NX Play

NX Play is a Mac app (and nxplay, the script behind it) that runs Nintendo Switch games natively on a Mac or an iPhone/iPad, through nxnative. It builds a game once, then starts it straight away the next time. This repository is nx-native-wrapper.

• A library of your games with their icons: extract them, play them on the Mac, rebuild them.
• Console Mode for the couch: full screen, driven by a game controller.
• Install a game on your iPhone or iPad through Xcode, or build an IPA to sideload.
• Copy saves between the Mac and a device, after seeing which one is newer, and back them up to your own private Git repository while you play.
• Pull nxnative's latest fixes before a play and rebuild when they change something, after asking whether to update now or play the current build. Or keep a build that works as it is.

You need your own games (NSP, NSZ, XCI or XCZ files, or a NUP file or dump of a Switch 2 game) and the prod.keys of your own Switch. Nothing here downloads games or keys.

Contents

• Why
• Requirements
• Install, or from the source
• Using NX Play: the Game menu, iPhone and iPad, saves, tools, settings, Console Mode
• Command line
• Controls
• Troubleshooting
• Development
• License

Why

nxnative can pack a game into a standalone Mac app (--platform mac-app), with its own settings window. That's an app for one game.

NX Play takes the other route: one app for all your games, everything portable and in one place.

• Each game stays in its own folder: the original files, the build, the saves and the IPA side by side. Move the folder, or the whole library, and it keeps working.
• Playing on the Mac, installing on an iPhone or iPad, moving saves and freeing space all happen from the same window.
• Every game follows nxnative as it improves, with no per-game apps to rebuild and replace.

Requirements

• A Mac with Apple silicon and macOS 15 or later. On an Intel Mac, IPAs and device installs work, but games cannot run on the Mac.
• Xcode, opened once. Setup downloads its Metal Toolchain. For iPhone and iPad, its iOS platform too.
• Homebrew: Setup installs the other tools with it.
• For Install on Device: an Apple developer account, signed in under Xcode › Settings › Apple Accounts.

Install

1. Download the DMG from the latest release and drag NX Play into Applications.
2. Install Homebrew if you don't have it: one command in Terminal.
3. Open NX Play. Setup opens by itself (later: NX Play › Setup…). It checks the Mac and Xcode and says what to fix. Install Missing then:

Everything except Homebrew's tools goes into one folder, ~/Library/Application Support/NX Play (Setup's Open Folder).

NX Play › Uninstall NX Play… removes it again: its folder, settings, caches and window state, its Dock icon if you kept it there, and the app, which goes to the Trash. It can also remove the Homebrew tools Setup installed. It leaves your games folder (the games, their builds and their saves), prod.keys, the save backup repository and Homebrew itself.

NX Play updates itself. It checks GitHub for a new release at launch and once a day (or now, with NX Play › Check for Updates…), and downloads it, verifying its checksum, signature and notarization. The update installs when you quit, or now with Restart to Update. What's New beside it lists what changed since your version; Help › NX Play Changelog has every release. NX Play never interrupts a game or a build to ask. A banner above the library, or a pill in Console Mode's top bar, says an update is ready. In Console Mode, Y (or U) shows what's new. If NX Play can't update itself because it runs from the DMG or from Downloads, the library asks you to move it into Applications.

Put your keys in ~/.switch/prod.keys, or choose the file in Settings.

From the source

git clone https://github.com/varyform/nx-native-wrapper.git
cd nx-native-wrapper
bin/setup

bin/setup is the same script Setup runs, for a checkout: it also installs the tools in mise.toml if you use mise, puts the Python packages into .venv and nxnative into ./nxnative in the checkout, and builds NX Play into /Applications. A build from the checkout keeps using those. bin/setup --check reports what is missing without changing anything; bin/setup --no-app skips building the app.

Using NX Play

Open NX Play and choose your games folder, with one subfolder per game:

Switch/
├── Metroid Dread/
│   └── Metroid Dread [010093801237C000][v0].nsp
├── Super Mario Bros Wonder/
│   └── ….nsz
└── Donkey Kong Bananza/
    ├── base/
    │   ├── exefs/        main, main.npdm, sdk, …
    │   └── romfs/
    └── updates/
        └── 458752/       exefs/ and romfs/ of the update

A Switch 2 game is one .nup file or a dump of its files, the way nxnative builds one. A dump is base/, then optionally updates// and dlc/