carafe-nx/carafe

Bring your Windows games to Nintendo Switch

Carafe is a desktop app that turns a Windows game folder into a standalone app for a Switch with custom firmware. The game lands on the HOME Menu with its own icon and starts like any other title — no launcher, no files to copy to the SD card.

• Its own icon and name on the HOME Menu, taken from the game's .exe or found on SteamGridDB.
• Its own save data, kept by the console like for any other game.
• A loading screen while Windows starts up, instead of a black screen.

1. Pick the game folder on your PC and the .exe to start. Carafe suggests a name, an icon and controls.
2. Build. Carafe packs the game, a Windows runtime and its settings into an NSP.
3. Install over USB. Connect the Switch running DBI and press Install — Carafe copies the NSP for you.

Inside the NSP is a runtime built on Autorun: Wine for Horizon OS with Box64 or FEX to run x86 code, DXVK for Direct3D and Mesa for the GPU.

• A Nintendo Switch with Atmosphère and sigpatches.
• DBI on the console for installing over USB.
• Windows 10 or 11, x64 or ARM64.

Get the installer from the latest release:

• x64-setup.exe — most Windows PCs;
• arm64-setup.exe — Windows on Arm, such as laptops with Snapdragon chips.

The installer speaks English, Russian and Simplified Chinese and installs Carafe for your Windows account, without administrator rights. From then on Carafe updates itself: when a new version is out, a button appears in the library. If you have Carafe 0.1, the installer removes it first: confirm removing the old version and allow the administrator prompt once. Your settings and library stay.

The installer is not signed yet, so Windows may warn about an unknown publisher. Choose More info → Run anyway to continue.

The Switch is a 2017 handheld: older and lighter games run best, and demanding 3D games may not run at all. Tell others how a game ran in Compatibility — every report helps the next player.

Carafe builds on Windows with Git, Docker Desktop, Node.js and Rust:

git clone https://github.com/carafe-nx/carafe
cd carafe/app
npm ci
npm run dev

The first run builds the Windows runtime in a container and takes a while. Details are in CONTRIBUTING.md.

Carafe stands on the work of others:

• Autorun — the Windows runtime for Horizon OS, with Wine, Box64, FEX, DXVK and Mesa;
• hacBrewPack — builds the NSP;
• nx-hbloader and devkitPro — the loader and the Switch toolchain;
• Tauri — the desktop app.

Carafe is made for games you own. It ships no firmware or games and does not help to obtain them. Carafe is not affiliated with or endorsed by Nintendo.

Carafe is GPL-3.0-or-later. The runtime overlay and the Autorun patches are LGPL-2.1-or-later (runtime/overlay/LICENSE, runtime/patches/LICENSE), the loader is ISC (runtime/loader/LICENSE). Third-party code in external/ keeps its own licenses.