Backup OpenEmu Save States to Dropbox

OpenEmu is one of the best ways to play your favorite retro games.  A long-time feature of emulators is the “save state,” which acts like a long-term Pause button.  It will save your game in the exact spot you decide (not just at a checkpoint in the game).  You could even save your game while you are in the middle of a jump and the next time you loaded the game up, it would start right there.

This trick uses a symbolic link, similar to how you can un-clutter your Dropbox.  In this case, you will put the save state folder into your Dropbox and then make a symlink in the original location.

On the Mac, OpenEmu saves these saved-game files to a folder in ~/Library/Application Support/OpenEmu/Save States/.  If you have Dropbox and OpenEmu on multiple computers, you can use the service to sync your save states across devices.

First, make a folder in your Dropbox called OpenEmu (case-sensitive).  In this example, I made the folder in ~/Dropbox/Games/.

Next, move the content of  ~/Library/Application Support/OpenEmu/ to the folder you created above.

then delete the original OpenEmu folder ( ~/Library/Application Support/OpenEmu ), which should now be empty.

Open Terminal and enter these commands (adjusting the paths if necessary):

ln -s ~/Dropbox/Games/OpenEmu ~/Library/Application\ Support/OpenEmu

If you did it correctly, you will see the content appear from your Dropbox and the symlinked-folder in ~/Library/Application Support and it will have a new icon (an arrow, indicating an alias and the familiar Dropbox “synced” badge).

Now your OpenEmu support files are now stored in your Dropbox while the original location just has an alias, which points to your Dropbox!  You will need to make a symlink on each computer you do this on or you will end up with two different versions of the folder.