Release notes from touchHLE

v0.2.3: The Happy New Year release!

2026-01-02T21:05:32Z

Hello everyone!

The touchHLE team is proud to announce the new release!

Compatibility has grown from dozens of games to over 300 apps with 3+ stars support 🎉

Many thanks to all of the contributors who made this release possible 🙏

~ ciciplusplus and hikari_no_yume

Compatibility:

New working apps:
API support improvements:
- Various small contributions. (@hikari-no-yume, @alborrajo, @ciciplusplus, @atasro2, @abnormalmaps, @hujerhoe, @acieslewicz, @WhatAmISupposedToPutHere, @jagotu, @apexad, @chyyran, @mistydemeo, @bognarit80, @RMZeroFour)
- UITextField now supports real text input with a keyboard. On Windows/macOS physical keyboard is used, on Android it's done via a system soft keyboard. (@ciciplusplus)
- UIScrollView and UITextView partial implementations. (@Skryptonyte, @ciciplusplus)
- Core Animation and UIKit now support affine transforms, allowing UI elements to be rotated, a feature needed by several games. Note however that auto-rotation is not yet supported. (@hikari-no-yume)
- Partial support for Core Animation explicit animations has been added. (@alborrajo)
- The libz dynamic library is now available, compiled from source using a clean open-source toolchain. (@acieslewicz)
- ALAC and Microsoft IMA ADPCM are now supported in Audio Toolbox, with the same caveats as other compressed codecs. (@abnormalmaps)
- Switched to ARMv7 rather than ARMv6 versions of libstdc++ and libgcc. (@acieslewicz)
- Added support for certain iPhone OS 3.1 binary format changes (iPhone OS 3.1 apps are still considered unsupported). (@bognarit80)
- Limited support for local multiplayer via Wi-Fi in some games. (@ciciplusplus)

Usability:

Default options for various games have been added or improved. (@celerizer, @nighto)
The app picker now has a “Quick options” feature. This provides a quicker and easier way to set some common options. (@hikari-no-yume)
App icons in the app picker are now sorted by the display name of the app, case-insensitively. (@hikari-no-yume)
The accelerometer (tilt controls) can now be simulated using a mouse, instead of a game controller or real accelerometer. Simply hold down the right mouse button and move the mouse cursor. (@alborrajo)
The new --disable-analog-stick-tilt-controls option can be used to disable the use of the game controller's analog sticks for accelerometer simulation. This is useful on devices with both an integrated game controller and an integrated accelerometer, as touchHLE by default will only use the real accelerometer if no game controller is detected. (@hikari-no-yume)
Android builds and releases of touchHLE now have an icon and meaningful version metadata. They also now use a different package name for preview builds versus releases, which means you can install them side-by-side. (@hikari-no-yume)
macOS builds and releases of touchHLE now come as an application bundle (.app directory) rather than as a bare “Unix executable” file. This should fix problems some users encountered with running touchHLE outside of a terminal, and allows putting touchHLE in the Applications folder like a normal graphical app. To support this, user data (apps, options, etc) is now stored in “Application Support” rather than the current directory, and the bundled files (fonts, dylibs, etc) are now part of the app bundle. If you prefer the old layout, you can still get it if you move all the files out of the bundle. (@hikari-no-yume)
The “File manager” button on Android now works more reliably, especially the first time it is tapped. (@hikari-no-yume)
The new --force-composition= option has been added, which is a workaround that may solve rendering issues in some games, at the cost of performance. For some games it is applied by the default options. (@ciciplusplus)
Most errors causing touchHLE to crash now produce a graphical message box, rather than the error message only being found in the log. (@abnormalmaps)
touchHLE now writes log messages to a file on all platforms, not just on Android. The file has been renamed from log.txt to touchHLE_log.txt. (@hikari-no-yume)
Two new options for input handling of analog stick (--stick-to-touch=) and 8-directional DPad (--dpad-to-touch=) via a game controller. (@celerizer)

Quality:

Fixed an issue on some Android phones where the accelerometer was not usable. (@Oscar1640)
Fixed multi-touch in some games. (@ciciplusplus)
App icons are now displayed with a glossy sheen where required. (@hikari-no-yume)
The app icons and labels in the app picker are now displayed at integer pixel offsets, making them sharper and more symmetrical. (@hikari-no-yume)

Other:

MP3 decoding now uses Symphonia rather than dr_mp3. We do not expect this to affect compatibility. (@abnormalmaps)

v0.2.2: (Not) An April Fool's Joke

2024-04-01T21:02:38Z

Hi everyone! I'm sorry this release took a while, but it's here. This release (including the date) was @ciciplusplus's idea, and they now have more power in the project than before. We hope you enjoy! ~ hikari_no_yume

Compatibility:

New working apps:
API support improvements:
- Various small contributions. (@alborrajo, @WhatAmISupposedToPutHere, @ciciplusplus, @hikari-no-yume, @LennyKappa, @Skryptonyte, @teromene)
- AAC audio files (AAC-LC in a typical MPEG-4 container) are now supported in Audio Toolbox. This is done in a fairly hacky way so it might not work for some apps. (@hikari-no-yume)
There is now support for iPhone OS 3.0 apps, in addition to the existing support for iPhone OS 2.x apps:
- Support for fat binaries has been added. touchHLE will no longer crash when trying to run an app with both ARMv6 and ARMv7 versions, and instead will try to pick the best available option (ARMv7, or failing this, ARMv6). This improves compatibility with iPhone OS 3.0 apps, many of which use fat binaries in order to improve performance on the iPhone 3GS and iPod touch (3rd generation). (@WhatAmISupposedToPutHere)
- The bundled ARMv6 dynamic libraries, libgcc and libstdc++, have been updated to their iPhone OS 3.0.1 versions. Previously the iPhone OS 2.2.1 versions were used. (@hikari-no-yume)
- touchHLE will no longer output a warning when trying to run an app with iPhone OS 3.0 as its minimum OS version. The warning now only appears for apps requiring iPhone OS 3.1 and later. (@hikari-no-yume)

Usability:

The --button-to-touch= option now supports the Start and the LeftShoulder buttons in addition to the A/B/X/Y buttons and D-pad. Certain games' default options have been adjusted to use them. (@nighto)
Default options for various games (@nighto)

v0.2.1: All treat, no trick! 🎃

2023-11-01T09:41:28Z

Hi everyone! I'm happy to announce a new release, two months after the previous one.

Before I get to the changelog, some special notes:

From this release onwards, the old list of supported apps is replaced by the new, crowdsourced touchHLE app compatibility database.
In case you missed it, the touchHLE app archive was recently launched. It only has one app at the moment, but that's hopefully just the start. If you were an indie developer in the early iPhone days, please get in touch!
If you want to get notified about future releases, you might want to join the Discord server. You can't post there, but you'll be @'d with updates. There's also a YouTube channel where I post short gameplay videos with new releases.
If you want to help me keep working on this full time, please consider supporting me financially.

Finally, a big thanks to all the other contributors who made this release what it was! If it weren't for them, there might not have been any new game support in this release.

Happy Halloween! 🎃

~ hikari_no_yume

Compatibility:

API support improvements:
- Various small contributions. (@hikari-no-yume, @ciciplusplus, @alborrajo)
New working apps:
- Doom (@ciciplusplus)
- Doom II RPG (@alborrajo)
- I Love Katamari (@ciciplusplus)
- Wolfenstein RPG (@alborrajo)

Quality:

Multi-touch is now supported. (@ciciplusplus)

Usability:

The Android version of touchHLE now has a documents provider. Thanks to a mere three hundred lines of boilerplate code originally written for the emulator Skyline (RIP), it is now possible for you, as the owner of a device running a newer Android version, to move ~~files~~ documents in and out of touchHLE's ~~directory~~ location on your device with relative ease. For example, it is now possible to download an ~~.ipa file~~ application/octet-stream document to the Downloads folder of your device, then, using an appropriate app, move this document to the touchHLE location. Users of normal operating systems and older versions of Android continue to be able to access a superior version of the same functionality via a so-called “file manager”. (@hikari-no-yume)
There is now an “Open file manager” button in the app picker, to make it easier to find where touchHLE stores your apps and settings. On most operating systems this opens the relevant directory in a file manager, and on Android it opens some sort of app for managing documents in the touchHLE location. (@hikari-no-yume)
The Android version of touchHLE now writes all log messages to a file called log.txt, in addition to outputting them to logcat. (@hikari-no-yume)
The new --stabilize-virtual-cursor= option makes the analog stick-controlled virtual cursor appear more stable to the emulated app, which is helpful in some games with overly sensitive menu scrolling. In some titles it is applied by default. (@hikari-no-yume; special thanks: @wareya)
Automatic language detection now works on all platforms, and supports a list of languages in order of preference, rather than just one. The LANG environment variable is no longer supported, and instead the new --preferred-languages= option can be used. Note that it is the emulated app itself that decides what to do with this list, and whether particular languages are supported. (@hikari-no-yume)
The app picker now has multiple pages, so it is no longer limited to 16 apps. (@hikari-no-yume)
The framerate is now limited to 60fps by default, which matches the original iPhone OS and fixes issues with some games where the game ran too fast or consumed excessive energy and CPU time. This limit can be adjusted or disabled with the new --limit-fps= option. (@hikari-no-yume; special thanks: @wareya)
The --button-to-touch= option now supports D-pad mappings in addition to the A/B/X/Y buttons. (@alborrajo)
Default game controller button mappings have been added for Wolfenstein RPG and Doom II RPG, including for the D-pad. (@alborrajo)

meta-config-post-merge-2

2023-09-21T05:41:04Z

Modify access rules

meta-config-post-merge: Merge pre-rewrite and post-rewrite refs/meta/config histories

2023-09-21T05:38:26Z

Maybe this will prevent the config from occasionally reverting?

Change-Id: I150bf06ad8a2938defce54f6f6d4b973ff74f35b

meta-config-post-rewrite

2023-09-18T11:35:54Z

Squashed commit of config changes

meta-config-pre-rewrite

2023-09-16T12:34:09Z

Remove test label

v0.2.0: touchHLE on Android!

2023-09-01T08:42:27Z

At long last, it's here: the first release to work on Android, the first release with an app picker UI, the first release with (very limited) UIKit support, and much more!

This release required a lot of effort, and not just from me! I want to especially thank @ciciplusplus, who dared to try to port touchHLE to Android and somehow succeeded. I also want to thank @KiritoDv and @LennyKappa, who also made big contributions to this release.

Thank you all for your continued patience and support. I hope you enjoy!

~ hikari

[Update 2023-09-01: When the release was tagged and uploaded yesterday, two changelog entries were mistakenly in the v0.1.2 section rather than v0.2.0. The copies of the changelog below and in the release zip files have now been corrected. Additionally, the OPTIONS_HELP.txt file was mistakenly absent from the Android release zip file, but it has now been added.]

Compatibility:

API support improvements:
- Various small contributions. (@hikari-no-yume, @KiritoDv, @ciciplusplus, @TylerJaacks, @LennyKappa)
- PVRTC and paletted texture compression is now supported. (@hikari-no-yume)
- Some key pieces of UIKit and Core Animation are now implemented: layer and view hierarchy, layer and view drawing, layer compositing, touch input hit testing, UIImageView, UILabel, UIControl, and UIButton. Previously, touchHLE could only support apps that draw everything with OpenGL ES, which is only common for games. This lays the groundwork for supporting games that rely on UIKit, and possibly some non-game apps. (@hikari-no-yume)
- Threads can now sleep, join other threads, and block on mutexes. (@LennyKappa, @hikari-no-yume)
New supported apps:
- Fastlane Street Racing (@hikari-no-yume)
- Mystery Mania (@KiritoDv)
- Wolfenstein 3D (@ciciplusplus; version 1.0 only)
- Many old apps by Donut Games (@ciciplusplus)

Quality and performance:

Overlapping characters in text now render correctly. (@Xertes0)
touchHLE now avoids polling for events more often than 120Hz. Previously, it would sometimes poll many times more often than that, which could be very bad for performance. This change improves performance in basically all apps, though the effects on the supported apps from previous releases are fairly subtle. (@hikari-no-yume)
The macOS-only memory leak of up to 0.4MB/s seems to have been fixed! (@hikari-no-yume)
App icons are now displayed with rounded corners, even if the PNG file contains a square image. This is more accurate to what iPhone OS does. (@hikari-no-yume)
The memory allocator is a lot faster now. (@hikari-no-yume)

New platform support:

touchHLE is now available for Android. Only AArch64 devices are supported. (@ciciplusplus, @hikari-no-yume)

Usability:

touchHLE now supports real accelerometer input on devices with a built-in accelerometer, such as phones and tablets. This is only used if no game controller is connected. (@hikari-no-yume)
The options help text is now available as a file (OPTIONS_HELP.txt), so you don't have to use the command line to get a list of options. (@hikari-no-yume)
The new --fullscreen option lets you display an app in fullscreen rather than in a window. This is independent of the internal resolution/scale hack and supports both upscaling and downscaling. (@hikari-no-yume)
touchHLE now has a built-in app picker with a pretty icon grid. Specifying an app on the command line bypasses it. (@hikari-no-yume)
The new --button-to-touch= option lets you map a button on your game controller to a point on the touch screen. touchHLE also now includes default button mappings for some games. (@hikari-no-yume)
The new --print-fps option lets you monitor the framerate from the console. (@hikari-no-yume)

Other:

To assist with debugging and development, touchHLE now has a primitive implementation of the GDB Remote Serial Protocol. GDB can connect to touchHLE over TCP and set software breakpoints, inspect memory and registers, step or continue execution, etc. This replaces the old --breakpoint= option, which is now removed. (@hikari-no-yume)
The version of SDL2 used by touchHLE has been updated to 2.26.4. (@hikari-no-yume)
Building on common Linux systems should now work without problems, and you can use dynamic linking for SDL2 and OpenAL if you prefer. Note that we are not providing release binaries. (@GeffDev)
Some major changes have been made to how touchHLE interacts with graphics drivers:
- touchHLE can now use a native OpenGL ES 1.1 driver where available, rather than translating to OpenGL 2.1. This is configurable with the new --gles1= option. (@hikari-no-yume)
- The code for presenting rendered frames to the screen has been rewritten for compatibility with OpenGL ES 1.1. (@hikari-no-yume)
- The splash screen is now drawn with OpenGL ES 1.1, either natively or via translation to OpenGL 2.1, rather than with OpenGL 3.2. (@hikari-no-yume)
Theoretically, none of these changes should affect how touchHLE behaves for ordinary users in supported apps, but graphics drivers are inscrutable and frequently buggy beasts, so it's hard to be certain. As if to demonstrate this, these changes somehow fixed the mysterious macOS-only memory leak.
The new --headless option lets you run touchHLE with no graphical output and no input whatsoever. This is only useful for command-line apps. (@hikari-no-yume)

android-before-merge

2023-05-06T21:03:59Z

Final cleanups, documentation updates etc before Android merge

v0.1.2, the iPhone SDK 15-year anniversary release… kinda.

2023-03-07T21:50:17Z

Hi everyone!

Yesterday was the 15-year anniversary of the iPhone SDK launch. Isn't that neat? I was hoping this release would be out yesterday, but alas I didn't manage to get everything done in time.

Something very cool did come out yesterday, though: Stop Skeletons From Fighting's video about the touchHLE project, and the story of Super Monkey Ball for iPhone. It's pretty fantastic, please watch it!

Anyway, without further ado, here's what touchHLE v0.1.2 has to offer…

Compatibility:

API support improvements:
- Various small contributions. (@hikari-no-yume, @nitinseshadri)
- Some key parts of UIImage, CGImage and CGBitmapContext used by Apple's Texture2D sample code are now implemented. Loading textures from PNG files in this way should now work. (@hikari-no-yume)
- MP3 is now a supported audio file format in Audio Toolbox. This is done in a fairly hacky way so it might not work for some apps. (@hikari-no-yume)
New supported apps:
- Touch & Go LITE
- Super Monkey Ball Lite (full version was already supported)

Quality:

The version of stb_image used by touchHLE has been updated. The new version includes a fix for a bug that caused many launch images (splash screens) and icons to fail to load. Thank you to @nothings and @rygorous who diagnosed and fixed this.

Usability:

The virtual cursor controlled by the right analog stick now uses a larger portion of the analog stick's range. (@hikari-no-yume)
Basic information about the app bundle, such as its name and version number, is now output when running an app. There is also a new command-line option, --info, which lets you get this information without running the app. (@hikari-no-yume)
You are now warned if you try to run an app that requires a newer iPhone OS version. (@hikari-no-yume)
Options can now be loaded from files. (@hikari-no-yume)
- The recommended options for supported apps are now applied automatically. See the new touchHLE_default_options.txt file.
- You can put your own options in the new touchHLE_options.txt file.
- If you're a Windows user, this means that dragging and dropping an app onto touchHLE.exe is now all you need to do to run an app.

Other:

The version of dynarmic used by touchHLE has been updated. This will fix build issues for some people. (@hikari-no-yume)

Enjoy!