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Folders & Scanning

FindRomCover compares two folders: the ROM folder with your game files and the image folder with your cover images. This page explains how the scan works and how to get accurate results.

Setting the folders

  1. Click Browse... next to ROM Folder and select the folder that contains your games. Subfolders are scanned recursively.
  2. Click Browse... next to Image Folder and select the folder where covers are stored.
  3. The scan starts automatically as soon as both paths are valid. You can also press F5 or click Check for Missing Images at any time.

Folder paths are validated before scanning. If a path does not exist, a warning is shown and the path is not saved.

What the scan does

  1. Enumerates every file under the ROM folder whose extension is in the supported extensions list.
  2. For each ROM file, looks for a cover image with the same base name in the image folder. Recognized image formats include .png, .jpg, .jpeg, .bmp, .gif, .tiff, .tif, .webp, and .avif.
  3. Adds every ROM without a matching image to the Missing Covers list.

The status bar reports the outcome:

Message Meaning
Found n ROM files, m missing covers Scan completed; m games need artwork
No ROM files found matching the supported extensions The ROM folder is empty or the extensions do not match; check Settings > Edit Supported Extensions...
No missing covers found Every ROM already has a cover

Note: A ROM is considered covered when an image with the same base name exists in the image folder. The comparison is case-insensitive and ignores the image extension, so Sonic (USA).zip is matched by Sonic (USA).png.

Automatic re-scan triggers

The list is refreshed automatically after:

  • selecting a new ROM or image folder;
  • editing the supported extensions;
  • saving a cover through the Local Files or Google API tabs;
  • the image folder watcher renaming a new image to the selected game;
  • a completed AI Batch Fill run.

Command-line pre-fill

You can start FindRomCover with folders already set:

FindRomCover.exe "C:\Path\To\ImageFolder" "C:\Path\To\RomFolder"
  • One argument is treated as the image folder.
  • Two arguments set the image folder and the ROM folder and trigger a scan on startup.

See Command-Line Arguments.

MAME descriptions

When Settings > Use MAME Descriptions is enabled, searches use the full MAME game description instead of the cleaned ROM filename. This can produce better web results for arcade titles. The data comes from mame.dat in the application folder — see MAME data.

Performance tips

  • Keep the image folder on a local disk for fast scans; network shares work but are slower.
  • Large collections benefit from the built-in trigram index, which pre-filters candidates before the full similarity comparison.
  • Use a narrower supported-extension list if your ROM folder contains unrelated files.