nxnative Guide: Requirements, Build Steps & What 62 Games Mean

What nxnative actually is

It is not an emulator, and the distinction is the whole point. An emulator fakes a Switch and runs the game inside the fake. nxnative does not fake the chip. Apple silicon and the Switch's Tegra are both ARM64, so the game's own compiled code can execute directly on your phone.

What has to be rebuilt is everything around it: the operating-system services the game expects (the Horizon host layer), the graphics calls (NVN translated to Metal), and the handful of instruction classes that do not map one-to-one. Shaders are translated offline during the build, not at runtime — which is why the frame rate is stable instead of stuttering every time a new effect appears.

That is also why this is per-game engineering rather than a universal launcher. Each game calls the system in its own way, so each one needs a profile — and a profile is someone having done that work for that title.

The requirements, in full

You need	Requirement	Why
Phone	iPhone 15 Pro or newer (A17 Pro), iOS 26+	Switch textures use BC compression; only A17 Pro and later have a hardware path for it
Tablet	iPad with M1 or later, iPadOS 26+	Same texture reason
Build machine	Apple-silicon Mac with Xcode and Homebrew	The toolchain is macOS-only
Disk on that Mac	About twice the game's size plus 10 GB	It unpacks, rewrites, then repacks
Time	30–60 minutes first build, around 10 after	Shader translation happens at build time
Your own files	Base game, update, DLC, plus prod.keys from your console	Nothing from any game is in the repository
Sideloading tool	AltStore, Sideloadly or LiveContainer	It is not an App Store app

Where the 62-game list stops being true

The list is genuinely useful and we use it on this site. But three things get lost in the headline number:

• One version per game. Each title was tested against a specific update. Install a different version and the 60 fps note no longer applies — you are the first person testing that combination.
• Profile is not verification. A profile means the project built the per-game configuration. It does not mean someone played it to the end. NX2Apple, which builds on this engine, is explicit that only three of its titles are verified end to end.
• Newer games are simply absent. Nothing on the list is a Switch 2 title — see the Switch 2 status page.

Where it sits in the family

Three projects share this technique, and the lineage is worth knowing:

Project	Role	Scope	Needs a terminal?
d2r-mobile	The original native-execution approach that nxnative grew out of	One game (Diablo II: Resurrected), with Android support since v2.0	Partially — it also ships a no-Mac packaging route
nxnative	The generalized engine: rewriter, host layer, Metal translation, profiles	62 tested games	Yes
NX2Apple	A fork that adds a GUI and archive packing	58 profiles, 3 verified end to end	No — one-click app

That d2r-mobile comes first is not our claim — it is in NX2Apple's own credits, which describe it as "the original native-execution approach that nxnative grew out of".

Should you use it

Yes, if you own an iPhone 15 Pro or newer and have a Mac — it is the best result available on a phone today. Prefer NX2Apple if you would rather not touch a terminal; prefer this one if you want to follow upstream directly or contribute profiles.

If you are on an older iPhone, no. The limit is a texture format in silicon, not a setting.

Requirements, game count, build times and the BC-texture reason from the nxnative README as relayed by its unofficial guide (checked 2026-10-25) and from the NX2Apple README's credits and limitations (checked 2026-10-26). The "profile is not verification" reading, the ordering table and the verdict are our editorial judgement.