shadPS4 Emulator: The Best PS4 Emulator, System Requirements, Game Compatibility and Platforms (2026)

shadPS4 is an open-source PlayStation 4 emulator for Windows, Linux and macOS. As of November 2026, it's the PS4 emulator with the best compatibility and the fastest release pace. The latest stable version is v0.21.0 (2026-10-30). Bloodborne, Dark Souls Remastered, Red Dead Redemption and Yakuza 0 all run. Bloodborne can hit 4K60 on high-end GPUs and goes online through the team's shadNet server. The Mac build needs Apple silicon and macOS 26 or later. There's no official Android or iPhone version.

Background

• shadPS4 was started in October 2022 by George Moralis ("shadow"), who worked on the PS1 emulator PCSX and co-founded the PS2 emulator PCSX2 (Wikipedia).
• The first public release, v0.0.1, came out on 2023-09-29. After version 0.1.0 (July 2024) added a shader recompiler, 3D games such as Persona 5 started to boot.
• The core team lists eight developers, including georgemoralis, psucien, squidbus and roamic, plus dozens of contributors. The README credits the fpPS4 team for reverse-engineering help and says the shader compiler was modeled on yuzu's.
• License: GPL-2.0. The GitHub repo has about 34,000 stars (2026-11-01).

Releases and recent news

Pre-release builds land on GitHub almost daily (the latest on 2026-10-31).

Platforms (as of November 2026)

The official compatibility tracker (shadps4-game-compatibility on GitHub) had 163 playable reports on Windows, 212 on Linux and 40 on macOS as of 2026-11-01. PS4 games are x86 programs, so on an x86 PC shadPS4 doesn't have to translate CPU instructions. The hard part is the PS4's AMD GPU. Macs and phones add an x86-to-ARM translation layer, which is why they're so much slower.

PC requirements

From the official Quick start wiki:

That's the bar to boot games, not to run them well. For Bloodborne, Digital Foundry measured up to 60 fps at 4K on an RTX 4080 in January 2026 and noted glitches above 60 fps. A comparison video covered by Notebookcheck in November 2025 showed 80–100 fps on an RTX 4060 Ti and 60+ fps at 4K. The team also recommends updating drivers for every GPU in the system, including integrated graphics.

What games work

The README names Bloodborne, Dark Souls Remastered and Red Dead Redemption as games that run successfully. Its screenshots also show Hatsune Miku: Project DIVA Future Tone, Yakuza 0 and Driveclub. For any other game, check its game page or the official tracker. Reports list the OS and emulator version, and results change a lot between builds.

Bloodborne gets the most attention. It ran without crashing by August 2024, readbacks fixed the vertex explosions in July 2025, and the community now has graphics overhaul mods such as BB Reborne (covered by Wccftech). If Bloodborne is all you want, also look at bbport, which splits the single-threaded GPU bottleneck shadPS4 hits in that game across threads.

Getting started

1. Download from the official site, shadps4.net. Most people should grab the QtLauncher (the graphical front end). The core shadPS4 build on the releases page is command-line only.
2. On Windows, install the Visual C++ 2022 runtime. Extract to a folder that doesn't need admin rights; the team warns protected folders cause odd problems.
3. Add your games folder in the launcher. shadPS4 reads extracted game folders (the one with eboot.bin).
4. Some games need a few PS4 system modules (.sprx files, such as font and audio decoder modules) placed in shadPS4's sys_modules folder.
5. Xbox and DualShock controllers work out of the box. Keyboard bindings can be saved per game. F10 shows the FPS counter, F11 toggles fullscreen.

Online play: shadNet

shadNet is the shadPS4 team's own online server. Version 0.1.0 shipped on 2026-10-14, the same day as shadPS4 v0.20.0. It doesn't use Sony's PSN: you register a shadNet account and configure it separately in the emulator. The team announced official Bloodborne online support, but co-op and PvP aren't guaranteed to be stable.

"shadPS4" on Android and iPhone

The shadPS4 team only releases for Windows, Linux and macOS and hasn't made any official statement about mobile. Everything you see on phones is unrelated to the team:

• Bachata S4 brings the shadPS4 core to Android with FEX (an x86-to-ARM translator) and is on Google Play. Of the 9 games it had tested by August 2026, none were rated playable. Bloodborne averaged about 21 fps on a Snapdragon 8 Elite.
• Bloodborne-Android is a Bloodborne-only Android port based on bbport. Since 2.0 it translates the game's code to native ARM ahead of time, which makes it faster than a general emulator.
• iOS only has personal experiments that need sideloading and JIT and mostly stop at title screens.
• Apps on the app stores simply called "PS4 Emulator" or "PS5 Emulator" are mostly fakes or prank apps.

More on mobile: the Android hub and the iOS hub.

How it compares

Known issues

• Still early. The README itself says not to expect a flawless experience. Many games don't boot, and those that do often have graphical bugs.
• The Mac build lags behind. It needs macOS 26 and Apple silicon, fewer games work, and some problems come from Rosetta 2's instruction translation (v0.21.0 fixed several).
• First-run stutter. Shaders compile on the fly. Since v0.13.0 they're cached, so the second run is much smoother.
• Lookalike sites. shadps4.org and similar domains aren't official. Trust shadps4.net and the release pages it links to.

Who it's for

• Windows and Linux PC players: the first choice. Bloodborne, Dark Souls Remastered and Yakuza 0 are all worth trying.
• Steam Deck: use the Linux build; lighter games are fine. For Bloodborne, bbport is tested on Steam Deck.
• Mac users: worth a try on Apple silicon with macOS 26, with low expectations. See the Mac hub.
• Phone users: there's no official version; see the unofficial projects above.

For more PC options, see the PC hub. Every PS project we track is on the PlayStation hub.