Nick Fernandez / Android Authority
TL;DR
- The latest update to the Citron emulator now offers Snapdragon 8 Elite GPU support.
- This means your Snapdragon 8 Elite phone should see better performance and fewer bugs with the Switch emulator.
- This update also brings support for Windows on Arm devices as well as a variety of other optimizations and fixes.
Citron is effectively a fork of the shuttered Yuzu Nintendo Switch emulator, and it received a major update earlier this year. Now, the Citron team has released another update, and there’s good news if you have a Snapdragon 8 Elite phone.
The Citron team announced the availability of the v0.11.0 update this week, and the headline addition might be Snapdragon 8 Elite GPU support. The changelog specifically points to optimizations for the 8 Elite GPU, improved shader execution and compilation on Adreno GPUs in general, and an “optimized rendering pipeline” for high-end Android devices. These changes should result in better performance and fewer bugs if you have a Galaxy S25 series phone, OnePlus 13, or another Snapdragon 8 Elite device.
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This support is notable as the Snapdragon 8 Elite didn’t initially play nicely with some of the most bleeding-edge emulators. This was likely due to the lack of open-source Turnip drivers and the new “sliced” GPU architecture. We nevertheless hope that the 8 Elite Gen 5, which uses the same GPU architecture, benefits from some of these Citron enhancements. This news also comes a few weeks after the Eden emulator brought improvements for Snapdragon 8 Elite devices.
There’s also good news if you have an Arm-based Windows device, as Citron now offers native support for Windows on Arm. That means you can expect better performance on your Snapdragon X laptop or desktop.
Other notable additions include per-game cheat configurations, more control over Citron updates, improved theming, and performance improvements for the game library. In any event, you can check out the Citron website to view the full changelog and download the emulator.
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