Popular Switch emulator Yuzu keeps making insane progress. Yesterday, the team have announced Yuzu is now available on Android. although this should be considered a “beta” at the moment, this build is already pretty impressive and runs well, provided you’ve got a reasonably recent device (specifics below). Zelda Tears of The Kingdom will require a beefy phone with 12GB of RAM at the moment. Some other games are less demanding, but the team recommends 8GB at least.

What is Yuzu

yuzu is an experimental open-source emulator for the Nintendo Switch from the creators of Citra.

It is written in C++ with portability in mind, with builds actively maintained for Windows and Linux.

“Experimental” feels a bit misleading at this point: the project is still very much work in progress, but already has an impressive compatibility list, with roughly 70% of Switch games playable from start to finish. (that’s more than 1800 playable games at the time of writing)

Yuzu Switch Emulator on Android

It’s important to note that this is a “first” release, and it comes with limitations. In particular (emphasis mine):

At the moment, yuzu requires devices powered by Qualcomm Snapdragon SoCs which have Adreno GPUs. Devices powered by SoCs like Exynos, Mediatek, etc. are expected to not work at all due to their “worse-than-Adreno” GPU drivers, at least for the near future. Also, yuzu on Android has high RAM requirements, therefore fairly high-end devices provide the best experience (e.g. SD 865 and 8GB of RAM or better).

Regarding software requirements, yuzu requires Android 11 or newer and a myriad of mandatory Vulkan extensions that the Play Store will automatically check for. That being said, the Android GPU driver ecosystem is very inconsistent; not all devices will be the same. Being able to download and install yuzu doesn’t mean the performance or compatibility will be great. As expected, Qualcomm is (currently) king here.

The team has shown a video of Tears of the Kingdom running on the Redmagic 8 Pro, a $650+ flagship phone from Redmagic designed for mobile gaming (yes, it has 12GB of RAM).

Tears of the Kingdom running on a Redmagic 8 Pro! pic.twitter.com/tPTwXS4jSP

— yuzu (@yuzuemu) May 31, 2023

Yuzu on Android: Controller Support

On controller support, this is what the team has to say:

Controller input support is in its early stages. The ability to configure multiple controllers and their button mappings is currently being worked on, but not yet ready. Xbox, PlayStation, and Switch Pro controllers are automatically mapped when they are paired over Bluetooth. Generic DirectInput controllers are supported, but until more development time is spent dedicated to them, you may see some mapping issues and potentially missing mappings for buttons. Joy-Cons are not supported for now, Android doesn’t allow access to them so they will have missing functionality.

Download Switch Emulator for Android

You can download Yuzu Switch emulator on the Google Play Store here.

More details on their release announcement here.

Alternatives to Yuzu on Android for Switch emulator

Other Nintendo Switch emulators for Android include Skyline, but that emulator was very recently discontinued and its future development is uncertain. MonoNX was another emulator for Android but its codebase hasn’t seen any update in 5 years.

Source: Yuzu Team