Nintendo Switch emulators

Nintendo Switch

The Switch in its two forms, handheld (above) and docked (below).
Developer	Nintendo
Type	Hybrid video game console
Generation	Eighth generation
Release date	March 2017
Predecessor	Wii U (new) 3DS
Emulated	✓

For emulators that run on the Nintendo Switch, see Emulators on Switch.

The Nintendo Switch is an eighth-generation hybrid gaming console released by Nintendo on March 3, 2017, and retailed for US$299.99 (equivalent to $372.85 in 2024). During its development, the Switch was known as the NX (short for NeXt or Nintendo "Cross") and was widely speculated upon until its announcement. Aside from specialized components unique to the console, the hardware is more or less off-the-shelf, being built around a semi-custom variant of NVIDIA's Tegra X1 system-on-a-chip, which was also used on a number of Android devices. The Switch contains 4 ARM Cortex-A57 CPUs running at 1.02 GHz with 4 GB of RAM and a proprietary NVIDIA GPU codenamed GM20B. The Tegra X1 SoC itself also has 4 ARM Cortex-A53 CPUs, however, these are unused [5] on the Switch, and are disabled in hardware on the later Mariko units [6].

While Nintendo intended to step up the console's security, vulnerabilities were still found early on that allowed tons of system files to be dumped, including dumps of games in the form of romfs.istorage archives, an exefs folder, and license files. These game dumps eventually got shared online by scene groups except for their licenses but were missing essential files to run. Even if they had been completed, there were no custom homebrew apps, let alone solutions to load unofficial game dumps for the system. A number of prominent hacking teams (starting with shuffle2 and fail0verflow in collaboration) all came across a new exploit independently of each other that allowed complete control over the system, later officially recognized by NVIDIA as CVE-2018-6242.

A "debugging emulator" for the Nintendo Switch, CageTheUnicorn (now Mephisto), popped up not long after the first components were dumped. It was designed to emulate sysmodules with "no support for graphics, sound, input, or any kind of even remotely performant processing […] by design." A couple of months later, members of both the Citra and Dolphin teams announced the release of their own emulator written in C++, which was capable of booting some homebrew applications; within a couple of weeks, yet another emulator named Ryujinx, written in C# by developer gdkchan, was released showing successful booting of commercial Switch games Puyo Puyo Tetris and Sonic Mania.

On May 7, 2024, Shuntaro Furukawa, president of Nintendo, officially announced that the company would reveal information about the Nintendo Switch successor within their current fiscal year.[7] Nintendo Switch backwards compatibility would be later confirmed by Nintendo themselves on its unnamed successor on November 5, 2024 [8]; including support for the Nintendo Switch Online service and its emulation apps.

Contents

Emulators

Name	Platform(s)	Latest version	Hardware features and peripherals	Enhancements	Compatibility	License	Active	Recommended
x86
Ryujinx		ryujinx-mirror builds GreemDev fork KeatonTheBot fork 1.1.1403‡ custom build for revived SMB35	~	~	82% 3578 out of 4360 reported titles‡ ryujinx-mirror games list	MIT (Permissive)	✓	✓
Citron		20241118	✓	~	?	GPLv3 (Copyleft)	✓	✓
torzu		Dark Git repository (requires Tor) (2024-05-31) NotABug mirror Unofficial Binaries	✓	~	?	GPLv3 (Copyleft)	✓	~
suyu		0.0.3	✓	~	?	GPLv3 (Copyleft)	~	~
Sudachi		1.0.11	✓	~	?	GPLv3 (Copyleft)	~	~
yuzu		Pineapple EA builds (archived) Former website (Last Archived Version)	✓	~	54% 1457 out of 2699 reported titles	GPLv3 (Copyleft)	✗	✗
NSEmu		git	✗	✗	?	GPLv3 (Copyleft)	✗	✗
Mephisto		git	✗	✗	?	GPLv2 (Copyleft)	✗	✗
CageTheUnicorn		git	✗	✗	?	ISC (Permissive)	✗	✗
ARM
Ryujinx		1.1.1403‡ ryujinx-mirror builds	~	~	82% 3578 out of 4360 reported titles‡ ryujinx-mirror games list	MIT (Permissive)	✓	✓
Citron		20241118	✓	~	?	GPLv3 (Copyleft)	✓	✓
Pomelo		Official Site [9]	✓	~	64% 87 out of 136 reported titles	GPLv3 (Copyleft)	✓	✓
suyu		0.0.3	✓	~	?	GPLv3 (Copyleft)	~	~
Sudachi		1.0.11 (apk) 1.0.6 (ipa)(v0.0.1.7.6 archived version)‡	✓	~	?	GPLv3 (Copyleft)	~	~
torzu		Dark Git repository (requires Tor) (2024-05-31) NotABug mirror Unofficial Binaries	✓	~	?	GPLv3 (Copyleft)	~	~
yuzu		yuzu GitHub (archived)	✓	~	?*	GPLv3 (Copyleft)	✗	✗
Egg NS		4.0.5	✗	✗	78% 172 out of 220 reported titles	Proprietary (stolen yuzu code)	✓	✗
DamonSwitch		1.0Preview	✗	✗	N/A	Proprietary (stolen yuzu code)	✗	✗

Compatibility layers (...)

Name	Platform(s)	Latest Version	Hardware features and peripherals	Enhancements	Compatibility	License	Active	Recommended
ARM
Strato		git	?	?	4% 58 out of 1426 reported titles	GPLv3 (Copyleft)	~[10]	~
Skyline		Edge 69	?	?	?	MPL 2.0 (Copyleft)	✗*	✗

Emulation focused Linux distros (...)

Name	Platform(s)	Latest Version	Hardware features and peripherals	Enhancements	Compatibility	License	Active	Recommended
ARM
Horizon Linux		git	✗	✗	?	GPLv2 (Copyleft)	✗	✗

Native

Name	Platform(s)	Latest version	Enhancements	Hardware features and peripherals	Compatibility	License	Active	Recommended
Consoles
Unnamed Nintendo Switch successor backwards compatibility mode	Unnamed Nintendo Switch successor	TBD	~	TBD	TBD	Proprietary	✓	TBD

Comparisons

Emulators

Ryujinx

An open-source hybrid approach emulator that is programmed in C#. Unlike yuzu, Ryujinx doesn't offer packaged early-access builds. However, work-in-progress features can still be tested by building locally from unmerged pull requests. Separately, Ryujinx has a closed source LDN-enabled build and there is a feature tracker for this LDN build for upstreaming. As of August 2022, Vulkan API support is available. While Ryujinx is notable for its focus on compatibility and accuracy, users often experience more shader stuttering compared to yuzu and its forks. Ryujinx also has support for ARM64 Linux and macOS[11][12], and it uses an alternative approach to yuzu's NCE for improving performance when emulating on ARM systems[13].

On October 1, 2024, Ryujinx GitHub and its repository were taken down. Shortly after this happened, the Ryujinx team announced that gdkchan was contacted by Nintendo and offered an agreement to stop working on the project and remove all related assets he was in control of.[14] However, the community quickly responded with the creation of mirrors and forks. Currently, three notable active projects have emerged: the GreemDev fork, the KeatonTheBot fork, and ryujinx-mirror. See Ryujinx#Forks section for more information.

yuzu

An open-source HLE approach emulator made by many of Citra's developers. As it was a hard fork of Citra, it shared many of its traits, namely cross-platform support and the use of OpenGL and Vulkan. yuzu offered early access pre-compiled builds to its $5/month Patreon supporters, allowing them to try out new features before they're available in the main build. Because of this, many people assumed the emulator was strictly closed and paywalled, however, the source code for many of these new features was always publicly available and could even be compiled by anyone. Because of this, some users went as far as to publicly share their own unofficial "early access" builds. One of yuzu's notable features was its decreased shader stuttering compared to Ryujinx, making it ideal for weaker PCs. yuzu also had both a free and paid version on Android which later saw greater improvements thanks to their implementation of Native Code Execution (NCE) and other fixes. Their Device Mapping & SMMU implementation also further helped reduce yuzu's memory footprint and allow possible future optimizations. There were even more optimizations exclusive to the Linux-x86 and Android platforms thanks to "MADV_REMOVE", but despite all the optimizations and improvements, only high-end devices are recommended for the Android platform. In yuzu's last progress report for January 2024, they highlighted ongoing work on "multiprocess" and "services", which is crucial progress towards emulating applets and system functions like some hardware features. Further development would have been required before it could be considered fully implemented.

On March 4th 2024, a lawsuit was filed by Nintendo against Tropic Haze LLC (aka yuzu) which unfortunately led to their decision to cease all development and official distribution of yuzu and Citra. Fortunately, it is straightforward to find an archive of the latest version (EA-4176), and its work is likely to be continued by other developers. According to suyu developers: The Switch SDK has been used illegally within the previous Yuzu developer team, which effectively makes the whole code radioactive[15]. However, the community quickly responded with the creation of mirrors and forks, see the Yuzu#Forks section for more information.

Sudachi

Initially conceived by Jarrod Norwell as an experimental port of yuzu to iOS/iPadOS, the project was rebased on Yuzu's EA-4176 build following the yuzu takedown. Subsequently, the project evolved to include further improvement of the project and distributions for Linux and macOS. While it was once available on separate repositories for Windows and Android, DMCA takedowns led to the closure of both repositories and the associated Discord server[16][17] (see "2024 - Yuzu (Switch) vs. Nintendo" section of the Legal Status of Emulation page). The project is now distributed through its own hosting platform. Requires a paid Apple Developer Account or TrollStore to use the com.apple.developer.kernel.increased-memory-limit entitlement. Sudachi is widely considered to be the most mature and actively developed yuzu fork available. The iOS version of Sudachi has been neglected for some time due to the developer's focus on another emulator, so there is a fork called "Pomelo", so for those platforms using "Pomelo" is recommended instead of using Sudachi.

Sudachi is nearing its end, according to a tweet from project developer Jarrod Norwell. He stated, "Nintendo Switch emulation and most of the community surrounding it are making it a very unsafe and unpleasant environment. Between the various forks that exist providing no benefits, the accusations, the immature and predatory nature of a lot of "leaders" it just is not worth hanging around it anymore."[18]

Pomelo

A fork of Sudachi maintained by Stossy11 focused on iOS/iPadOS support. Just like with Sudachi, this also requires a paid Apple Developer Account or Trollstore to work.

torzu

torzu is another yuzu fork. To prevent take-downs, the git repository is primarily hosted using the tor network, requiring a tor compatible browser or proxy to access. A clear web mirror is also currently hosted on NotABug. torzu still aims to remain "compilable on Linux and Windows" and serve as a "good base to fork" in the future. torzu doesn't publish official releases or offer official support.

suyu

A fork of yuzu and an initial attempt to continue from where that project left off (based on the latest EA-4176) on GitLab instead of GitHub, which was suggested by the community due to a potential takedown attempt. However, GitLab still took down the suyu repository due to the use of raw yuzu code. As a result, the suyu team now uses their own repository. This decision, along with various precautions[19], suggests a desire to avoid legal claims similar to those faced by yuzu. Later, the team tried to recruit programmers to start to study the code. Thus, there is an adaptation period needed to see some serious advancements, and in the meantime, in response to concerns about the project's financial motivations, the suyu team emphasized a strict policy against accepting donations; they assure users that there is no intention to profit from the emulator. But there have been inexperienced coding criticisms from some in the community directed at the developers' work.

Messages from suyu developers about leaving the project: kksowo's message on Paste.bin, The Death of Suyu by u/AMA2581 on r/suyu. After this, however, the founder of the project states that they will still try to maintain the project as much as they can. Their Discord server is shut (see "2024 - Yuzu (Switch) vs. Nintendo" section of the Legal Status of Emulation page), and the project could be considered dead.

Egg NS

Similar to DamonPS2, it is a closed-source, payware/malware emulator only for Android. It is NOT recommended to use this emulator because there is significant controversy surrounding this emulator for the following reasons: touch controls require an expensive monthly membership to use, it expects to run on a high-end/flagship device within the ballpark of a Qualcomm Snapdragon 8xx and 8 Gen 1, and it was discovered to have violated GPLv2 licensing requirements by illegally stealing code from yuzu and Skyline. Happy Chick is also a code-stolen emulator by this company. Its icon is edited from Happy Chick with Adobe Photoshop. Its real headquarters location is in mainland China.

DamonSwitch

Developed by DamonPS2 team. Closed-source, payware/malware emulator for Android only, known to steal code from other emulators. Even worse compatibility than Egg NS, it can barely run anything. It is NOT recommended to use this emulator. Damon company edited the yuzu icon with Adobe Photoshop for its own use. Its real headquarters location is in mainland China.

SphiNX

SphiNX is an inactive closed-source Switch emulator. The emulator was a work in progress project, but as of now, there are no public releases.

Compatibility layers

Skyline

Skyline (formerly MonoNX and Lightswitch) is a free compatibility layer for the Nintendo Switch that runs on Android and is written in C++ and Kotlin. Unfortunately, development of Skyline ceased in May 2023.

Strato

A fork of Skyline that continues from where that project left off. It is an open-source compatibility layer for ARMv8 Android devices. For the sake of convenience, the team bills the app as an emulator, but it functionally works like Wine, running almost all the entire original code on bare metal except for what interfaces with the rest of the system. Some titles can go ingame with poor framerate and minor glitches, but the Skyline team has done great work making 3D games, such as The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, have graphical output, boosting FPS in many titles, and fixing bugs in games. In March 2024, lead developer "Lynx" announced departure from the project and decided to step away from console emulation development[20]. The project was then handed over to the other developers.

Emulation-focused Linux distros

Horizon Linux

Horizon Linux is an open-source ARM64 Linux modified to run Nintendo Switch applications with hypervised CPU & IO, but still mostly relying on yuzu code in its Mizu shim to emulate functions such as the GPU. Puyo Puyo Tetris is semi-playable with audio output, and the emulator can also run several homebrew applications.

Native

Unnamed Nintendo Switch successor backwards compatibility mode

To be dated; confirmed by Nintendo themselves that Nintendo Account and Nintendo Switch Online features will carry over the successor, including its own games.

Hardware features and peripherals

Name			Ryujinx forks	Yuzu forks	Unnamed NSW successor BC
Switch HOME Menu			✗[21]	✓	TBD
Mii Editor			✓	✓	TBD
NSO emulators			✓	✓	✓
Cloud-based titles[22][23]			✗	✗	TBD
Amiibo			✓*	✓	TBD
Nintendo Labo			~[24][25][26]	?	TBD
Connectivity	Nintendo Switch Online		✗*	✗	✓
	Local Wireless Play / LDN		~	~	TBD
	LAN Play		✓	✓	TBD
	Smart Device Mode		✗*	?	TBD
Controllers	Native Dual Joy-Con Support		~*	✓	TBD
	Ring-Con		✗*	✓	TBD
	Poké Ball Plus		✗	?	TBD
	USB Keyboard & Mouse		~*	✓	TBD
Inputs	IR Motion Camera		✗*	✓	TBD
	HD Rumble		✗*	~	TBD
	Motion Controls (Gyro)		✓*	✓	TBD
	Touchscreen		✓*	✓	TBD

Connectivity

XLink Kai - Nintendo Switch setup guide

Nintendo Switch Local play games are divided into two groups; games with Local Wireless support, and games with LAN support. There are different requirements and rules for the two types.[27] The difference is that Local Wireless is ad-hoc Wi-Fi between Switch radios. LAN is when the switches are joined to the same Wi-Fi access point.[28]

Local Wireless Play/LDN

Local Wireless games are a bit more restricted but the following can play games together:

• Players using modified "CFW" Nintendo Switch systems using ldn_mitm sysmodule
• Players using Ryujinx's LDN builds or yuzu. Ryujinx also allows for connecting to CFW Switch devices that are using the ldn_mitm submodule. There is a feature tracker for Ryujinx for upstreaming LDN to main builds. GreemDev fork of Ryujinx has merged LDN feature.

• Ryujinx: LDN compatibility list
• yuzu: LDN compatibility list

LAN Play

LAN games are the most widely supported, and the following can play games together:

• Players using unmodified "OFW" Nintendo Switch and Nintendo Switch Lite systems.
• Players using modified "CFW" Nintendo Switch systems.
• Players using Ryujinx or yuzu

• Ryujinx: LAN Play compatibility list
• yuzu: LAN Play compatibility list

So in summary, it is possible to play on the same network and LAN multiplayer over the internet with programs like XLink Kai, see XLink Kai's setup guides for Ryujinx and yuzu, also see LAN Tunneling programs for more information.

Nintendo Switch Online

Main article: Nintendo Switch Online

For more information about other revive projects see Preservation projects page. You can play some of the multiplayer Switch titles using revival private servers.

NSO emulators

• Official emulators
• Nintendo Switch Online#List of emulators
• Wikipedia:List_of_Nintendo_Switch_Online_games

For the Nintendo Switch family of systems, Nintendo distributes retro games to subscribers of their Nintendo Switch Online service. Subscribers have access to games for the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES), Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES), Game Boy (GB) and Game Boy Color (GBC). At the more expensive subscription tier, titled "Expansion Pack," players can also access Nintendo 64, Sega Genesis, and Game Boy Advance (GBA) games.

• Ryujinx compatibility for NSO emulators: NSO N64, NSO NES, NSO SNES, NSO Genesis, NSO GameBoy, NSO GameBoy Advance. This PR change allows the JIT service, required by the NSO N64 emulator and Super Mario 3D All Stars (for Super Mario 64) to run.
• yuzu compatibility for NSO emulators: NSO N64, NSO NES, NSO SNES, NSO Genesis. It's important to note that, as mentioned in the #Emulators section, the compatibility list referenced here not up-to-date.[29]

Enhancements

Name		Ryujinx forks	Yuzu forks	Unnamed NSW successor BC
Graphics	Resizable Internal Resolution	✓*	✓	TBD
	Ultrawide hack Widescreen already supported on Nintendo Switch system. But there is no support by system for render games in other ratios such as ultrawide 21:9 or super ultrawide 32:9.	✓	✓	TBD
	Texture Replacement	~	~	TBD
	Ray-tracing (DXR, VRT and MRT)	Implementing ray-tracing in an emulator is unfortunately quite challenging and unlikely to be possible soon. However, you can try "Screen-Space Ray Traced Global Illumination" shader using ReShade. (Demonstration)
	Pre-rendering AA (MSAA, SSAA)	✗	✗	TBD
	Super-resolution techniques (DLSS, XeSS and FSR 2+)	Requires access to the depth buffer and temporal data like motion-vectors, so it is quite challenging and unlikely to be possible soon.
	RTX Remix	Implementing RTX Remix technology in an emulator is unfortunately quite challenging and unlikely to be possible soon. Besides, yuzu and Ryujinx already support some of RTX Remix features. On top of that, you can use ReShade for post-processing.
Performance	Internal Framerate Hack	✓	✓	TBD
	Frame generation technologies (LSFG, DLSS-G, ExtraSS and AFMF)	Implementing frame generation technology in an emulator is unfortunately quite challenging and unlikely to be possible soon, however post-processing techniques such as motion interpolation is quite possible. Input latency will be a crucial factor, but its impact likely varies depending on the specific technique used, it is recommended to use after applying the "Internal Framerate Hack". While AFMF or LSFG[30][31] can be used with yuzu (or forks) or Ryujinx, please be aware that some visual glitches and artifacts may occur at this time.
	Overclock	✗	✗	TBD
	Preload ROM image to RAM For users with sluggish multi-platter HDDs or plagued by horrible seek times, this enhancement might offer smoother experience, potentially reduced power consumption; it also shines when images reside on a network drive. Although keep in mind that preloading image would take some time, and it will require additional amount of RAM capacity.	✗	✗	TBD
	Rendering latency reduction technologies (LatencyFleX, Reflex and Anti-Lag+)	While most emulators offer frame pacing or framebuffer latency control options, implementing rendering latency reduction technologies like NVIDIA's Reflex SDK isn't currently possible. This is due to a combination of factors, including potential licensing issues[32] and likely doesn't offer enough benefits to justify the development effort.
Post-Processing	Post-rendering AA (FXAA, TXAA and MLAA/SMAA)	✓	✓	TBD
	Post-rendering scaling (Sharp bilinear, Lanczos and FSR 1)	✓	✓	TBD
	Filters	✗	✗	TBD
	AI-powered filter compatible (Freestyle)	?	✓	TBD
	Shader Chain	✗	✗	TBD
	Inverse tone mapping compatible	✓*	✓	TBD
TAS features	Macros/Scripts/Lua	✗	✓	TBD
	Rewind	✗	✗	TBD
	Fast-Forward/Turbo Speed	~*	✗	TBD
	Savestates	✗	✗	TBD
	Movie recording/playback	✗	✗	TBD
Quality of life	Pause/Resume Emulation	✓	✓	TBD
	Built-in mod editor and manager	✓*	~	TBD
	Built-in Cheat Manager	✓	~	TBD
	Built-in Patch Manager	✓*	~	TBD
	Built-in Custom resolution/CRTSwitchRes For using this on Windows OS you need CRT Emudriver. Another option is using EDID editor tool such as "Custom Resolution Utility".	N/A Eighth gen home consoles and beyond only have digital video output anyway.
	Streamable compression format	~	~	TBD
	Per-Game Profiles	✓*	✓	TBD
	Command Line Options	✓*	✓*	TBD
	On-Screen Display Showcases messages, controller input state which is useful for speedrunners, performance data, active settings, and various notifications.	✗	✗	TBD
	Variable Refresh Rate compatible	✓	✓	TBD
	Big Picture Mode	✗*	✗	TBD
Controls	Mouse Injector Compatible	~*	✗	TBD
	Input lag-mitigating technique	✗	✗	TBD
Misc	RetroAchievements	✗	✗	TBD
	EmuVR support	Exclusive to libretro cores. So there is no support at the moment.
	AI Service With the help of OCR and other techniques, the AI service can provide a live translation of a game, or text-to-speech capabilities for the visually impaired among other things, either on demand or automatically.	Exclusive to libretro cores at the moment, so there is no support.
	Free Look Free Look is an enhancement feature that allows manipulation of the in-game camera.	~	~	TBD
	Debug Features	✗*	✗	TBD

References

Emulation issues

For more information about Nintendo Switch hardware and reverse engineering;

• MVG: How the Nintendo Switch Security was defeated
• Ryujinx: Blog, Discord
• yuzu: Blog
• Torzu: Blog (NotABug mirror)
• SwitchBrew
• dekuNukem - Nintendo Switch reverse engineering attempts
• ReSwitched - Awesome Switch: resources