Winlator

Winlator lets an Android phone run programs built for Windows on x86-64 PCs, most often games. It isn’t a virtual machine running a copy of Windows. It combines two projects:

• Wine, which answers a Windows program’s calls to Windows with Linux equivalents, so no Windows licence is involved.
• Box64 and Box86, which translate x86 processor instructions into ARM ones that a phone’s CPU can run.

Graphics go through DXVK and VKD3D, which turn Direct3D into Vulkan, and Mesa drivers (Turnip, Zink, VirGL). Older DirectDraw games are handled by cnc-ddraw. All of these are other people’s open-source projects, credited in the README. Winlator’s work is packaging them into one app with a desktop, containers and per-game settings.

Before you install

• A 64-bit ARM phone. This build contains native code for arm64-v8a only, so 32-bit-only phones can’t run it.
• Your own games. Winlator comes with no games. You copy the game’s Windows files onto the phone and open them from Winlator’s file manager or desktop.
• Expect it to depend on your GPU. Turnip is Mesa’s open-source Vulkan driver for Qualcomm Adreno GPUs (Snapdragon phones). Phones with Mali or other GPUs use the other graphics paths. Which games run, and how fast, varies by phone and by game. We haven’t tested any.

Getting started

1. Install the APK and open it. On first launch it unpacks its own system files. The README says to wait for that to finish.
2. Create a container: a separate Wine environment with its own settings.
3. Copy your game onto the phone and run its .exe from the Winlator desktop. For games you play often, make a shortcut. Shortcuts keep their own settings, so each game can be tuned separately.

Tips from the developer

The README lists fixes for common problems. In short:

• Crashes or instability: change the Box64 preset in the container’s Advanced settings. For Unity games, the Stability preset or the launch argument -force-gfx-direct is suggested.
• .NET programs: install Wine Mono from Start Menu → System Tools → Installers.
• Some older games won’t start: add the environment variable MESA_EXTENSION_MAX_YEAR=2003.
• Low-resolution games look wrong: turn on Force Fullscreen in the shortcut’s settings.
• Crackling audio: raise the average latency in the ALSA/PulseAudio settings.

About this file

This is the original Winlator by brunodev85, taken from the project’s GitHub releases. The developer signs releases with an Android debug certificate, as shown under More Information. It is recorded here so a future release signed differently won’t go up without a check.

Many forks circulate under the Winlator name. We checked one that is signed with Android’s public test key and uses another app’s package name. We don’t host builds like that.

CPU types in this build: arm64-v8a (64-bit ARM, almost every phone since 2017).

Recent releases on the project’s GitHub. We host and check only the newest one. Full changelog.