nxnative project enables Nintendo Switch games to run on Apple devices

An open-source project named nxnative allows Nintendo Switch games to run natively on Apple Silicon devices, including iPhone, iPad, and Mac, without the use of traditional emulation. Developed by seedds, the tool leverages the shared ARM64 architecture between the Nintendo Switch and modern Apple chips to execute game code directly on the hardware.

Technically, nxnative replaces the Switch’s Horizon OS with a lightweight host environment and translates the console’s NVN graphics API into Apple’s Metal API. It also utilizes components from other projects, such as Ryujinx’s shader translator, to facilitate this process. Because it is not a traditional emulator, games can appear as standalone applications on the Apple home screen.

Testing has shown significant performance gains for certain titles; for example, Monster Hunter Rise and The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom have been reported to run at 60 FPS on M1 MacBook Air hardware, doubling the original console's 30 FPS. Over 60 to 70 games have been tested, including Super Mario Odyssey and Metroid Dread, though compatibility varies and some titles, such as Doom Eternal, have failed to launch.

Users must provide their own legally owned game files and decryption keys. The process currently requires technical knowledge, such as using macOS for compilation, though community tools like NX2Apple aim to simplify the installation via a graphical interface.