Citra is the world's most popular, open-source, Nintendo 3DS emulator.
It is written in C++ with portability in mind and builds are actively maintained for Windows, Linux, Android and macOS.
Compatibility | Releases | Development | Building | Support | License
The emulator is capable of running most commercial games at full speed, provided you meet the necessary hardware requirements.
For a full list of games Citra supports, please visit our Compatibility page
Check out our website for the latest news on exciting features, progress reports, and more! Please read the FAQ before getting started with the project.
Need help? Check out our asking for help guide.
Citra has two main release channels: Nightly and Canary.
The Nightly build is based on the master branch, and contains already reviewed and tested features.
The Canary build is based on the master branch, but with additional features still under review. PRs tagged canary-merge are merged only into the Canary builds.
Both builds can be installed with the installer provided on the website, but those looking for specific versions or standalone releases can find them in the release tabs of the Nightly and Canary repositories.
Android builds can be downloaded from the Google Play Store.
A Flatpak for Citra is available on Flathub. Details on the build process can be found in our Flathub repository.
Most of the development happens on GitHub. It's also where our central repository is hosted. For development discussion, please join us on our Discord server or at #citra-dev on libera.
If you want to contribute please take a look at the Contributor's Guide and Developer Information. You can also contact any of the developers on Discord in order to know about the current state of the emulator.
If you want to contribute to the user interface translation, please check out the Citra project on transifex. We centralize the translation work there, and periodically upstream translations.
- Windows: Windows Build
- Linux: Linux Build
- macOS: macOS Build
- Android: Android Build
If you enjoy the project and want to support us financially, check out our Patreon!
We also happily accept donated games and hardware. Please see our donations page for more information on how you can contribute to Citra. Any donations received will go towards things like:
- 3DS consoles for developers to explore the hardware
- 3DS games for testing
- Any equipment required for homebrew
- Infrastructure setup
We also more than gladly accept used 3DS consoles! If you would like to give yours away, don't hesitate to join our Discord server and talk to bunnei.
Citra is licensed under the GPLv2 (or any later version). Refer to the LICENSE.txt file.