Last updated Jun 15, 2026

PSP Sidecar#

PSP Sidecar is a plugin and companion homebrew app that caches your game library's headers and file locations to a small sidecar file on your memory stick. On boot, the plugin loads this cache into RAM and serves it directly to the XMB, eliminating most of the disk seeks the firmware would otherwise perform. The result is a cold boot to XMB that is 5-8 seconds faster and a game list that loads in roughly 2 seconds on a 128 GB card with 100 games, compared to 10-13 seconds without it.

Compatible with Game Categories Lite. Works on ARK-5 CFW, tested on PSP 1000. Created by qberty↗.

Runlevel: VSH (XMB) only.

Download#

Download PSP Sidecar v1.3↗

How it works#

The plugin intercepts several firmware calls at the XMB level:

Free space scan skip: hooks sceIoDevctl and serves a precomputed value for available space, bypassing the full FAT32 cluster scan the firmware runs on every boot.
Game list cache: hooks dopen, dread, and dclose to intercept the XMB's per-game PARAM.SFO and ICON0 reads. Instead of opening each ISO individually, it synthesizes ISO9660 sectors in RAM using a VirtualPBP struct built from the cache file.
Stat pre-computation: stores per-game sceIoGetstat results in the cache, saving 20-50 ms per ISO on highlight.
ISOCACHE.BIN bypass: pre-generates the cache file ARK parses on cold boot, skipping that disk seek entirely (v1.2+).

The cache file is small enough to fit in the PSP 1000's RAM while still covering the data needed to skip redundant seeks across the full game list.

Installation#

If updating from a previous version, delete the existing sidecar files in /SEPLUGINS/ and /PSP/SYSTEM/ISOCACHE.BIN before proceeding.

Copy psp_sidecar.prx to /SEPLUGINS/ (or flash0: if using Leftovers).
Copy psp_sidecar.ini to /SEPLUGINS/ (or flash1: if using Leftovers).
Activate the plugin in Plugin Manager to VSH/XMB mode ONLY.
Copy the PSP Sidecar homebrew app folder to /PSP/GAME/ (or a GCLite subfolder).
Launch the homebrew app and press X to generate the cache.
Reboot.

Configuration#

Edit psp_sidecar.ini in /SEPLUGINS/ to adjust the two available options:

Option	Default	Description
`video_menu`	`false`	Set to `true` to keep the XMB VIDEO menu usable on PSP 1000. Costs some performance.
`max_games`	`0`	Maximum number of games to fast-load. `0` fast-loads everything. Set a lower value if 300+ games cause crashes due to low RAM.

Regenerating the cache#

The cache must be up to date for the speed gains to apply. Run the PSP Sidecar homebrew app and press X every time you add or remove games. A stale cache causes the XMB to fall back to slow direct reads on any entry it cannot match.

If you want to skip the free-space-scan boost without reinstalling, delete sidecar_xmb.bin from your /SEPLUGINS/ folder. The plugin will leave that optimization off and continue with the rest.

Troubleshooting#

If your games show as corrupted, make sure to delete your ISOCACHE.BIN file from /PSP/SYSTEM/ and regenerate the cache with the homebrew app. If you have a large game library (300+), try setting max_games to a lower value in the INI to reduce RAM usage.