I would like to request a more consistent availability of the "SHUTDOWN" menu command for handheld devices. Currently, when running Pico-8 on a handheld device (Powkiddy RGB30, Anbernic 351v, etc..) it can be difficult to shut down Pico-8. Every device has button shortcuts to force quit an App but they often won't work in Pico-8 depending on the OS and Handheld. In these cases using the "SHUTDOWN" command in the START menu is the only way to return to the OS. When launching directly into a cart, there is always a Shutdown command in the START menu

In my opinion, this is the desired behaviour.

However, when Pico-8 launches Splore mode, that menu does NOT have the "SHUTDOWN" command. It is replaced by "EXIT TO SPLORE"

From Splore it is possible to get to a Shutdown but that is hidden and sometimes not easy to access. You need to actually select a cart and press START, then select "OPTIONS"

Which will then bring up a second menu where you can actually shut down Pico-8

This is pretty cumbersome. Especially it seems like the Powkiddy RGB30 seem to have a double-trigger issue on the START button making hard to enter that cart menu in Splore without immediately launching the cart as well.

EDIT: I realized I had confused START and ESC. I edited the post. There is also an ESC menu and that works well for the purpose I'm describing here. It usually has a shutdown option. The problem I have is that many handhelds don't have a button that can be mapped to ESC so it would be good if the START menu always included a quick shutdown

Yes! This is frustrating. I just got the RGB30, a handheld that PICO-8 really shines on, except for some interface quirks and the difficulty exiting PICO-8.

I got the RGB30 for couple days and thanks for your post I finally know how to shutdown pico-8 when the shortcut is not working without force rebooting the device using the reset button on the top.

And yeah 100% agree! There should be an obvious option to shutdown the system.

This would be nice! I spent while trying to figure out how to exit splore the first few times.

responding to the exit signals would be nice too - I had to ask for help trying to shut it down after a game crashed and showed me a red blinking cursor on the pico8 commandline. (idk how it works on the backend, I just know that select+start+start will quit the other (retroarch-based) emulators on my rg351v)

Agreed, this feature would be great.

Just FYI for anyone else who has an RGB30 (the device in the post) if you hold L1, then press Start + Select, it exits PICO-8

Agreed with OP. I find exiting really unintuitive and ended up here after searching online for how to shut down. Shutting down by clicking on a game’s options was completely unexpected.