Your Switch games, running on your iPhone.
Not an emulator. No terminal. A macOS or Windows app does the whole build in a few clicks.
🆕 Latest highlights
- Windows launcher (
NX2Apple-windows-x64.zip): Build iPhone and iPad IPAs on Windows with the same 1.2 interface, a bundled engine tree (no git needed), guided first-run setup, multi-core NSO rewriting, and in-app self-update (NX2Apple.exe).
- Switch 2 games: Pick a Switch 2 game folder or
.nup file in the Mac or Windows launcher, with no prod.keys needed, and play on Mac, iPhone, or iPad.
- Custom touch controls, split Joy-Con, and Steam Controller (2026): Resize buttons, move the left stick, or arrange every control in the visual layout editor on iPhone and iPad. Physical controllers support per-game or global button remapping, split a Bluetooth Joy-Con pair into two sideways controllers on Mac, and support the Steam Controller (2026).
- One app for iPhone and iPad: All your games live inside one shell app (or export an unsigned IPA for AltStore and SideStore), each carrying its own host framework so engine updates never force a rebuild, with Cover Flow in landscape, per-game settings and mods, safe game deletion that keeps your saves, and 7 languages.
- Console mode: Plug in a controller and press Select, or start directly in console mode. The library goes full-screen like a Switch home menu, and holding Home for 2 seconds quits a game.
Every release is in the changelog.
What NX2Apple is
NX2Apple runs Nintendo Switch games on your Mac and iPhone from your own game dumps. It is not an
emulator: the game's own code runs natively on Apple silicon, and Metal draws it. A Mac app, the
launcher, does the build in a few clicks (unpack, rewrite, translate the shaders, pack) and then
keeps your games in a library you start with Play, the way a Switch does.
It is a community fork of nxnative, which does the actual
work (the code rewriter, the Horizon host, NVN on Metal and every game's profile); this fork adds the
launcher and a short list of patches, and follows nxnative every day.
Requirements
- An Apple silicon Mac. The launcher opens on macOS 13 or later. Building needs Xcode with
the iOS SDK, and NVN games need Xcode 27.2 (macOS 26.6
or later) unless built with
--allow-other-metal. Take 27.2 from Apple's download page, not the App Store's newer
Xcode. With both installed, give 27.2 a distinct name such as Xcode-27.2.app. In Settings →
Build tools → Choose Xcode…, select the copy to use with NX2Apple, including one on an external
drive. During first-run setup, click Set up later to reach Settings, then Run setup again
after choosing Xcode. Use system Xcode follows the Mac's command-line selection (for example,
sudo xcode-select -s /Applications/Xcode-27.2.app).
- Your own game dumps (NSP or XCI) and your own
prod.keys from your own console. Nothing is
bundled, downloaded or looked up for you. The same prod.keys opens every one of your Switch
games. A current dump covers all retail titles. Switch 2 games (a game folder or .nup file) do not need
prod.keys.
- For an iPhone or iPad: iOS or iPadOS 26 or later and a recent device. Older devices are untested.
The app carries its own build tools and Python, so no Homebrew and no Python install; the .NET SDK 10
is the one tool it still installs for you. The launcher's dependency page checks each requirement and
installs what it can with one click.
Install
- Download the app:
NX2Apple-macOS-arm64.zip from the
latest release. Unzip it.
- Open it once with right-click, then Open. The app is not signed with a paid Apple developer
certificate, so macOS asks before the first start; after that it opens normally.
- Follow the setup. The launcher fetches the project it builds with (a Download repository
button on the setup page, a shallow clone into
~/NX2Apple; if GitHub is slow, the page shows the
manual ZIP route), checks the tools above and updates itself later. You never need git.
- Build a game. Pick the game's folder (or its base game, update, DLC and
prod.keys one by
one), choose This Mac or iPhone / iPad, and press build. The page shows the real stages and
the time left, and a stopped build continues where it left off. The iPhone / iPad target is one
app on the device for all your games. The launcher signs it with Xcode, installs it and copies the
game in. It needs a device paired with the Mac.
Building by hand from a terminal is in BUILDING.md.
This is the beginning of the README. Read the rest at the original. Read the full README ↗
