@mitu Perfect! that's how it works with my PC setup, just wasn't sure if having a key mapped to "esc" would work.

Can I remove my keyboard as a controller? i dont actually want to use to play games. would that help?

@guitarans when it asks for hotkey unless your controller doest have a key you can assign to select, you really should use select as your hotkey. That is how it was originally designed. The only reason they added the hotkey option in the controller config menu in emulationstation was because of people using controllers like the n64 controller or dreamcast controller where they dont have a button to assign to select. It used to automatically assign it to select.