Lemuroid

Lemuroid is an open-source emulator app built on libretro, the same family of emulator cores that RetroArch runs. Its developer, Filippo Scognamiglio, names ease of use and good integration with Android as its main goals, and it runs on Android TV as well as phones. You copy your games into a folder, point Lemuroid at it, and it builds a library from them.

Systems

From the project’s list: Atari 2600, 7800 and Lynx; NES, SNES, Nintendo 64, Game Boy, Game Boy Color, Game Boy Advance, Nintendo DS and Nintendo 3DS; Sega Master System, Game Gear, Genesis/Mega Drive and Sega CD; PlayStation and PSP; arcade games through FinalBurn Neo; PC Engine; Neo Geo Pocket and Pocket Color; WonderSwan and WonderSwan Color.

The developer warns that PSP, DS and 3DS need a powerful phone. In the source code, 3DS is limited to 64-bit ARM phones and has no save states. Since version 1.17.0, DS games run on the melonDS core, which can use the phone’s microphone; that is why the app asks for it.

Features

• A library built by scanning your game folder, subfolders and zipped games included. Games are recognised with libretro’s database, and cover art comes from libretro’s servers.
• Automatic saves: your state is saved when you leave a game and restored when you return, and since 1.17.0 Lemuroid also tries to save whenever the app goes to the background. Quick save slots too.
• Controls: touch controls you can resize and move, tilt input, gamepad support with shortcuts for quick save and load, and local multiplayer with several gamepads on one device.
• Display: LCD or CRT screen effects, and an HD mode that smooths pixel graphics.

Emulator cores come from the internet

This APK doesn’t contain the emulators themselves. When you add games, Lemuroid downloads the cores for your phone’s processor from the developer’s LemuroidCores repository on GitHub, so it needs an internet connection the first time. Our checks cover this APK only, not the cores it downloads afterwards.

That is why F-Droid flags it NonFreeNet. It also flags it NonFreeAdd, because some of those cores aren’t open source: libretro’s documentation lists Snes9x, Genesis Plus GX, FinalBurn Neo and MAME 2003-Plus under non-commercial licences.

Games and BIOS files are not included

Lemuroid contains no games; the project says you must supply ROM files you legally own. It includes no BIOS files either. Sega CD and Atari Lynx games need one, which you put in your games folder before scanning again. PlayStation games start without one, but libretro’s documentation says a real BIOS gives better compatibility.

About this file

• This is F-Droid’s build of Lemuroid 1.17.0, from April 2026, signed with F-Droid’s key. It won’t update the Google Play version, or the other way round, without uninstalling first.
• The Play version differs in two ways: it gets its cores through Google Play, and it can sync saves to Google Drive. This build has no Google Drive sync.
• Since 1.17.0, Lemuroid needs permission to show notifications before it will run a game.
• The 12.0 MB file has native code for ARM and x86, 32- and 64-bit, runs on Android 6.0 and later, and declares 13 permissions.

Flagged by F-Droid:

• NonFreeAdd: Promotes non-free add-ons.
• NonFreeNet: Relies on or promotes a proprietary network service.

CPU types in this build: arm64-v8a (64-bit ARM, almost every phone since 2017); armeabi-v7a (32-bit ARM, older and budget phones); x86 (32-bit Intel, emulators); x86_64 (64-bit Intel, emulators and Chromebooks).

Versions currently kept in the F-Droid repository. We host and check only the newest one. Full changelog.