or what DLC is available for a game (which SlaloM shows). The "alt gr" key does not work, so typing a backslash on a German keyboard (for example) is not possible - except if you press CTRL in addition (doesn't matter which alt(gr) and CTRL pair you use). Good thing you never need this, cause there's dialogs and drag&drop instead. This is not a Java bug but something somewhere in SlaloM, as some testing showed, but I don't know yet what causes it.

Changing a tag group name (which is done by changing the group name of all tags in that group, which is easy due to multi-select) does not carry through to the saved view/filter presets which remember the collapsed groups.

FAQ ▲ "Can I turn off those help texts that pop up all over the place?" Just press F1 to turn them off/on at any time, or click the button at the top that has the blinking border while help is turned on, which it will be automatically on first start. Help is very useful: It tells you about keyboard shortcuts, "hidden" features, sometimes (Very rarely.) displays additional data of an item (e.g. in the properties editor), and it explains the concepts you should know about SlaloM. So, make sure you turn it on every once in a while to learn new stuff that makes your PC gamer life easier.

"So, does this change Steam data?" No! Neither Steam, any other client, or your system is changed in any way by SlaloM. You only see the renamed games and altered Steam play time inside this program. If you delete its folder, then that's the end of it: No trace remains, uninstall completed. Well, there might still be a folder called "(screenshots)" in some of your game installations, if you took screenshots with SlaloM.

"I have to use this INSTEAD of Steam?" Yes and no. You're not binding yourself, but for the sake of data consistency, you'd want to use other clients directly for playing as little as possible. It doesn't matter much in the case of Steam, because SlaloM can be made to auto-import all data (when last played and for how long overall), but game time of other clients or manually installed games would be lost. Also, starting v36, SlaloM remembers not just the total time played of a game and when you last played it, but it remembers every single play session of a game (start time and duration) which will probably lead to interesting features eventually. Currently, there's only the optional column for the amount of sessions and the one for the longest session, but later there might be graphs and such. E.g. I once made a Minecraft launcher that had a unique feature that I've never seen anywhere (Does it surprise you still at this point?), namely a screenshot timeline. You would see a zoomable/pannable view of the time domain and would see your screenshot files in the respective place. The reason for taking a screenshot is a situation, and the time when you took it is an indicator for that situation, and all screenshots taken close to that time would basically have the same connotation. That's untapped data! I might do such a thing in SlaloM, too, possibly in a universal way so you could decide the kind of data first (screenshot dates, game sessions, purchase dates, ...).

"Why swap one library browser for another? And what's YOUR gain?" My gain is simple: I developed SlaloM for myself and then increasingly considered other potential users, too. You may not like the idea that instead of the Steam library, you'd have to use a different program. But not only is the Steam library screen horribly underdeveloped, you're forgetting something: You're not replacing the library browser you're accustomed to with a different one - you're replacing all your various libraries (incl. your manually installed games) with one central access point that has game library management power you didn't even dream of. This allows you to decide what you want to play BASED ON THE GAMES, not based on which library this entails. Who cares if the game is on Uplay or outside any game client. Just care about the game itself! Free yourself from Steam's subconscious grip! Let GOG have a little of your cash, too! :D

"Why was it created, what's the goal?" I wanted to manage my Steam games with tags instead of the crappy Steam Library screen that didn't even have multi-select back then. While I was at it, I realized how much a screenshot display of the selected game was missing. Ultimately, I thought that I could actually effect a change: If people would pick up on SlaloM and manage their games with tags (The way God intended.) and freely rename them as they see fit, the growing SlaloM community could make Valve's head turn, and they would finally wake up and give us a proper game manager. Over time, I realized that the idea is stupid: 1) For Valve to move, it takes ... A LOT. 2) People do their best to ignore the existence of SlaloM. They're really good at that. There are currently (2017-01-24) like 2 downloads per day :( Anyway - SlaloM exists and keeps evolving. Because *I* want to manage my huge game library like a pro.



I also have the idiotic idea to eventually kick off a long-term community project to create a game manager to rule all game clients : A powerful library system that, via plugins, can be extended to support any game client under the sun. People would use this one manager instead of dealing with their multiple installed game clients. This would also remove the "fanboy" effect (For lack of a proper term.) that keeps people mentally locked in e.g. the Steam universe instead of opening up to e.g. GOG and others. This even sounds a little as if it would be in the interest of those companies - making me wonder why THEY (At least the less prominent ones.) don't collaborate to do this. Let the store front, not the walled garden, be the source of your revenue! Anyway: Yes, you CAN add non-Steam games etc. to Steam, but it's tedious (NO DRAG AND DROP WHAT THE FUCK!?), they feel like a foreign element within Steam, and most of all, why would anyone want EVEN MORE entries in a list that lacks all management comfort? Why don't we, the millions of gamers, whose wallets keep the BILLION dollar game industry afloat, create OUR OWN home in which we manage all our games, where the big names' game clients are not the masters but the servants? ... In before I wake up again. Anyway, SlaloM is the small one-man effort version of this.

"Why was it published after 2.5 years of use?" TL;DR: Cause it's fixed now, and before this it probably wouldn't have worked for 90% of the users (which I didn't know, and there was no feedback). - Back then, I made forum posts right away and every once in a while, but there was almost no feedback (as in ~2 guys tried it). Anyway, recently I got some fresh feedback that suggested that the program wasn't working for others, but I didn't know why. Now I happened to make a fresh OS install and put Steam in its default folder on drive C instead of my arbitrary folder on D, plus I used more than one library tree, and I got the same problems that had been described to me. Turned out that for some wicked reason, Steam had built the binary database on my other computers with different upper/lower case for certain keywords than on my new one, and since I'm searching for key locations binarily and also tried to keep it as fast as possible, I originally chose not to ignore case. SlaloM now looks for both case variants. It also now supports multiple library trees.

"How does it keep track of game time?" If you set SlaloM to download your Steam game info on each start, which requires your Steam Web API key (Check the box, enter "mum" or whatever you want in the "Domain Name" box, click "Register". Easy as pie.), the total duration played for each Steam game will be up to date whenever you start SlaloM, and if some of your games were missing from SlaloM's list, now they will definitely be there. For other games, you have to make do with the launch screen that SlaloM shows for every game: Once you click it, SlaloM assumes that play time's over and will show you a dialog with the measured time, where you can edit it if required (But there are ample edit features in the properties dialog, too, even for Steam games.) and then confirm, updating the database, or cancel, which is useful if you're just surfing games to gather some screenshots for SlaloM's awesome screenshot display.

"Will there be a SlaloM 2?" Probably not, even though development had already begun, focusing on a highly customizable GUI (e.g. multiple modes, each "freely" definable, so you could switch from fullscreen mode to three-windows-and-a-small-list-mode, etc.) ... but then for some reason SlaloM 1 development massively took off again, probably due to keygiveaway.com which allowed me to tackle SlaloM's main problem a little (NOBODY KNOWS ABOUT IT! WAAAAAAAH!) by getting the user group from ~6 people to almost 300 in about 2 months. (If my server logs are any indication, they basically all came and stayed for the keys :P) My vision for SlaloM has quite changed in these months, meaning that I should definitely abstain from kicking off a new project if apparently I didn't even really know yet what I want. And I also have other projects in the pipeline that I would rather want to deal with, e.g. an image viewer ("ANOTHER ONE!?") that has features that I miss in all image viewers that I have tried so far. Something outside-the-box. Like Aceistant, File Rename Editor, and SlaloM. With blackjack and hookers!

"Will SlaloM get me banned?" It hasn't gotten me banned in over 3 years of almost daily use, hence I'd say no. SlaloM also just uses normal file access (and only reads, it doesn't write), it doesn't use some RAM reading hacks or anything. E.g. it also works when Steam is not running, except it of course needs Steam for launching games and other such stuff (for which it uses the official protocols). Again, I'm reading some Steam files. Why should they care?

"Why did you choose this name?" Initially I thought "Steam library organizer and launcher", which gave me "Sloal". After a few development steps, I realized that "SlaloM" sounds way better - the only thing missing was an "M". So I added "Messiah" because 1) that's what it was to me in regards to Steam, 2) that's what I originally (Not so much now.) expected it to possibly become for the Steam audience once enough people use it, because Valve could have adopted the tag system, and 3) for personal reasons.

"So, in early 2017, you actually paid for SlaloM ads on Google for a while? Why?" This stopped in March after ~180€ because even though the download numbers were helped a lot, the amount of actual users does not seem to have increased. The money seems entirely wasted. The reasons for this in the first place can only be explained to SlaloM users, because others are unlikely to understand what we have here, and how wrong it is that PC gamers do not know about it. Valve's Steam is evolving at a pace that is unfathomably ridiculously slow, especially for a billion dollar company that conquered the central market place. It's a crime, almost. So, I invested n-thousand hours to develop SlaloM, giving me and its few users the ability to rename Steam games, to filter by arbitrary tags, to see screenshots immediately when selecting a game, sort by purchase date, etc. - This exists now! But nobody knows it. The Steam user base alone (SlaloM works with other game clients and manually installed games, too.) of supposedly active accounts is far above 100,000,000 strong! You bet your ass that at least a hundred thousand of those would want to use SlaloM instead of Steam's library screen - if they'd only know about it. It's a phenomenon in the PC gaming world waiting to happen. Let's make it happen! Because of the Google ads, I had to put a wee bit of JavaScript on this page, even though I tried to keep it out completely. It's from Google Adservices and enables me to check if an ad-caused visit lead to a click on one of the two main download links of SlaloM. I have to gauge if the ads are reaching the right people so I don't waste money.

Spread the word ▲ A game library manager that easily unites all PC games under one roof (not just games it has some kind of crowd-sourced online database entry for)? And it shows a big screenshot whenever you select a game instead of some stylized advertisement logo type thing? For Windows and Linux? And you can sort and filter your library like a madman, incl. purchase date and price paid etc.? And you can rename Steam games and adjust their reported game time? How is that not worth to be known to PC gamers? There are far over 100,000,000 active Steam accounts and who knows how many GOG Galaxy, Uplay, Origin, itch, etc. users. They have no idea of the freedom they could easily enjoy. This plus the incredible effort I'm investing in the project lets me ask: Could you please contribute a little? I'm not talking about money but about something far more valuable: Word-of-mouth recommendation. If you believe that SlaloM is good and should be known, then please tell someone about it. There's something like a critical mass. An example: When I discovered that Wednesday and Thursday are the least useful days for my SlaloM Google ads, I turned off those days entirely. And immediately, the only downloads I got on those days were caused by a fresh Reddit comment I made, just the situation I had before starting with Google ads (beginning of February). SlaloM has by far not yet reached the critical mass that somehow, out of nowhere, someone would come here and take a look at it. I'm still turning the starter of the engine, it's not yet running. We need to get to the point where SlaloM is at least a real existing thing (however small) on the Net, not just an illusion that we actively have to conjure. That's why I ask you to please tell someone about it. That would be an invaluable service.

Aceistant

download v[18, 2016-12-23 06!00 UTC] (~310 KB Java 8 program) [fallbacks in case of problems with the above up-to-date version]





download v[17, 2016-12-09 06!00 UTC] (~310 KB) download v[17pre, 2016-07-15 05!00 UTC] (~310 KB) download v[16, 2016-04-14 04!00 UTC] (~130 KB)

How exactly you use Aceistant is your choice, of course, but the original intention was to keep the program open all the time and to switch to it whenever you need to update your to-do notes, have to write down relevant events that took place (e.g. times when your Internet is down), want to toss a new idea into the respective section (Oh, you didn't have a section for that? Well, 5 seconds later with no dialog-fighting involved, you do. Based on experience: The easy section concept is a true creativity booster.), or quickly create an alert that will notify you a minute before the News are on - something that you would normally not do because it's too much of an "official" / complicated task, but in Aceistant is only a text note that doesn't take you 10 seconds. The location doesn't matter, you can't accidentally "lose" an alert. It's so easy, you'll create reminders you would normally never consider, it can literally be a little life-changing.

Features Text-folding on steroids, but navigation/unfolding is just a click.

Sections are separate from each other as if in separate files.

Date/time alerts with topic and end date (and sound)

Zoomable graphical overview of all alerts

Time span calculation

Writer mode - black screen with vertical paper and serif font

Hyperlinks for Internet addresses and files/folders/shortcuts etc.

FAQ tool for pasting text snippets you need very often

Decision tool for counting your pro/contra reasons score

Everything is done in text, no dialog is needed to set it up.

The Java 8 program Aceistant offers a very simple and very powerful way to help organizing your life/work. We all take notes every once in a while, often on paper, because to write notes that we want to keep on a computer, we would have to create a file. That file would have to have a name, and it would have to be in a place (directory) which itself also needs to be in the right place etc. The mental hurdle between you and actually writing down things on your computer is much too high. How many creative ideas did you have that you didn't write down because it would have brought just too much overhead? (Or because you got lost in all those font and style possibilities.) AND: How often did you have an additional thought that you would want to add to those notes, but finding the right file would just have been too tedious, so it ultimately doesn't happen? With Aceistant, all you need to do is to jump to the right text section by clicking in the always visible hierarchical section list - or just create a new section - and start writing. A section is defined in the simplest possible fashion by a special text syntax, there's no dialog window involved. Sections can be arbitrarily hierarchical, so you can make a "Don't forget!" section and, inside of it, "shopping", "pending mails", etc. In the background, it's all one file, and this UTF-8 text file will look exactly the same in any other editor as it does in Aceistant (minus the comfort) - there is no hidden control-information, it's all just your text. So, apart from the fact that you'll probably become pretty addicted to what Aceistant has to offer, you are not binding yourself at all. Also, you can move sections around at any time with copy/cut/paste, and the outcome will be exactly as expected. You could even do this in another application, or you could easily create a program that creates a hierarchical text for Aceistant. Whenever you're in a text section (except the always existing section "all"), the editor will only show that section (and sections that are contained within it). So, if you would for example press CTRL+a to select all text, delete it, and then press CTRL+s to save the text (which Aceistant forces you to do all the time), you will only have deleted those sections. The rest of the text is entirely untouc