A tech enthusiast managed to run iOS on an original Nintendo Switch. The project took two days and used QEMU, an open-source emulator, to make it happen. The Nvidia Tegra X1 processor in the Switch was used to emulate a full iOS build. You can see what it looks like in this image: .
This unusual experiment has some big limitations. For example, it takes over 20 minutes to boot up. The system often crashes, and apps won’t open properly. The person behind the project, PatRyk, joked about it on X, saying, “I’ve lost my mind (and 2 days of my life to install this). Behold: the world’s slowest ‘iPhone’.” Here’s his post:
I’ve lost my mind (and 2 days of my life to install this)
Behold: the world’s slowest “iPhone” 🎉🎉Takes over 20 minutes to boot, kernel panics every 2nd thing you do, can’t open any apps (they all time out and crash) 🚀🚀 pic.twitter.com/r3B3JPDUDV
— PatRyk (@Patrosi73) June 17, 2025
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Why Bother?
You might wonder why someone would try this. The answer seems to be curiosity and fun. iOS is hard to run outside Apple’s hardware, so just getting it to start is a big deal. This project builds on the QEMU Apple Silicon emulation efforts, which let you run Apple’s ARM-based systems in virtual environments. You can learn more about it on GitHub.
What It Means
While this “iPhone” is more of a novelty than something useful, it’s still an impressive technical feat. It shows how flexible QEMU can be in emulating different hardware setups. For tech enthusiasts, it’s a fun example of how far you can push existing hardware. For others, it’s a reminder of the challenges in running software on non-native platforms.