Switch 2 emulator for Mac
Apple silicon Macs have two different ideas on offer: an experimental emulator zip, and a native recompile that is not an emulator.
Eglantine and Lichii on macOS
Both projects ship a macOS arm64 zip for macOS 15 or newer. The archives are not notarized. The usual first launch is a right-click Open, or clearing the quarantine attribute. Intel Macs have no binary in the asset list.
Lichii build 70 notes say Mario Kart World on an M4 Pro moved from about 9.5 frames per second to about 30–38 in races. A community note on the Lichii site puts Ocarina of Time on an M4 Pro around 12–13 frames per second with DEVICE_LOST. Those are different games and I am not averaging them.
A single GBAtemp post puts Pokopia near 10 frames per second on an M1 and near 20 on an M3 Pro. That is one person's report.
NXNative is the other door
NXNative runs a game's ARM64 code on the Apple chip and rebuilds graphics on Metal. The readme lists named Switch 2 games for Mac, including Mario Kart World and Donkey Kong Bananza. iPhone and iPad are explicitly untested for those games. Details live on the NXNative page.
Related pages
FAQ
Does an M1 Mac have an official minimum?
No project published a lowest chip. The M1 Pokopia figure is one forum post, so it stays labeled as a single source.
Can I use the Intel zip?
There isn't one in the Eglantine or Lichii release assets I checked. The Mac files are arm64.
Sources
- Eglantine build 212 — checked 2026-11-07
- Lichii build 70 — checked 2026-11-07
- Lichii community compatibility notes — checked 2026-11-07
- NXNative readme — checked 2026-11-07
- GBAtemp, Pokopia on the PokeDinner fork — checked 2026-11-07
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