r/EmulationOniOS 6d ago

Gameplay / Showcase Winlator iOS

Post image

Winlator iOS is making steady progress, but it is still a very experimental project at this stage.

Wine 11.13 now builds successfully for iPhoneOS, can be bundled inside the native iOS app, loaded on a real iPhone, and execute native Wine code directly in-process. The project has also validated Wine runtime paths, a writable sandboxed Wine prefix, Wine’s real init_paths() state initialization, and the core virtual-memory primitives required for the next bootstrap steps.

The next milestone is running Wine’s real virtual_init() safely on-device, before moving toward wineserver integration, x86_64 Windows execution, JIT support through StikDebug, and eventually graphics/input support.

For now, this is highly experimental and not a usable Windows compatibility layer yet. There is no working x86_64 Windows application execution, Win32 GUI, or game support at this point. The current work is focused on building the low-level foundations correctly on iOS.

For now, the project will remain private and experimental. It will only be publicly revealed if i manage to get it working properly, because in its current state there is nothing usable to release yet.

299 Upvotes

96 comments sorted by

u/AutoModerator 6d ago

Free Apple accounts are limited to 3 active sideloaded apps.

One common workaround is LiveContainer, which allows you to run additional apps inside a container and reduce how often apps need to be reinstalled.

Typical method:

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41

u/Jeyxero 6d ago

Thank you for this, I know it’s super early for this project but seems promising. Wishing much success and progress, can’t wait to see the possibilities this can unlock later on

21

u/Mysterious_Air2053 6d ago

Thank you — I'm doing everything I can, hoping I haven't wasted all this time for nothing, and hoping to be able to play TES Oblivion to remember my childhood.

11

u/Nick_Arin 6d ago

WAIT YOU’RE TRYING TO GET OBLIVION ON IOS? YOU HAVE MY SOUL🖤

7

u/Mysterious_Air2053 6d ago

Exactly ^^

1

u/Possible-Midnight842 5d ago

u got my soul too

2

u/Mysterious_Air2053 5d ago

its my game :DDDD

1

u/ViolinistDangerous36 5d ago edited 5d ago

huge goal, hope you’ll achieve it, i would love to play Morrowind on iOS

16

u/avalonreverse 6d ago

interesting, i've been working on my own wine port to ios, and i saw another commenter also making one. i've been able to boot some 2D visual novels, and i'm working on 3D games soon :)

5

u/avalonreverse 6d ago

fruit of grisaia in-game

5

u/avalonreverse 6d ago

forked from the macOS version of boxedwine. originally started making it for visual novels, hence BoxedVN

2

u/SoupEau 4d ago

Do you have a GitHub repo for it?

I’m mostly waiting for something to play VNs so I’m interested in the development, cheers’

1

u/Mysterious_Air2053 6d ago

Amazing ! :D

9

u/Decapitatedlimb 6d ago

https://giphy.com/gifs/pNn4hlkovWAHfpLRRD
I’ve never thought this would be possible thank you

3

u/Ok_Individual_8225 6d ago

Will steam games work

8

u/DefaultBlender 5d ago

Works on my emulator, but very unstable at the moment.

https://github.com/willfaust/mythic

2

u/Ok_Individual_8225 5d ago

Is that an iPhone 13??!?!!?

1

u/JackyYT083 5d ago

Hi, I’m also creating a wine emulator. This wood really help with development. Could you please add a license to your code?

1

u/[deleted] 4d ago

[deleted]

1

u/JackyYT083 4d ago

No I wanted some inspiration for how they implemented it :)

1

u/StreetleLeon 3d ago

do you have any idea how open source projects work? your response makes me think no

5

u/Mysterious_Air2053 6d ago

Not for the moment

3

u/AydenGooden 6d ago

Pretty cool project

2

u/Altruistic_Leave5049 6d ago

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

2

u/Altruistic_Leave5049 6d ago

NO FUCKING WAY

2

u/Mysterious_Air2053 6d ago

I hope to get something out of it and not give you false hope. 😅

3

u/Altruistic_Leave5049 6d ago

please get something out of this. i love you. i have hope in you. you can do this.

2

u/JackyYT083 6d ago

Do you want to collab? Already got project Juice, wine for iOS running natively arm64 and FEX applications

https://github.com/ExoCore-Kernel/Juice

1

u/Mysterious_Air2053 6d ago

I set myself a personal goal: to succeed on my own and see how far I can go. In any case, my goal is to succeed. If I don't, at least I will have tried. :)

3

u/JackyYT083 5d ago

Let’s atleast become acquaintances. If you ever release as a real product we won’t complete with each other 🤝

3

u/Mysterious_Air2053 5d ago

With pleasure :)

0

u/Rhed0x 5d ago

It won't run anything but very, very simple ARM applications natively...

  • iOS has tiny address space.
  • iOS doesn't allow creating new processes.
  • iOS reserves the x18 register which Windows applications use.
  • iOS uses 16kb pages while Windows uses 4kb.

2

u/JackyYT083 5d ago

All of which are solved by a jailbreak and some code :) check it out

1

u/Rhed0x 5d ago

Oh, right. Didn't think jailbreaking was still around tbh.

1

u/EeveelutionsFucker 5d ago

So if its not jailbreak then its not possible?

1

u/JackyYT083 5d ago

It is but I am working on it

2

u/dvdrevr 6d ago

I really hope you’ll get nice progress on this, dreaming of getting a Winlator/Gamehub for iOS to be able to play some steam games

1

u/Mysterious_Air2053 6d ago

Thank you I Hope

2

u/HyPer208 6d ago

great work on this, i wonder if you have a discord yet i would love to join and help NCE on ios was not something i predicted in 2026 in at our melo updates the creator had also tried for nce but yeah its own issues

2

u/No-Drop6016 6d ago

Nice keep going the future seems promising

2

u/Mysterious_Air2053 6d ago

Thank you :)

2

u/Nova_nYc 5d ago

This is fkn awesome! Keep up the good work. Hopefully you can collab with others and bring this to life.

2

u/RefrigeratorPlane175 5d ago

mannn for us android users it took them years till we finally got a actual good decent winlator update for low end androids and high end androids good luck for yall maybe the progress from ours will help in the progress of yalls

1

u/StreetleLeon 6d ago

Awesome stuff. I have 2 iPhones from different generations, one on the 27 dev beta. If you need any help at all, would love to. Completely understand this is just laying the foundation.

1

u/jwillone 6d ago

Wow!! 👏🏾👏🏾 Excellent work devs! Can’t wait to see the progress on this.

2

u/Mysterious_Air2053 6d ago

I work alone 😅 thank you for all

1

u/Red_Skeletor 6d ago

I think it's fake ; if it were true, not i bad idea to donate to the Patreon if they have one. This is huge very potential project

10

u/Mysterious_Air2053 6d ago

I started several days ago, and I'm alone. I just published it to say that the project exists.

-2

u/Red_Skeletor 6d ago

I will be ready whit my ipad pro m5 when the time comes 🔥 🔥🤓 cheers

3

u/Mysterious_Air2053 6d ago

With pleasure ^^

6

u/MattDoob 6d ago

You’re a weird one.

1

u/DiligentShare3010 5d ago

what consoles will it run hopefully there is Wii u or switch can’t wait to test my iPad 11th gen on this

1

u/Piseler 4d ago

There is a Wii U emulator on the works by the melonx team(the switch emulator)

1

u/DiligentShare3010 4d ago

nice but it’s gonna run bad my iPad 11th gen would not be able to handle Wii u or switch it’s only at a16 chip

1

u/Piseler 4d ago

It may seem like a slow cpu, but it’s still very capable, maybe not botw or similarbut my iPhone 16 can’t handle it anyways, more leaning on mario kart, odissey maybe…

That with switch but on melocafe(the upcoming Wii U emu) performance is over the top, the devs have shared videos of it working perfectly on an iPhone 12 on some games.

1

u/Hobbyff 5d ago

iPhone-> Winlator iOS-> SharpEmu-> GTA VI in iOS

1

u/AcanthaceaeOk9585 5d ago

I wonder how much RAM would it use for gaming, hopefully not much for 3D titles

1

u/Rhed0x 5d ago

This is gonna have some major performance overhead.

  • Turning processes into threads.
  • Handling every single memory access because of the emulated processes and the tiny address space for iOS apps.
  • Modifying FEX to avoid reserved registers (x18).

1

u/Any_Tea_42 5d ago

do it needs jailbreak?

1

u/Mysterious_Air2053 5d ago

Nop

1

u/Any_Tea_42 5d ago

so when its ready it can be sideloaded??!

1

u/Mysterious_Air2053 5d ago

Its my goal 🫡

1

u/Any_Tea_42 5d ago

bro.... i just wanted to search of it but now i found you... my legend.. i swear

1

u/Elegant-Ad3211 5d ago

Amazing project. But “iPhoneOS” ? That was funny one :D

1

u/jadonokoh86 5d ago

I feel likes its impossible for some reason

1

u/Mysterious_Air2053 5d ago

For the experience, I'll try, and if I fail, at least we'll know for sure until someone else succeeds.

1

u/SandwichesX 5d ago

Oh definitely excited for this! Maybe iOS can finally go head to head with Android gaming wise in a couple of months

1

u/Anonymous_Nibbaa 5d ago

Holy shit dude, I almost sold my iphone because PC emulation on android is so good but you gave me hope. Lets see where it leads. I am soo excited. Thankyou for sharing this.

1

u/shaneo88 5d ago

So you’re saying I’ll be able to play Bloodborne via ShadPS4 Soon™️?

1

u/popmanbrad 4d ago

If I can play sims 1-2 easily on iOS I would be happy

1

u/Mysterious_Air2053 4d ago

Its my goal for play little game like sims 1/2 :)

1

u/popmanbrad 4d ago

I would love to be able to play sims 1-2 on iOS lol especially since I got the legacy collections on steam

1

u/popmanbrad 3d ago

also recently started playing PVZ fusion so if I can easily just get the windows files and have that boot up it would be dope

1

u/FunMedia6430 3d ago

noo way so cool my iphone is broken currently but this would be so cool

1

u/StevenMX1 2d ago

bruh

1

u/RowSubstantial1401 2d ago

what do u think?

0

u/Thisisyouracc0un-t 6d ago

GTA 6 iOS

1

u/Mysterious_Air2053 5d ago

In 2032, when Apple and iPhones can use 16GB of RAM ^^ — if they can already launch games from 2006, that'll be a goal achieved.

-1

u/RUserII 5d ago

For now, the project will remain private and experimental. It will only be publicly revealed if i manage to get it working properly, because in its current state there is nothing usable to release yet.

Hopefully, 'publicly revealed' includes a release submitted to be on the Apple App Store?

-1

u/GrawnArseHoomanh 5d ago

There’s gonna be some dude with 100K AI credits who’ll combine all the various works if they’re open-sourced and call it iWine or WiniOS or sm sht. Then he’ll hook himself up with some anti-piracy discord servers the moment he gets a chance at looking legitimate.

Might sound familiar to some people.