A new way to play: Tears of the Kingdom can now appear as its own app with an icon on an iPhone’s home screen. A new open source project called nxnative turns Switch games you own into native apps for iPhones and iPads. No emulator is required: each game’s original code runs directly on Apple’s chips. Mac apps can also be created using the same process.
This works because both the Switch and Apple’s newer devices use Arm-based processors, meaning a game’s instructions are already compatible with an iPhone’s chip. PC ports like AI’s recent Link’s Awakening don’t have this edge and have to translate the code first, as most PCs use x86 processors.
For an iPhone or Mac, only the Nintendo-specific components need to be replaced. A small host program effectively replaces the Switch’s operating system, while translating the console’s graphics into Apple’s Metal API instead of using Nintendo’s own graphics interface.
The tool only gained attention over the weekend after tech account Techjunkie Aman posted on With a special game update, Breath of the Wild, Tears of the Kingdom and Fire Emblem Engage can even jump from the Switch’s 30 fps to 60 fps.
However, the setup is a bit tedious. You will need your own game files and the decryption keys extracted from your own console, as well as a Mac running Xcode to run the build script. The initial setup alone can take up to an hour.
The finished app must then be sideloaded using a tool such as AltStore or Sideloadly, i.e. installed from outside the App Store. The apps only run on an iPhone 15 Pro or newer, or an iPad with an M1 chip or newer and iOS 26 or iPadOS 26. This is because older iPhones cannot handle the compressed textures that these games use. Even on supported devices, Amiibo functionality and online play are not available.
Creating a Mac app only requires one additional command during the creation process. Mac gaming YouTuber Andrew Tsai has created several apps this way and got Monster Hunter Rise running at a fixed 60fps on a base model M1 MacBook Air with just 8GB of RAM. He also managed to get the console-exclusive tactics game Unicorn Overlord to run natively.
Of course, the project has no connection to Nintendo. Each build begins with user-provided files, so the project itself does not distribute game data. Switch emulator Yuzu also didn’t distribute games, but its developers still agreed to pay Nintendo $2.4 million in 2024 to settle a lawsuit.
A few months later, rival emulator Ryujinx went offline after Nintendo contacted its lead developer. Ironically, nxnative still relies on code from Ryujinx to translate each game’s graphics.
