Beginner's guide to Switch emulation


Follow this guide to play Nintendo Switch games on PC for free.

Ownership of a Nintendo Switch🕹️ or the games are not needed to emulate them. 🏴‍☠️

➜ Hardware requirements:

  • A sufficiently powerful PC 💻 (Windows, Linux, or MacOS) to emulate the game(s).
  • Controller(s) 🎮 or Joy-Con(s) to play switch games with the best experience.
  • If you don't have any of those, a keyboard ⌨️ can be used as a controller. It will work alright.
  • A mobile device📱 could work but it is not recommended as they are often not powerful enough to emulate heavy duty switch games.

📝 ➜ Table of Contents

 


 

Installing the emulator

➜ In order to run NS games on PC, an emulator is required.

One of the best NS emulators currently is Eden. It is an active fork of the discontinued FOSS emulator Yuzu. Alternatively, use Ryujinx. Although instructive screenshots are taken with Sudachi, the process for Eden is identical.

List of NS emulators.

 

  1. Visit Eden's downloads page.
     
  2. Download the Eden build for your operating system (e.g Windows, Mac, Android, Linux).
     
  3. Extract the files into a new folder with a file archiver such as 7-zip or WinRar.
     
  4. Open the new folder with the extracted contents inside.
     
  5. Run the Eden executable located in the folder (on Windows it is named eden.exe).
     

Install keys and firmware

After installing an emulator, switch firmware and encryption keys need to be installed to run games.

 

  1. Download decryption keys from here
     
  2. Open Eden, Go to tools ➜ install decryption keys, and install the downloaded prod.keys file.
     
  3. Download Switch firmware from here. (ensure that the firmware version matches the prod.keys version)
     
  4. Extract the contents of the downloaded zip file into a new folder.
     
  5. Open Eden. Go to tools ➜ install firmware, and install the extracted folder.
     

Install Games, Updates, and DLCs

After keys and firmware are set up, download the switch game files.

  1. Download game files from NXbrew. Rutracker is also a great resource for up to date ROMs. There is a list of other ROM sites at FMHY
     

➜ Download the base game file, Update files, and DLC files from NXbrew.

NXbrew ssbu
example with SSBU

 

  1. Open Eden. Then Add a new game directory, place the base game files, updates, and DLCS inside the game directory. The game should appear in the home screen.

 

➜ Can check on the Add-ons column of the game to ensure all desired updates and DLCs are installed.


Running the game & configuring controls

To play switch games, connect controllers or joy-cons. They can be connected via Bluetooth or USB connection. Keyboards can also be used.

 

  1. To connect them to the emulator. Press F11 to leave full screen and select Emulation ➜ Configure.

     
  2. After opening the configuration menu. Enter the Controls tab. Bind controls there for each player and select control devices here.

     

➜ There are many other settings in the configuration menu that might be worth tweaking. I recommend checking them out. Notably, consider switching between DOCKED and HANDHELD mode. DOCKED has greater video quality while HANDHELD is less computationally demanding.

After finishing everything, double click the game to run it. Alternatively, right click on the game and use the Start game button.
 

 


Game specific optimization mods can be installed from sites like GameBanana.
If you encounter any issues, feel free to contact @susdung in the FMHY discord.

Edit

Pub: 10 Oct 2024 01:47 UTC

Edit: 22 Apr 2026 11:50 UTC

Views: 57640