Ryujinx
Its an open-source Nintendo Switch emulator & debugger programmed mainly in C#. It aims to offer great performance, uncluttered friendly interface and consistent development build releases. Due to its relatively early development state, it has not yet had a stable release but has a nice UI, run quite a lot of games at full speed, scale up to 8x resolutions, native Mii Editor and much more!
While development has been stopped due to the powers of influence from Nintendo, I'm sure it won't take long for phoenix to rise from the ashes...
Last Release:
1.1.1403 / 02-10-2024
Yuzu
Yuzu has an impressive development pace and certain games are even fully playable, albeit not without glitches or slowdowns.
Nintendo basically shut down Yuzu; quite unfortunate but time will tell what resurfaces... In the mean time, it was an experimental open-source emulator for the Nintendo Switch from the creators of Citra.
Alternative(s):
Last Release:
03-01-2024 / EA-4176
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Windows: Requires latest Visual C++ 2019 x64 redistributable package & 64-bit only
Linux: 64-bit only
Mac OS: It's no longer supported due to Apple deprecating OpenGL and their current version not supporting the OpenGL extensions they require (18-11-2018)
NXEmu
NXEmu is an open-source Nintendo Switch Emulator written in C++ for Windows. It is still in the very early stage and not usable for people to play any games. It is showing some graphics, but takes a lot of time to boot anything.
Please check here regarding milestones.
Bear in mind, I cannot link to builds as they have to be manually compiled. Once compiled builds are made directly by the developper, I will add them. I'm raising awareness, for now.
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Windows: 7+
General Info
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Everything on the Switch is encrypted, so if you want to run anything other than homebrew, you have to dump encryption keys from your console. To get more information please take a look at referenced Keys Documentation.
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Homebrew is available on many websites, such as the Switch Appstore.
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A hacked Nintendo Switch is needed to dump games, which you can learn how to do here. Once you have hacked your Nintendo Switch, you will need to dump your own games with NxDumpTool to get an XCI or NSP dump.
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Switch firmwares can be found at Darthsternie.