nxnative

Play your own Nintendo Switch and Switch 2 games natively on Apple silicon Macs, iPhone and iPad. One script packs your game into a Mac app or an unsigned IPA that you sideload.

It is not an emulator: the game's own code runs directly on the Apple chip, with Switch graphics rebuilt on Metal. Nothing from any game is in this repository, and the project is not affiliated with Nintendo or any game publisher.

Games · Community front ends · Requirements · How to play · Discussions · For developers

Games

The full tested games table includes original Switch games, tested builds, engines and graphics APIs. Each game's note records its tested platforms, progress and known issues.

These Switch 2 games have passed Mac gameplay testing. Build them from a .nup file or a dump folder:

• Donkey Kong Bananza
• Fire Emblem Fortune's Weave — up to 120 fps
• Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment
• Kirby Air Riders
• Mario Kart World
• Mario Tennis Fever
• Pokémon Pokopia
• Splatoon Raiders
• Star Fox
• The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time
• Yoshi and the Mysterious Book

Community front ends

Community projects build on nxnative with tools to turn your games into apps for your iPhone, iPad or Mac without the command line, and libraries to organize and launch them. They are separate projects: questions and bugs about them go to their own pages.

• NX2Apple — Mac builder with a shared iPhone/iPad game library.
• NX Play — Mac library with device installs and save sync.
• NxNative Launcher — Mac launcher with guided builds and controller mapping.
• LumaNX — Mac game builder with IPA export.
• GameCase — iOS game library based on LiveContainer.

Requirements

• Mac: Apple silicon, macOS 26.6 or later. Building games requires Xcode 27.2.
• iPhone: A17 Pro chip or later, with iOS 26 or later.
• iPad: M1 chip or later, with iPadOS 26 or later.

The games' textures are BC-compressed, which older iPhones cannot read. Switch 2 builds are tested on the Mac; check each game's note for device-specific validation.

For a game without a profile, the script writes a survey and tries a provisional build with guessed settings. That build may not start; see Port another game.

How to play

Switch 2 games are built from one .nup file or a folder of their files, not from NSPs, and are tested on the Mac only: see Switch 2 games.

Build from the command line

You need a Mac with macOS 26.6 or later, Xcode 27.2, Homebrew and Python 3.12 or newer (an arm64 one, not an Intel Homebrew's). An iPhone build also needs Xcode's iOS platform (Xcode → Settings → Components).

The shaders are built with Xcode 27.2's Metal compiler. Select it before step 1: sudo xcode-select -s /Applications/Xcode.app. With several Xcode versions installed, name this one Xcode-27.2.app and select it with sudo xcode-select -s /Applications/Xcode-27.2.app.

1. Install the tools (only once), in Terminal:

xcodebuild -downloadComponent MetalToolchain
git clone https://github.com/seedds/nxnative.git && cd nxnative
brew install xcodegen zstd glslang
python3 -m pip install lz4 "capstone>=5,<6" fonttools nsz zbic "backports.zstd; python_version < '3.14'"

2. Put your game in a folder: the game, plus its update and DLC if you have them (.nsp, .xci, .nsz or .xcz):

~/Games/MarioWonder/
  Super Mario Bros. Wonder [010015100B514000][v0].nsp
  Super Mario Bros. Wonder [010015100B514800][v327680].nsp

3. Build, with your game folder and your prod.keys:

python3 scripts/build_ipa_from_nsp.py ~/Games/MarioWonder -k ~/keys/prod.keys

The IPA appears in the game's folder. The first build takes 30–60 minutes and needs free disk space of about twice the game's size plus 10 GB; building again is much faster.

To play on the Mac instead, add --platform mac-app: you get a Mac app of the game to open from Finder. All options: The packing script in detail.

Install

Install the IPA on your iPhone or iPad with a sideloading tool such as AltStore, Sideloadly or LiveContainer. If your tool offers Increased Memory Limit, turn it on: the bigger games need it.

Game too big to install? Build again with --romfs separate, and run the command the script prints once to copy the game files to your phone (Quick reinstalls). With AltServer, also add --shader-files: it cannot install a file of 2 GiB or more.

Controls, saves and settings: Playing.

Switch 2 games

A Switch 2 game is built from one NUP container (a .nup file) or a folder of its files, not from NSPs. Neither needs prod.keys. A game this project has no profile for is surveyed and gets a provisional profile, as NSPs do (Port another game), which may not boot. You get a Mac app; iPhone and iPad are untested.

From a .nup file, which holds the base game, its updates and DLC in one file. Give the file, or a folder that holds it:

python3 scripts/build_ipa_from_nsp.py ~/Games/DonkeyKongBananza.nup --platform mac-app

Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment is played this way: its 47 GB NUP unpacks in under five minutes. A NUP that carries the game's control data (its NACP) and icon gives the app the game's name and icon; otherwise the name comes from the game's profile and the app has no icon unless you give it one with --icon <image> (ICON in Spyder; a JPEG or PNG of any size).

A NUP without the base game also works, when its base package is empty or it has none and its updates are marked standalone_update: the update is taken as the whole game, and the script says so. If the game then stops on missing files, that update holds only what changed: pack a NUP with the base game. The newest update is selected by default; --package v<N> selects another version in the container. Such a container has no v0 (base game) to select.

From a folder of files. The script expects this layout (updates and dlc are optional):

~/Games/DonkeyKongBananza/
  base/exefs/                     main, main.npdm, sdk, rtld
  base/romfs/
  updates/458752/exefs/           the update's version, as a decimal number
  updates/458752/romfs/           the patched RomFS, not a patch
  dlc/040074a01bf13001/0/romfs/   the DLC's title ID

python3 scripts/build_ipa_from_nsp.py ~/Games/DonkeyKongBananza --platform mac-app

An update's folder alone will do (no base/), and so will exefs/ and romfs/ directly in the folder, as nup extract writes them, which count as base/. The app has no icon, because the folder holds none; --icon <image> (ICON in Spyder) gives it one. To turn such a folder into a NUP: nup pack ~/Games/DonkeyKongBananza game.nup.

Discussions

Questions, how a game runs on your Mac or iPhone, and ideas go in Discussions; Issues are for bugs, with the log. Ocarina of Time's performance (frame rate, resolution, which Macs hold 60 fps) is followed in Ocarina of Time: state on main.

For developers

How it works · Game notes · Bring-up and debugging · Front ends · Contributing

Acknowledgements

This project is built on other people's work (licenses):

• d2r-mobile (MIT) developed this native-execution approach, for Diablo II: Resurrected. nxnative started as a copy of its generic parts: the NSO rewriter, the host that stands in for Horizon, the NVN-on-Metal layer and the iOS app shell. Fixes go both ways.
• Ryujinx (MIT): its shader translator (Ryujinx.Graphics.Shader, Ryujinx.Common and Spv.Generator 1.3.2, in dm/third_party/ryujinx with a few fixes listed in its README) turns the games' shaders into SPIR-V. Its emulation of the kernel and system services is also a reference when the host's behaviour is in doubt.
• Atmosphère: its kernel, mesosphère, is the reference for Horizon's synchronization semantics (address arbiter, condition variables).
• LibHac: reads NSPs and layers updates over the base game in dm/tools/nx_extract.
• SPIRV-Cross: SPIR-V to Metal Shading Language.
• glslang compiles the GLSL of OpenGL games to SPIR-V for it.
• MacNativeGames (MIT): the GPU widening of 8-bit indices and in-pass clears in dm/gfx/nvn/nvn_mtl.m, and the visibility-counter lowering in the shader translator.

License

MIT (LICENSE). Third-party code keeps its own license (dm/third_party).