I do not want to install Galaxy, I really do not. But I would like to try Gwent and Gwent requires Galaxy. So.. sigh.

The problem is that I already have some GOG games installed and I do not want Galaxy to mess with them at all. I'm afraid that during installation Galaxy will start some "user friendly autodetecting" and all installed games (and the ones I will install in future) will be "automerged" into Galaxy - I really do not want that.

I just want to use Galaxy purely as kind of "launcher" for Gwent (and maybe for Thronebreaker). Nothing else.

Is that possible to install Galaxy in that way without such "user friendly experience"? Does anyone use such Galaxy/Gwent setup?

If it's possible then what's the safest way to install Galaxy to get such results? Should I download and install it separately (before Gwent) and configure it first?

Short of installing it on a different partition or something like that I'm not sure you can stop it detecting your games.
But once you install it you can turn off auto updates and all your other games will be completely unaffected by Galaxy.
Your only issue will be it it starts updating things before you can get to the settings to turn auto updating off, but at worst it will maybe start updating one game which you could then cancel.

:( Has anyone tried to download Galaxy installer and then install it while being offline? Maybe that could be solution if it works.

Hmmm, yeah I suppose that might work... Not sure if the installers are web based these days or not, but if you can install it and set the settings how you want it while offline and then go online it should update itself and nothing else.

So.. now I need some "confirmation" that such offline installation will be able to finish itself. :P

Also, it would be good to have some list of such "messing" options I should look for (and in what menu they are "hidden").

I was trying to look for some GOG Galaxy step-by-step installation video on youtube but found nothing. :(

I don't think you can actually do anything in Galaxy until you log-in the first time, so being offline isn't going to make any difference when you're starting out. AFAIK there's no way you can stop it from detecting installed games if you've used a recent offline installer.

Best thing is just to do what adaliabooks suggested, if it tries auto-updating games after you log-in, just cancel it then turn off auto-updates. You can cancel updates with the queue that's shown on the bottom-left of the app. And you can access the settings using the "GOG" button on the top-left and clicking Settings, you can turn off pretty much anything you don't like.

As for Gwent, in my opinion Homecoming needs a major balance patch before it's playable. At the moment everyone just plays the same broken crap and it's not fun at all. Thronebreaker is pretty good though.

Correct me if I am wrong, I don't use galaxy but a search tells me that it doesn't autodetect games when you install it. There is an option to scan and import if you want to do it.

I can't even configure it while offline? :( No, never. That will be my first time. Does "indexed" status show after "import" and if I do not do "import" then I will see nothing "indexed"?

Maybe you can, I just tried logging out and I was able to change settings without being logged in. But i'm not sure about a first time install.

[Edit] Looks like Johny already clarified.

Yes, this is an option I was looking for.

OK, so this is another thing I was looking for. :)

Two more questions:

Can I point at and add manually just one game to Galaxy? (instead of doing the full scan and adding all of them)

What will happen when I install another game after having Galaxy already installed? Will it be "auto added" / "indexed"? I would prefer not.

You actually have to select a folder to scan when you wan to do a scan and import function. So yes, you can point at and add manually just one game, just select that one games folder.

Just use the offline backup installers and not the GoG Galaxy installers and it won't add it to GoG Galaxy at all.

Thank you for the answers. :)

Ah, so using offline installers (as I do any install now) do not allow game to be added to GOG Galaxy - good to know. :)

This isn't actually true, the offline installers will still be detected and added to Galaxy automatically if Galaxy is already installed. To be fair my recollection is not what Johnny has said and Galaxy auto added a number of games I had installed prior to installing it with out me having to scan for them, but it was a while ago and I might be misremembering.
I use a mix of offline installers and Galaxy to install games (depending on my mood and which gets better download speeds) and have never had to import a game manually since my first install.

But if you can configure it while offline and not logged in then you can basically turn off everything before you ever log in and it won't affect your games in anyway.
I'm fairly sure I only installed it at first to use Gwent when the Beta came out and sought to keep my other games out of it, but once a few got auto added I found it useful and now I use it quite a bit. Despite all the doom and gloom and naysayers, Galaxy is pretty great.