04. FAQ - spruceUI/spruceOS GitHub Wiki

  • Please make sure you have the latest spruce release installed. Here is how to update.

  • There is a firmware available that fixes WiFi! Please update your firmware!

  • Please make sure you have shown Hidden Files during the install the .tmp_update folder is essential for spruce to function.

  • Try a different microSD card! This often fixes peoples problems. There are counterfeits and just generally bad cards out there. You can try the SD card fix on the Unbricking/Firmware page but if this doesn't solve it I cannot really help you.

SpruceUI Topics

I love spruce, how can I support you? Can I donate?

Emotional support and kind words are always appreciated! At this time though the spruce team doesn't accept donations. We highly recommend donating to your local women's shelter instead!

I found a website/store selling A30s/SDCards with Spruce pre-installed, is this sold by you?

No, we do not sell pre-loaded spruce cards to anyone. Commercial use of spruce is prohibited without explicit written permission. To get permission email us at [email protected].

Features Topics

Does spruce support videos and music?

Yes! We have FFPlay installed for such a thing. Place your music and videos in the Roms/MEDIA folder. Some supported types:

  • Video: MP4, MKV, AVI, MOV, FLV, and more
  • Audio: MP3, WAV, AAC, FLAC, OGG, and more

Spruce has the same limitations as Onion for file sizes and resolutions. Here is a video explaining how to properly compress files.

Does spruce offer a way to download updates?

Yes, starting in v3.1.0 spruce now comes packaged with an OTA update app. (OTA = Over the air, aka download). This app is hidden by default so it doesn't get in your way in the day to day, but spruce will periodically check for updates automatically. If one is found it'll show the updater app with a message saying update available. You can control if the updater app is shown/hidden in the App Visibility section. You can also turn off the check for updates in Advanced Settings as well.

Hardware Topics

Why can't I map my L3 key from the thumbstick?

For some reason this isn't actually wired up on the A30. This doesn't provide an input to the device at all. It is only a fidget clicker.

Why does my A30 perform better/worse than other A30's?

For reasons only Miyoo may know there is a noticeable disparity between A30's in terms of performance. Some devices will be able to run in overclock and do well with higher end systems like DC and PSP. While others will crash or freeze up just from trying to run in overclock mode. There really isn't much we can do as a software/UI modification about this. Some A30's will win or loose the 'chip lottery' and it's beyond our teams control unfortunately.

My A30 gets hot, why? How can I fix it?

This seems to vary device to device. Most likely doing with the 'chip lottery' mentioned above. So your particular A30 may just run hotter. But for one thing Spruce does it's best to manage CPU performance and only ramps up on demand when in smart mode. So we recommend running your emulators in "Smart" CPU mode so you aren't possibly running the CPU at a higher clock than you need. The big thing we've seen affect this though is WiFi use. Having WiFi on increases CPU and battery usage to a noticeable degree. (MinUI users will say their A30 runs cooler on MinUI than Spruce, MinUI not supporting WiFi is largely why). So if heat/battery is your concern we recommend turning off WiFi. In Spruce v3.0.0 we also introduced a "Turn off WiFi in game" option to help manage that.

I am having issues with my microSD card and I cant figure it out. How do I fix it?

Try this Formatting tool on "Quick" mode, then format to FAT32 and install spruce normally. Its working like MAGIC getting seemingly dead SD cards working again on the A30.

I have to hold the power button way too long to turn on my A30, can you shorten it?

Unfortunately no, this is determine by the A30's hardware/firmware. Believe us, it drives us crazy too. It's possible Miyoo could shorten this with a firmware update and if they do we'll be sure to shout it from the mountain tops. Until then we are all suffering from it.

Can I upgrade my A30 with a Hal/Gullikit or similar joystick?

No, for some reason the A30 motherboard hates it. If you replace your stick with an 'upgraded' stick like a Hal sensor stick we've seen reports of the connection fusing, sparking, and/or melting. We say DO NOT DO THIS! It may have to do with how Miyoo wired the stick since this causes issues and it does things like not send an L3 input. All that said, if you took the risk and successfully upgrade your stick let us know. Perhaps there's a specific kind. We do believe replacing it with a straight up Joycon replacement thumbstick should be fine though.

Emulation Topics

Why is my Games menu empty even though I already added games?

Spruce Version 3.0.0 and above implements an automatic EmuFresh function. If you have added games and they system is not showing try these steps:

  • Launch a game or the Advanced Settings App and exit it back to the main menu.
  • If this does not work, open Advanced Settings and scroll down to the bottom of the first tab. Activate the Reset Emufresh toogle and press B.
  • If that doesn't work or you're on 2.3.0 or lower, update please!, hit the home key in the main menu and there should be a "Refresh Roms" option
  • If all that does not work, download the latest .7z version of spruce from the Releases page and put it, without unzipping, onto the root of the microSD card. Run the Updater App (Updater app on 3.0.0 or above).

Is there some sort of compatibility sheet for what games work well/play?

Yes there is. There's a community effort in the MiyooA30 sub reddit to track play ability of higher end systems. (Direct link to sheet) Just as a warning though performance differences from one A30 to another can make it difficult to say the results posted will be your personal experience. (See question above for more details) As a real world example, one person may report Burnout Legends perfectly playable on PPSSPP no tweaking. For another PPSSPP performance might be a slideshow with the same settings. So just keep that in mind.

How do I use Netplay?

Netplay works on spruce! You need to turn off auto load and auto save states in the Retroarch menu. You also want to make sure you have updated the firmware to fix the wifi issues with the original firmware.

PPSSPP Retro Achievements login not working! I can't get a virtual keyboard up to login with my info.

This seems to be a common issue with PPSSPP across multiple devices. This Reddit post and comment talks about a workaround for it.

Customization Topics

How do I add background music?

In each theme folder there is a "sound" folder, select your and replace the "bgm.mp3" with your own. You must rename the new file to "bgm.mp3"

How do I add new themes?

You can easily copy+paste in themes from the stock MiyooOS or Onion into the "Themes" folder on the root of the microSD card. Onion themes are not 100% compatible with spruce.

Tenlevels got his start as a Thememaker, we are always interested in people contributing with new themes!

How can I mix and match themes and icon sets?

Right now spruce doesn't have this built in, and it was requested by many of our theme creators not to add it. So at this time spruce team has no plans to add such a feature out of respect for their work. That said themes are just a collection of images in your /Themes folder, you can easily edit and combine themes as you wish locally.

Debugging Topics

How can I backup/restore my spruce install?

Spruce includes a suite of apps to manage updates and your files. Two of those are the Spruce Backup app and the Spruce Restore app. These are hidden by default but are used by the update process. So you may have some backups already! Go to Advanced Settings > App Visibility and look for their respective names and hit show. Both apps are a one click run. Spruce Backup will create a backup of all your important spruce related configs and settings and place that on your SD Card in /Saves/spruce/backups. The back up app will keep the last 7 backups in there. To restore just be sure to have a compatible backup file in /Saves/spruce/backups and Restore will restore the most recent backup file, based on the date written in the files name.

Are there any logs I could read/send if I'm experiencing issues?

There are many! Most of them are saved to /Saves/spruce/ though. We use a rotating log system, so each boot cycle a new log is made and existing logs are incremented, ie spruce2.log was from when you had your device on two reboots ago. Backup and restore apps also have their own separate logs in the spruceBackup.log and spruceRestore.log so if there was an issue with those processes that's the place to check

Is there an easy way to reinstall spruce if I'm having issues?

We have two main ways. The easiest is to use the update downloader app to do it for you. Normally the updater app will only download a newer version. But you can tell it to reinstall. Go to our Advanced Settings app. Then make sure the "show expert settings" option is on, if not turn that on, save & exit, then re-open Advanced Settings. with expert settings shown, look for an option on the System tab called "Allow a reinstall" set that to "run" and save & exit. Now you should have the "Check for Update" option in apps if you didn't before. Run this and it will offer you to download and install the current version you have installed. Ez-pz, pretty hands off.

Alternatively you can update manually using the EZ Updater spruce comes packaged with. The steps are pretty much the same as updating manually with EZ Updater. Go to our latest releases and download the packed .7z release file, named in the pattern spruceVxx.xx.xx.7z, and place this on the root of your SDCard, do not extract it. If it's the right file and in the right location on boot you should have the EZUpdater app available, don't run it yet. Use the steps above to run the "Allow a reinstall" task so EZUpdater allows you to get past the "Already up to date" message. After running that task, run the EZUpdater app. It'll take it from there.