Hydra is an experimental Nintendo Switch emulator for macOS.
The emulator is still in very early stages. A few games and homebrew apps work perfectly, but most will either crash or have issues that make them unplayable.
Only the NRO, NCA and NX formats are supported. You can convert an NSP file to NCA with this tool, and NSP to NX with this tool.
In order to run official games, you will need to download a set of patches to prevent crashes. You can get the patches together with a guide on how to install them here.
You can download the latest release from here.
You can install Hydra dependencies with a package manager of your choice, like brew.
brew install cmake ninja sdl3 fmtFirst, clone the repository and update submodules.
git clone https://github.com/SamoZ256/hydra.git
cd hydra
git submodule update --init --recursiveNow configure CMake and build with Ninja.
cmake . -B build -G Ninja -DMACOS_BUNDLE=ON
ninja -C buildYou will find a macOS app at build/bin/Hydra.app. If you want to use the SwiftUI frontend instead of SDL3, you can use the -DFRONTEND=SwiftUI option.
You can find a config file at ~/Library/Application Support/Hydra/config.toml after launching the emulator at least once.
Some games require firmware files from a Nintendo Switch console to function properly. The firmware files need to be decrypted, which can be done with this tool.
To use the firmware, set the firmware_path option in the config file to the path of the decrypted firmware files.
Pull requests are very welcome. Feel free to join the official Discord server for better communication.
