How to get the Citra Nintendo 3DS emulator to work on Android smartphones

The 3DS emulator Citra has officially been ported to Android devices.

If you want to get your hands on this emulator, you’ll first need to download the app from the Google Play Store. This is still the beta version, so users may encounter some bugs that will be fixed in later updates.

The app requires a minimum of 64-bit Android 8 (Oreo) and OpenGL ES 3.2 support. These are relatively high requirements, but they ensure that every device that can run Citra will have a reasonably good experience. 

As for hardware, it’s recommended that you have a device with a Snapdragon 835 or better. This narrows down the number of smartphones that can run the emulator because the experience may vary depending on the quality of your device’s GPU drivers.

Users may encounter low frame rate, lagging during cutscenes, and no keyboard support. But otherwise, everything should work. If your smartphone isn’t compatible with these configurations, it simply won’t run the emulator. 

To know if your smartphone features are compatible, you can enter your cellphone configurations then go into the system tab and finally go into the about phone tab. It’ll probably show your Android version and hardware information.

The app is free to use, but anyone who enjoyed the app can contribute to the project through Citra’s Patron or by upgrading to the Premium version of the emulator. With that, players get Dark Mode support, Texture Filtering, and some future features.