What is Yuzu?
In this guide, I’m going to show you how to setup and configure the Yuzu emulator for Android, which allows you to play your legally backed up Nintendo Switch games on Android.
I will not be showing you how to get ROMs, firmware files or anything that could get me in trouble, so you can go away now Nintendo ninjas.
Which Yuzu to download?
Due to recent events (Yuzu being shut down), I’m unable to provide this.
Installing Yuzu
Open the app and click Get Started.
Grant permissions for each thing it asks you to.
Now we come to the first item that I can’t show you how to get and that’s prod.keys. I’m using mine dumped from my actual Nintendo Switch, which is the legal way. I would suggest Googling prod.keys to find out more. Find and select your prod.keys file when you have it.
Next up is we have to tell Yuzu where our Nintendo Switch ROMs are. Click Add Games and navigate to the folder that has your legally backed up Nintendo Switch ROMs. I’m using ones that came directly off my Nintendo Switch.
For organization, I suggest having a Switch ROMs folder, and then a subfolder that has updates and DLC. So you’ll have the base games and then all the updates and DLC in a separate subfolder. You’ll see why in a bit.
We’re done for this part, so click Continue.
Yuzu Settings
You can now see all of your games here in a grid, but there’s still some settings we should go over.
Click the Settings cog top left. Then Advanced Settings. Then click System.
If your device is powerful enough, you may be able to turn on Docked Mode here to increase your resolution. For most devices and games though, you’ll want to stay in Handheld mode. I would advise leaving this as handheld, and then doing per-game settings for any games you want to use docked mode for, which I’ll show later.
Head back and into Graphics. Once again, if you have a strong enough device, you could swap Resolution here to higher, especially if you’re outputting to a TV or a higher resolution display. Same advice here, leave it as default and change anything on a per-game basis later.
Scroll down and you’ll see a few options here. Because Yuzu is still early access, and being developed, a lot of games will need some setting changes and won’t work with the default settings as you see them here. You may need to turn on asynchronous shaders sometimes, or reactive flushing. If you run into a game that isn’t working, try these, but you can leave them off as default.
Now head back and back again to the main settings screen. Jump into Controls and this is where you can add more players if you have some Bluetooth controllers connected, or even just map your own controller to what you want.
Most times your controls should be recognized and mapped out of the box without you needing to do anything, but it’s always good to come here and map it yourself.
GPU Driver Manager
Back out again and head to GPU driver manager. This will take some technical knowhow again, so if you’re the type to just want things to run, you can skip this. For everyone else that wants the best performance, you can use custom GPU drivers here.
GPU Drivers: https://github.com/K11MCH1/AdrenoToolsDrivers
You’ll want to select the one that matches your device. So for example, right now the most recent Odin 2 driver would be Qualcomm driver v676.53 as if you read the description for all the others, it says it’s broken on 8 gen 2, meaning Snapdragon 8 Gen 2, which is what the Odin 2 uses. If you click the Assets drop down, you can download the zip file that’s there. Then in Yuzu, on the GPU driver manager page, select Install bottom right and navigate to that zip file. Then just make sure it’s selected on screen.
To make things a bit more complicated, the most recent GPU driver is not always the best for every game, so you may find yourself using a few different ones to get the best performance.
Importing/Exporting Yuzu data & Save data
Back out again and head to Manage yuzu data. There’s a few things you can do here. You can import or export your entire Yuzu data, you can import or export your save data, install game updates or DLC, firmware and more. Because Yuzu’s save data is hidden behind Android’s data storage, you can’t use cloud syncing for saves right now.
Installing game updates and DLC
Next up I’m going to install game updates and DLC for the games I have. I’ll navigate to the folder that has all my updates and DLC, select all and then select and Yuzu will install them all for me. It’ll take some time, so come back in a bit.
Then we come to Install firmware, and this will be necessary for everyone. You need to install Switch firmware here, and once again, I’ll be using my legally backed up firmware. Navigate to your zip file and install it.
I haven’t had a reason to use Amiibo keys, and I’m not sure what it actually does, but I assume anyone looking to use Amiibo’s or fake Amibo’s can look deeper into it.
Remove on-screen controls
Head all the way back to the main game screen and just load a game by selecting it. You’ll see you instantly have on-screen controls and if you’re using a handheld or controller, we don’t want that.
If your device has a back button, push it, or swipe and click the back button from the navigation bar. You’ll get an in-game menu, head to overlay options, and turn off show overlay. You can also disable the FPS counter too if you’d like.
Per-game Settings
Go ahead and exit the game through that menu, and now we’re back on the main screen. Yuzu has the ability to do per-game settings, which is crucial because each game does require different settings a lot of time. You may want docked mode for one game, and handheld for the other, or you may need reactive flushing on for one, but not the other, and so on. The way to access this is to push and hold on a game. You’ll be greeted with a new menu, and if you look at the top right, you can see Settings to change per-game settings. Anything changed here will only affect this specific game.
Mods
But if you head to Add-ons on the right, then Install, you can install updates, DLC or even Mods and cheats easily. What’s also cool is if you load into the game, and head back to the in-game menu, you can see the per-game settings option there, so you can do some things on the fly if you’d like.
Let’s take a look at installing a mod. I’m going to use The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening because without the mod, the game is broken with a blur across the entire screen right now.
There’s a mod that fixes that. I’m going to use gamebanana.com which has a mods section and the mod that we need right here. If you scroll down on the page, you’ll see the download to download the zip file. Extract it, I’m using Solid File Explorer which I always recommend as a file manager to do so.
Head into the folder, and you want to rename the title id, which is the folder inside of titles to No DOF in this particular case. Every mod is different, but for this one, it needs to be No DOF like you see below.
Then, install the mod using the Addons screen and you want to select that No DOF folder that has the romfs folder inside. If you did it right, it’ll look like this screen. Make sure it’s selected, so it’s enabled and then open the game.
And there we go, no more blur for Link’s Awakening.
Cheats
That’s great for mods, what about cheats? Well it’s the same sort of idea. I like to use gbatemp.net for cheats, and an easy way is just to Google the game name plus cheats and add gbatemp to the end to get to the right page. Let’s use Pokemon Scarlet for this example.
First thing we need to do is find out what version of the game we have, especially if you’ve installed updates. In Yuzu, push and hold on Pokemon Scarlet, and select Info at the top left.
In this scenario, I’m using Version 3.0.0.
So on the Pokemon Scarlet Cheats gbatemp page, I want to scroll to that version, and we’ll see the filename should be C01884F294C053C4.txt.
Scroll to the bottom of the page and download the attachment, in this case it’s named ScVi.zip.
Go ahead and open Solid File Explorer and then extract it. Go into the Cheats folder, and remove all except the one that matches the filename for your version.
Edit the file and you want to choose the cheat you want to use, so I want Force Shiny On here. Remove all the other cheats and leave only the Force Shiny On section. Or whichever cheat you want.
Rename the title id folder to Force Shiny On. Or whichever cheat you chose.
Head back to Yuzu, add-ons and install that cheat the same way we did the mod, but selecting the Force Shiny On folder. Open the game and get into a battle to see if it worked.
And it worked! Do these steps for any cheats you want to add.
Other than that, that’s the full Yuzu for Android setup guide.
