Play your own Nintendo Switch games natively on iPhone and iPad. Bring your game (its NSP files) and your prod.keys; one script turns them into an 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.

Acknowledgements

This project is built on other people's work:

d2r-mobile (MIT) developed this native-execution approach, for Diablo II: Resurrected. nxnative (first called smbw-mobile) 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, unmodified in dm/third_party/ryujinx) turns the games' Maxwell 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).
yuzu: Maxwell instruction encodings for the shader reference tool, and a cross-check for kernel behaviour.
LibHac: reads NSPs and layers updates over the base game in dm/tools/nx_extract. hactool did the first extractions.
SPIRV-Cross: SPIR-V to Metal Shading Language.
deko3d (zlib): its texture layout size algorithm is ported in dm/gfx/nvn/nvn_tex.c.
libvpx (VP9 movies), libdeflate, bcdec and NVIDIA FLIP ship in dm/third_party with their licenses (list).
Capstone, lz4, fontTools and XcodeGen are used by the build.

Games

All of these are tested on an iPhone and playable:

Game	NSPs to put in the folder	IPA	Notes
Super Mario Bros. Wonder	base game + update 1.2.1	~4 GB
Fire Emblem Engage	base game + update 2.0.0 (+ Expansion Pass DLC)	~15 GB	Upgraded to 60 fps (30 fps on Switch)
Metroid Dread	base game + update 2.1.0	~5 GB
13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim	base game + update 1.10	~5 GB
Super Mario 3D World + Bowser's Fury	base game + update 1.2.2	~3 GB
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild	base game + update 1.9.0 (+ DLC)	~16 GB	Upgraded to 60 fps (30 fps on Switch)

Needs iOS / iPadOS 26 or later. Other games aren't supported yet: for them the script writes a survey instead of an IPA.

Pack an IPA

1. Get nxnative and its tools (once, on a Mac with Xcode and Homebrew):

git clone https://github.com/seedds/nxnative.git && cd nxnative
brew install xcodegen zstd spirv-cross
brew install --cask dotnet-sdk
python3 -m pip install lz4 capstone fonttools

2. Put one game's NSPs in a folder, base game and update (and any DLC):

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

3. Run the script:

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

The IPA appears in the same folder (here ~/Games/MarioWonder/SMBWMobile.ipa). The first build takes 30–60 minutes, later ones about 10. You need free disk space of about twice the NSPs' size plus 10 GB. Options such as -o (output path) and --app-name are listed by -h.

4. Install the IPA with your sideloading tool (AltStore, Sideloadly, LiveContainer, …). The app gets the game's name and icon.

Play

Touch controls. Tap 2D / 3D at the top to switch layouts; the app remembers your choice. 3D World and Breath of the Wild start in 3D, the other games in 2D.

 ZL  L3*        [−]  2D/3D  [+]        R3*  ZR
 L                                           R
                                         X
  ( L stick )                          Y   A
             ✚ D-pad*   ( R stick )*     B
                                  * 3D layout only

A connected game controller hides the touch controls and keeps every button.

Saves and logs are in the Files app, under the app's name: save/ and log.txt. When something goes wrong, send log.txt (the previous run is log.prev.txt).
Short stutters the first time a new scene appears are normal: the app compiles graphics for it once and remembers them for the next launch.
Reinstalling: some sideloading tools give a reinstalled app a new data folder. Copy save/ and pso_user.tsv over from the old one to keep your progress.
Settings without rebuilding: put lines like DM_OPMODE=0 (handheld mode: lower resolution, higher frame rate) in Documents/env.txt.

Known issues

No amiibo and no online features.
Fire Emblem Engage: after switching away from the app and back, some sounds may stay silent until you restart it.
Super Mario 3D World: a few small magenta squares can appear near the birds in World 1-1.

For developers

How it works, the script's options, running games on the Mac, adding a game, and per-game notes: docs/development.md. In-depth bring-up and debugging notes: docs/agents.

License

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

README.md Unescape Escape

nxnative