@simpleethat said in Anyway to turn off the footer when you start a game?:

Onscreen Notifications

Something extra that people might find useful. I had the same problem getting rid of those notifications, but editing RetroArch via its GUI was creating havoc. I managed to achieve the same result by editing /opt/retropie/configs/all/retroarch.cfg

Firstly I did this:
Enable usage of OSD messages.
video_font_enable = "false"

but the secret sauce is to add this line
menu_enable_widgets = "false"