nxnative goes viral: native Switch games on iPhone, iPad and Mac with no emulator, now with Switch 2 on Mac

nxnative was the hottest "Switch on iPhone" project of late October 2026, and it isn't an emulator. It packages Switch games into native iPhone, iPad or Mac apps and runs the game's code directly on Apple's chips. GitHub user seedds created the project on October 13, tech accounts made it go viral around October 25, and on November 1 its official site listed 109 Switch games that passed gameplay testing. Since October 31 it also supports the Switch 2: as of November 3, the project lists four Switch 2 games, starting with Donkey Kong Bananza, tested on Mac only. The bar to entry is high: you need a Mac to build, and on iPhone you need an iPhone 15 Pro or newer on iOS 26.

How it works without emulation

The Switch uses an ARM64 NVIDIA chip, and Apple's A-series and M-series chips are ARM64 too. nxnative takes advantage of that:

• CPU: the game program is rewritten and its ARM64 code runs directly on the Apple chip, with no instruction translation.
• System: a small host program stands in for the Switch OS (Horizon), providing threads, memory, the file system, audio and other services.
• Graphics: Nintendo's NVN graphics API is reimplemented on Metal, and shaders are converted at build time.
• Origins: it grew out of d2r-mobile, a project that brought Diablo II: Resurrected to phones, uses Ryujinx's shader translator and draws on Yuzu and other projects.

That's different from a real emulator like MeloNX, which emulates the console live while you play. nxnative packages each game individually ahead of time. Switch 2 games work the same way: the game is turned into a native program, not emulated.

How many games work

60 fps examples include Breath of the Wild, Tears of the Kingdom and Fire Emblem Engage, with specific update versions. YouTuber Andrew Tsai ran Monster Hunter Rise at a steady 60 fps on an 8 GB M1 MacBook Air. The official site notes that passing a test doesn't mean every game was verified on every device.

Since Oct 31: Switch 2 support

Starting October 31, the main nxnative repository took a run of Switch 2 commits. Donkey Kong Bananza reached its frame loop on Mac first, then Switch 2 shaders were translated natively to Metal, and the supported Xcode version moved to 27.2. Bananza became playable on Mac on November 1, followed by Splatoon Raiders (Nov 2) and Pokémon Pokopia (Nov 3). As of November 3, the README's game list has four Switch 2 titles, all marked "Switch 2, Mac only":

A few things to keep in mind:

• Only Mac is officially tested. The README says iPhone and iPad are untested. One user reported Bananza settling at about 30 fps on an iPad Pro M4 after a while; that's a single user report.
• Different inputs. Switch 2 games are built from an unpacked game folder, not an NSP, and don't need prod.keys.
• No Mario Kart World. The late-October Mario Kart World demo used a developer's private fork. The game still isn't on the official list (more below).
• All frame rates come from the project itself; there are no third-party benchmarks yet.

Community tools followed quickly. The GUI builder NX2Apple 1.0 now manages a whole game library from one app, shipped 1.0.2 rc on November 2, and its author teased an iPhone build of Bananza. LumaNX 0.3.0 tracks the latest nxnative and says it can build Switch 2 games, untested. The community project pokopia-native says it can build Pokopia as native Mac and iPhone apps; there's no independent iPhone test yet. Full details are in nxnative adds Switch 2 support: Donkey Kong Bananza runs natively on Mac.

Requirements (as of November 3, 2026)

Older iPhones are excluded because Switch games mostly use BC-compressed textures, which chips before the A17 Pro can't read.

PC and Android: community only

• Windows: nxnative can't run games on an x86 PC. Community tools let you package an iPhone build on Windows, meaning "build on a PC, play on an iPhone".
• GUI tools on Mac: the project now points to community front ends such as NX2Apple, NX Play, NxNative Launcher and LumaNX if you'd rather not use the command line. The official command line can still build Mac apps directly.
• Android: there's no official version. Since October 24, community forks such as nx2android and nxnative-android have appeared, packaging games as APKs with Vulkan graphics and shipping updates almost daily. nx2android originally needed a GPU with BC texture support: Snapdragon (Adreno) and Xclipse on Exynos 2200 and later work, Mali and PowerVR don't. Its v0.2.0 on October 31 partly relaxes that, claiming to run on Vulkan 1.1 drivers without BC textures or timeline semaphores, but no third-party tests have confirmed how well that works. v0.2.0 also adds eight games (Metroid Dread, Super Mario Odyssey, Pokémon Legends: Arceus and more) and an Apple silicon Mac version of its packaging tool.

Legal status

As of November 3, GitHub's public DMCA archive has no Nintendo notice naming nxnative (the archive is published with a delay), and the repository still gets commits every day. The project ships no game content, but many outlets point out that Nintendo went after Yuzu and Ryujinx, so it's hard to say how long it will last. So far Nintendo's moves have targeted demo videos: YouTuber Andrew Tsai said on October 22 that one of his recomp videos got a copyright strike from Nintendo. Separately, on October 27-28 a developer used a private nxnative fork to run the Switch 2 exclusive Mario Kart World on a Mac and an iPhone. That fork isn't public and isn't part of official nxnative, which only added Switch 2 support on October 31 and doesn't list Mario Kart World; see Mario Kart World on Mac and iPhone.

nxnative's approach has spread: TotK Recomp, the Tears of the Kingdom PC recompilation released October 29, credits nxnative. For the month's other unofficial native Switch ports, see our Switch recompilation roundup.

What this means for players

If you have a Mac and a recent iPhone and don't mind the command line and sideloading, nxnative opens a new path on Apple devices: no live emulation, and some games reach 60 fps, which they don't on the console. Switch 2 now has its first games playable on a Mac this way, without prod.keys, though it's four titles and Mac-only testing so far. The trade-offs are that you build every game yourself, only newer devices work, and games outside the tested list may not boot. Read more on our nxnative page, compare options in the Mac setup guide, and for the emulator route on iPhone see the iPhone and iPad guide and enabling JIT on iOS. For the emulator route to Switch 2 games on PC, see the Switch 2 emulation guide. nxnative's official site is nxnative.dev; other sites with similar names aren't official (see how to spot fake emulator sites).