Citron gets full rewrite, promises better Nintendo Switch emulation on Android and PC

While the Nintendo Switch emulation scene got a little muddy after a popular emulator, Sudachi, was shut down, the team behind Citron has brought some good news. The Yuzu fork has just been updated to version 0.7, and per the developers, it's a "complete ground-up rewrite."

With such a major overhaul, there's a big potential for a significant emulation performance bump. Most notably, the Vulkan rendering pipeline has been overhauled in the new update of Citron, and many core components of the Nintendo Switch emulator have been rewritten.

Another notable highlight is the implementation of AMD FSR 2, but as the devs note, it's currently "half-baked and experimental." This means that the Nintendo Switch emulator for Android and PC could throw random crashes, and there could be visual glitches.

Game compatibility issues may also arise when trying to emulate the Nintendo Switch games with FSR 2 on the emulator. Speaking of which, with support for a more recent firmware, Citron now has better compatibility for Nintendo Switch games than before (multi-platform EasySMX X20 controller curr. $49.78 on Amazon).

To be specific, with the update, Citron works with firmware 20.4.0. This is a big highlight when compared to Eden, which is also a Switch emulator, as the latter has support for firmware 19.0.1.

Other than that, as the Citron version 0.7 is a complete rewrite, the devs warn that there could be UI/UX problems, memory leaks, and audio sync issues. Regardless, this update marks major progress in the development of the Nintendo Switch emulator, as the last notable update was in March 2025. For those interested in giving the update a try, it's available on the official website.