Nintendo Switch 2 games are already running on iPhone and Mac, a week before Zelda

A little over sixteen months after the Nintendo Switch 2 launched, a first software jailbreak let a developer run Mario Kart World on macOS and then on an iPhone 18 Pro, without a traditional emulator. The demo is neither stable nor public, and its creator says he won't release the code. But it lands a week before the exclusive The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time remake, turning this into a real-world test of Nintendo's anti-piracy strategy.

The jailbreak: software-only, temporary, found in two weeks

On October 22, 2026, security researcher Sammy Hajhamid (known as "pepsipu") presented ns2jb, the first public Switch 2 jailbreak. It's a software-only, non-persistent exploit: it requires a PC and must be rerun after every console restart. The method starts from SmileBASIC 4, a backward-compatible app, to exploit a filesystem service flaw and run native code; it reportedly works on firmware 23.0.1. According to its creator, the AI coding tool Codex helped find the exploited vulnerabilities, but building the jailbreak itself took about two weeks of real work, not a fully automated AI job. Nintendo has since pulled SmileBASIC 4 from several eShop storefronts.

A few days later: Mario Kart World on Mac, then on iPhone

Developer Will Faust then posted videos on X of Mario Kart World running on macOS, via a private fork of the open-source nxnative project, and then on an iPhone 18 Pro. nxnative isn't an emulator in the traditional sense: because Switch and Apple chips share the ARM64 architecture, the project rewrites the game's system and graphics calls to run natively, translating rendering calls to Metal. The project already existed for about sixty original Switch games (Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, Metroid Dread, Breath of the Wild...), but this marks the first time a Switch 2 game has been involved.

The result remains rough: the macOS build showed limited colors and texture-loading issues, while the iPhone build had a brief stutter at startup before running more cleanly. Faust says he used a userspace file-backed memory trick to keep RAM usage low, and states he owns the game and dumped it himself through the jailbreak's filesystem exploit. Importantly, he has said he won't release the code anywhere, which makes the demo impossible for anyone else to reproduce for now.

What's still unverified

Other claims are circulating without independent confirmation: an account called Centro Leaks says Splatoon Raiders and Donkey Kong Bananza, two other Switch 2 exclusives, are already booting on PC through a separate project. No outlet we could check has verified this claim as of publication, and none of these ports are public.

This feat isn't an isolated case: for more than a year, an AI-assisted "recompilation" scene has been targeting older Nintendo games. An unofficial PC port of The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening, built with the help of Claude to decompile and rewrite the game, is already in public beta, for instance. These projects always require users to supply their own, legally obtained game files, which places them in a legal gray area rather than straightforward piracy.

Why Nintendo won't let this slide

The publisher showed, on the previous generation, that it hits hard on piracy: in July 2025, the FBI and Dutch police seized the NSW2U site, credited with 3.2 million downloads and a loss the FBI itself estimated at $170 million; Tropic Haze, the maker of the Yuzu emulator, had already agreed to pay Nintendo $2.4 million. On Switch 2, the console can reportedly be banned remotely if tampering is detected, and using workaround cartridges like the MIG Switch is already triggering bans.

Sources

• Wccftech: Mario Kart World Is Already Running on macOS and an iPhone 18 Pro
• Insider Gaming: Mario Kart World Seen Running on iPhone After Switch 2 Jailbreak
• KeenGamer: Nintendo Switch 2 Jailbroken Just Over a Year After Launch
• TweakTown: Nintendo Switch games can now run natively on macOS, no emulator required
• TechSpot: Switch games are the latest targets of AI-built PC ports
• Gigazine: FBI shuts down major Nintendo Switch piracy site 'Nsw2u'
• Game Informer: The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time Remake Launches This November

The bottom line

None of this is public or reproducible today: the jailbreak is temporary and technical, the fork running Mario Kart World on iPhone won't be shared, and at least one rumor about other games involved still needs checking. But the mechanism has been proven less than seventeen months after the console's launch, right before one of the year's biggest Switch 2 releases. Nintendo has a track record of reacting fast; the real question is how many more times this cycle repeats with each new console.