Emulator Lakka

Systems: nearly everything (RetroArch on Linux) · Runs as: Linux, booted via hekate · Get it: lakka.tv · Switch docs

Best effort: this guide is community-maintained and may lag behind new releases. The emulator's own site (linked above) is the authoritative source — if anything here doesn't match what you see, trust their instructions.

Lakka is a minimal Linux distribution that boots straight into RetroArch. On the Switch it runs on the Linux4Tegra (L4T) stack, which means better performance than the Horizon-side RetroArch NRO for some heavy cores (Dreamcast, N64, PSP) — the trade-off is that you reboot into it rather than launching it from the homebrew menu.

Like SCCM-Retro, its ROM library is not the FAT32 sd:/roms folder HaulNX writes to — there's a copy step (below). Unlike SCCM-Retro, Lakka does not need its own partition; it lives in folders on your existing FAT32 card.

Install

Requirements: an unpatched (fusée-gelée-vulnerable) Switch and hekate 6.0.6 or newer.

1. Download the Switch build from lakka.tv.
2. Extract the archive onto the FAT32 partition (root) of your SD card — you get a lakka folder plus bootloader additions that add a hekate launch entry. Your CFW setup is untouched.
3. Inject hekate as usual, then Launch › More configs › Lakka.
4. Pair Joy-Cons/controllers in Horizon first if you haven't — see the official Switch page for the controller-dump step.

Reboot to get back to hekate and into Horizon/CFW.

Getting your HaulNX downloads into it

Lakka keeps its library at /storage/roms inside its own filesystem, so files under FAT32 sd:/roms aren't picked up directly. Two supported routes:

• Over the network (easiest): boot Lakka, enable its services (Wi-Fi + Samba in the settings menu), then from your PC open the Lakka share (\\LAKKA or its IP) and copy from your card's roms folder into the ROMs share. Keep the per-console subfolders — snes, gba, psx, and friends — intact.
• Hekate USB tools: the Lakka docs recommend hekate's USB mass-storage mode for SD access rather than repeatedly reseating the card; you can shuttle files from a PC that way in one session.

Then scan as usual in RetroArch: Import Content › Scan Directory → /storage/roms. Everything on the RetroArch page about playlists, Manual Scan, and per-system core choices applies here unchanged.

BIOS files

Same list as regular RetroArch (PSX, Sega CD, PC Engine CD, Neo Geo, ...); they go in /storage/system — reachable via the same Samba share (System folder). See the BIOS section on the RetroArch page for the per-console files.

Tips

• Treat FAT32 sd:/roms as your master library: download and organize with HaulNX, sync to Lakka in batches over Samba.
• Lakka's cores are built for L4T and sometimes perform very differently from the Horizon NRO versions — if a game struggles in one world, try the other before giving up on it.