Switch 2 Emulator Status (November 2026): Unofficial Eden Forks, Progress and Fake Repos

As of November 5, 2026, experimental Switch 2 emulators exist, but they aren't really playable yet. Since October 29, a wave of unofficial Eden forks (eden-nx2, Eglantine, Lichii, Eden-NS2, PokeDinner and the Android port Eden SX2A) has gone public. On PC they boot a handful of Switch 2 games such as Mario Kart World, Donkey Kong Bananza, Pokemon Pokopia and Splatoon Raiders; the Lichii fork added Star Fox and, on release day, Ocarina of Time, at low frame rates. Every build is a pre-release with stutter, glitches and crashes. On Mac, nxnative takes a different route, converting games into native programs, and lists nine Switch 2 games; on Android, Banana Native runs Donkey Kong Bananza. Eden itself does not support Switch 2; its own pull requests are still drafts. The from-scratch projects (Pound, oboromi, Voland, Compound) still can't run commercial games. And impostor repos and malware downloads have followed right behind the real forks.

We keep this page updated. The PC, Mac and Android sections were checked on November 5, 2026 (Beijing time, afternoon); the from-scratch projects (Pound, oboromi, Voland, Compound) were last checked on November 1.

Every Switch 2 project at a glance

Citron Neo, Ryubing, MeloNX and Kenji-NX are Switch 1 emulators. Switch 2 is not something any of them support.

Unofficial Eden forks: the first downloadable Switch 2 emulators

On October 29, the day Eden opened registration on its code server, user Takoroka posted an eden-nx2 Windows pre-release there: the first public emulator build that boots Switch 2 games. Several more forks followed within days:

XDA, Wccftech and DSOGaming covered the forks on October 31, and XDA called Eglantine the best option for Mario Kart World right now. Keep a few things in mind:

• They don't come from the Eden team. Headlines saying "Eden adds Switch 2 support" are wrong. Eden co-founder Camille LaVey began reviewing the official PR #4588 on October 31 and estimated that only about 40% of its code is genuinely useful. A merge is far off.
• Performance figures are self-reported. There are no controlled tests, results vary a lot between PCs, and the forks change their base almost daily, so what runs today may break tomorrow.
• The hardware bar is high. eden-nx2 asks for a Vulkan GPU with 8 GB of VRAM or more and 16 GB of RAM or more.
• Newer isn't always faster. Within hours of Eglantine v0.1.0-rc1, users reported big slowdowns compared with build 212 (for example, Fire Emblem going from 50+ fps to 8-10 fps). The developers hadn't responded with a conclusion as of November 5; build 212 is the build just before rc1.
• Ocarina of Time: the fix that lets it start was merged into Eglantine early on November 5 (Beijing time), but no released Eglantine build includes it yet, so release builds stop at a black "Launching..." screen. Lichii build 75 gets past the intro and into the game, with too much fog and glow outdoors; users report a black 3D view in handheld mode (docked mode renders on NVIDIA cards, slowly). Full story: Ocarina of Time on Switch 2 emulators.

For details on each fork, see Eden Switch 2 forks. For the full story, see First public Switch 2 emulator builds.

Mac: nxnative runs nine Switch 2 games

nxnative is not an emulator: it converts a game's code into a native program ahead of time and translates its graphics calls to Metal. Both the Switch 2 and Apple silicon are ARM, so no CPU emulation is needed. Public Switch 2 support arrived on October 31, and as of November 5, 2026 the project lists nine Switch 2 games, all marked "Mac only." iPhone and iPad are officially "untested." The results below are the developers' own tests on their Macs:

Ocarina of Time is not on the list yet. An unmerged work-in-progress version (PR #1299) reached Kokiri Forest at about 60 fps on an Apple M5, per its author, with overexposed spots and some shaders not translated. Eglantine and PokeDinner also ship Apple silicon builds, but they are much less stable on Mac. More in nxnative adds Switch 2 support.

Android: Banana Native, and nothing else yet

• Banana Native (v0.1.0 on November 3, v0.1.1 on November 4) is a community Android port of nxnative by moceure, the author of the discontinued Eden SX2A. It is unrelated to the nxnative project and is not a fork of nx2android. Its README says it is, as far as the author knows, the first time Switch 2 games run natively on Android. Per the developer, tested on a single phone (Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5, 16 GB): Donkey Kong Bananza "works," at about 30 fps at 1080p in normal mode and 52-58 fps in the phone's performance mode; Mario Kart World 1.8.0 gets in-game and drives, with graphics problems. It needs Android 13 or newer, a Snapdragon (Adreno) chip and 12 GB of RAM or more. It reads the game's own folder (base, updates, DLC) and needs no keys or firmware; NSP and XCI files don't work. Each game has to be prepared once, which takes 10-15 minutes with a Mac or about an hour on the phone alone. AndroGaming called it "still early to call them ported." See Banana Native runs Switch 2 games on Android.
• nx2android, another community Android port of nxnative, lists 27 tested games, all original Switch titles; Switch 2 support exists only as an unmerged PR.
• Eden SX2A, the Android port of the Eden forks, stopped at v0.3.2 on November 2.
• There are no working Android reports for Ocarina of Time.

Watch out for impostor repos

Until late October, every "Switch 2 emulator download" was a scam because no working build existed. Now that real experimental forks exist, the scams have shifted to borrowing their names:

• EglantineEmu/Eglantine-Switch-Emulator on GitHub (created October 30): a keyword-stuffed description, a "v0.2.1" version that doesn't match real Eglantine build numbers, and a single zip. The real Eglantine is under GitHub user Djihads80.
• "Mario Kart World MKW Recomp" on SourceForge, and an itch.io page called "Mario kart world for pc" that tells you to run a "Loader.exe."
• "Eden-NX2 download" pages on assorted download sites.

How to tell: the real forks are free and open source, have no official websites, and publish release notes for each build. These are all fake:

• "Complete a survey to get your unlock code." The FTC warned about exactly this Switch emulator scam back in 2017.
• Paying for a "full" or "premium" version.
• Being told to run a lone Loader.exe or Launcher.exe, disable your antivirus, or run as administrator.
• Claims of an iPhone version or "play Switch 2 online," or videos that pass off Switch 1 emulators or real hardware as Switch 2 emulation.

Modern Vintage Gamer also warned on October 30 that downloads of these new emulators are likely to carry malware. For how to tell real emulator sites from fakes, see How to spot fake emulator sites.

Compound is not "the first Switch 2 emulator"

Around October 28, 2026, Chinese tech sites including ZOL and Sohu ran headlines calling Compound "the world's first Switch 2 emulator," based on the developer's own social media posts.

Compound's README says otherwise. It calls Switch 2 support "a research target, not a shipping capability": the build has no console keys, no content decryption and no Switch 2 execution layer, and its feature table marks Switch 2 as not implemented. Its description is almost word-for-word the same as Pound's, so it reads as a Pound fork.

"World's first" is a recycled label. In July 2025 a project called Hassaku claimed to be the first Switch 2 emulator and said it was booting games. The community was skeptical, and nothing verifiable followed. On October 24, 2026, ounce-core was widely reported as a "Switch 2 emulator engine," while its own documentation says it is not a console emulator and makes no compatibility claims.

Rule of thumb: read the project's own docs, not the headline. If the docs say "can't run commercial games" or "not implemented," you can't play anything.

Where it started: the private nxnative fork running Mario Kart World

This was the biggest Switch 2 story of late October, before the Eden forks arrived and before public nxnative added Switch 2 support:

• On October 27, developer Will Faust posted footage of the Switch 2 exclusive Mario Kart World running on macOS through a private nxnative fork. On October 28 he showed it on an iPhone 18 Pro.
• XDA described it as playable but rough: missing shaders, lag and geometry all over the place. Faust said the hardest part was getting NVN2, Nintendo's Switch 2 graphics API, working.
• He called it a personal project and is not releasing the Switch 2 code. The original videos were pulled after a copyright claim. VideoCardz reported on October 30 that several Switch 2 demo videos it had embedded were gone from X, reportedly through Nintendo copyright takedowns, though it couldn't confirm each case.

Two things to keep in mind:

1. It isn't an emulator. nxnative rewrites a game's code ahead of time and runs it directly on Apple silicon, translating graphics calls to Metal. Both the Switch 2 and Apple silicon are ARM, so no CPU emulation is needed. That trick only works on ARM devices (Macs, and through community ports, Android phones), not on x86 PCs.
2. This fork stays private, but public nxnative caught up. The author kept his Switch 2 code to himself; the public nxnative project added its own Switch 2 support on October 31 (see the Mac section above).

Switch 2 jailbreak news: facts only

On October 21-22, 2026, a software exploit called ns2jb was released for the Switch 2. Per GBAtemp, it runs in user mode only, requires a tethered PC, is lost on reboot, and supports system version 23.0.1.

A jailbreak lets people read files off their own console. A week later the Eden forks had experimental builds out, but getting from "boots" to "plays well" is a long road, and these hard problems are still there:

• A new GPU: Switch 2 uses a much newer NVIDIA architecture, so shader translation has to be written from scratch. eden-nx2's own release notes say some models are missing because shaders aren't implemented yet.
• A new graphics API: games talk to Nintendo's proprietary NVN2.
• Performance: emulating a 2025 console needs far more hardware headroom than emulating the 2017 Switch.

What you can do today

• To play Switch 2 games reliably: a real Switch 2 is the only option.
• To try Switch 2 emulation anyway: on PC, follow the Eden Switch 2 forks, but expect to need a strong PC, put up with frequent crashes, and make sure you have the real project. On an Apple silicon Mac, nxnative is the most stable route today. On Android, Banana Native is the only option that runs a Switch 2 game, on high-end Snapdragon phones.
• To play Switch 1 games on PC or phone: Switch 1 emulation is mature. Start with the best Switch emulators in 2026. The official Eden release is the default pick on PC and Android, and MeloNX on iPhone.

How to judge future headlines

Real progress would look like this, in order:

1. Shader translation that actually renders frames.
2. Booting console firmware (just the OS, not a game).
3. A commercial game reaching its title screen.
4. A public release anyone can run.

As of November 1, 2026, the from-scratch projects like Pound and oboromi hadn't reached step 2. As of November 5, the unofficial Eden forks get a few commercial games in-game and have public pre-release builds (Eglantine's first release candidate, v0.1.0-rc1, among them), but shader support is incomplete and no fork has shipped a stable release.

Changelog

• 2026-11-05: Updated the PC status (Eglantine v0.1.0-rc1 and its reported slowdowns; Lichii running Star Fox and Ocarina of Time). Added sections on nxnative's nine Switch 2 games on Mac and on Android (Banana Native, nx2android). Updated the project table, summary and FAQ.
• 2026-11-01: Unofficial Eden forks that boot Switch 2 games (eden-nx2, Eglantine, Eden-NS2, PokeDinner, Eden SX2A) appeared from October 29. Rewrote the summary, project table and FAQ; added the status of Eden's official PRs #4588 and #4611; replaced "every download is a scam" with an impostor-repo warning.
• 2026-10-30: First published. Checked Pound, oboromi, Voland and Compound; added the private nxnative demo and the ns2jb news.