Nintendo Switch emulation is already possible on Android, albeit with a lot of work to go. Nevertheless, there’s already a best Android Switch emulator for gamers to sink their teeth into. However, it’ll require a lot of effort to get anything playable out of it. Are you up for the challenge?
Unlike the best PS2 emulator or best 3DS emulator, the best Android Switch emulator is adapting a modern console. The Nintendo Switch has not been discontinued, it’s an ongoing machine. This means that performance is not going to be great on many games. Furthermore, some of the history behind Switch emulation is ethically grey, so we’ll also be your ethical guide as well.
Best Android Switch Emulator: Skyline
At the time of writing, Skyline is not the most performant of Nintendo Switch emulators on mobile… kind of. Early in development, the Skyline emulator has the most bootable games — recently cracking Unity support — but no games run particularly well.
Some games do have decent performance on high- end Android phones. For example, Pokémon Let’s Go Pikachu and Let’s Go Eevee almost hit 30fps on mobile. However, other popular games like Super Mario Odyssey run so slow that we’d deem them unplayable.
With this in mind, Skyline is a rough emulator for the time being. On the other hand, it’s constantly improving and bringing new games to the app every few weeks. It’s still quite a ways off from being perfectly playable, but it’s fun to support emulators during development.
Furthermore, the speed in which in the developers are improving the app is incredible. With help from Yuzu, the creators of the desktop Switch emulator, development is expected to go even faster in the future. This time next year, we may be looking at full speed emulation on a number of games.
As far as features go, Skyline is pretty good, despite its early age. There’s already game cover support, touch and wireless controller support, and even support for portable or docked emulation.
If you want to try and emulate Switch games on Android, check out Skyline here.
Is EggNS better than Skyline?
If you don’t want to use Skyline, there is an alternative to the best Android Switch emulator: EggNS. However, there are a lot of caveats for those who wish to use this emulator.
Technically, EggNS has better performance than Skyline, but not for that long. Over the last year, EggNS has received few updates, meaning that it will quickly fall behind Skyline in the future. Nevertheless, it does have better performance right now.
Unfortunately, EggNS is not well liked by the emulation community, and for good reason. For starters, the emulator is built off stolen code from Yuzu. Additionally, the emulator was originally tied to a £49.99 USB C controller.
While the emulator is now a standalone product, it’s also very confusing to use, and is made even more obtuse by poor translation and weird menus. But is it better?
Right now, EggNS will give you better performance in more games than Skyline. Technically, it is the best Android switch emulator, but not one that we can recommend.
What specs do I need?
In order to emulator Nintendo Switch games in your phone, you’ll need a rather beefy machine. For the bare minimum, you’ll need at least a SnapDragon 850 chip for both emulators.
Obviously, the more powerful your hardware, the better. Switch emulation is still an ongoing matter, and an upgrade is always important.