UniPatcher

UniPatcher is a ROM patcher by Boris Timofeev, in its own description “an Android tool for applying patches to ROM images of various video game consoles”. A patch, as the app’s FAQ explains, is “a file that contains the differences between the original version of a ROM and the hacked version”: fan translations and ROM hacks are shared that way, as the FAQ puts it, “to reduce download size and avoid copyright issues”. You need both files already; UniPatcher contains no games and no patches, and doesn’t download either. It is for old console games, not Android games: “UniPatcher is not designed to hack the Android games.”

Patch formats

IPS and IPS32, UPS, BPS, APS (both the Game Boy Advance and the Nintendo 64 variants), PPF (versions 1 to 3), DPS, EBP (EarthBound patches), and xdelta versions 1 and 3, eleven in all. The app picks the format from the patch’s file extension; for xdelta files it then reads the file’s header to tell the two versions apart. BPS, UPS, xdelta and PPF (versions 2 and 3) patches can check that your ROM is the one they were made for (see the questions below); the setting to ignore checksums doesn’t apply to XDelta1 patches.

Patching a game

1. Choose the patch file and the ROM file in Android’s file picker. UniPatcher needs no storage permission for this; cloud storage and SD cards work too.
2. Choose where to save the patched game. The suggested name is the ROM’s, with “[patched]” added.
3. Tap the button at the bottom right and keep the app open. A window shows each step and ends with “Patching complete”.

UniPatcher copies both files into its own temporary storage, applies the patch there and writes the result to the file you chose, so the original ROM isn’t touched. That is why it needs free space of roughly twice the ROM’s size plus the patch; since version 0.19 it checks before starting and says how much it needs. If saving fails with “Permission denied”, the developer advises saving to an ordinary folder such as Download or Documents, not to Android/data, another app’s folder or a problematic SD card.

Other tools

• Create patch: make your own xdelta3 patch from an original file and a modified one.
• Fix checksum (SMD): for Sega Mega Drive (Genesis) ROMs, it fixes, in the app’s words, “the red screen of death”. This one overwrites the file you pick, without a backup, so copy it first.
• Add/Del SMC header (SNES): some Super Nintendo patches need a ROM with or without the extra 512-byte header that some ROM files have. The tool removes the header if the ROM has one and adds one otherwise, optionally from a header file of your own; the result is saved as a new file. Adding came back in version 0.19, after being removed in 0.17.
• Settings: light, dark or system theme, and the option to ignore checksums. On Android 12 and later the app takes its colours from your wallpaper.

What goes online

Nothing. UniPatcher has no internet permission. After a crash it shows a notification; if you tap Send, your e-mail app opens with a report addressed to the developer, and nothing is sent unless you send it. That crash library, ACRA, is what our scan lists. Links to the project’s GitHub, its translation site and Bitcoin donations open in other apps when you tap them; in this edition, once you have patched something, a donation request appears now and then when you open the app.

About this file

• This is F-Droid’s build of version 0.19, released on 13 October 2026, signed with F-Droid’s key. The versions on Google Play (with more than a million downloads) and GitHub are signed by the developer, so you can’t install one over the other without uninstalling first. The Play version has no donation menu.
• 32-bit ARM works again. Version 0.18 raised the minimum to Android 7.0 and, without saying so in the release notes, dropped 32-bit processors. The developer: “I thought there were none left. I’ll add it back in the next version.” Version 0.19 runs on 32-bit and 64-bit ARM and on 64-bit x86; 32-bit x86 devices still aren’t supported.
• 0.19 also redesigns the app in Material 3, checks free space before patching, offers itself in “Open with” for patch files, and falls back to picking a folder on devices without Android’s save dialog.
• The 8.3 MB file, up from about 3 megabytes in 0.18, contains the xdelta 3.1.0 and XZ libraries the app builds itself, now also xdelta 1.x with the part of the GLib library it needs, which accounts for most of the growth, and six small patch files from EBPatcher that convert known non-standard dumps of EarthBound to the standard one before an EBP patch is applied. Our scan found one library, ACRA, used for the crash reports above.
• The screenshot is the project’s own and shows version 0.19’s menu; we left out the other one, which shows a commercial game’s file name.
• UniPatcher is licensed under the GPL-3.0 or later; the xdelta 1.x code it now includes is under the GPL-2.0 or later, and GLib under the LGPL.

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_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.