NX Redux

Custom firmware for retro handheld gaming devices. It keeps the minimal, distraction-free interface — pick up, pick a game, play — while deliberately extending what sits underneath: standalone emulators, netplay, achievements, media tools and more. Those extras stay out of the way until you ask for them, tucked into the Tools and pause menus (and hidden entirely in simple mode).

NX Redux is a fork of NextUI by LoveRetro, which itself descends from MinUI.

Refer to the Youtube Video below for demonstration of the features:

Supported Devices

• Trimui Brick — firmware 1.1.1
• Trimui Brick Hammer — firmware 1.1.1
• Trimui Brick Pro — firmware 1.1.1
• Trimui Smart Pro S — firmware 1.0.1
• Trimui Smart Pro — firmware 1.1.1 (It should work in theory, but I can't confirm it because I don't have the device to test)

⚠️ SD cards are built per device model. Each release is packaged for a specific device — resolution, OSD assets and other layout differ between models — so a card set up for one device (e.g. the Brick) must not be moved into another (e.g. the Smart Pro S). To carry saves, save states, settings and (optionally) ROMs across devices, use the built-in Device Sync tool instead of swapping cards.

⚠️ Update the stock firmware first. NX Redux relies on system libraries the stock firmware ships, so older firmware breaks some features. Install the official TrimUI firmware version listed above for your device before installing NX Redux.

Why Fork

NextUI keeps a deliberately tight core and pushes extras out to paks. That's the right call for a project many people contribute to — but it's not what I wanted to build. Some features only work the way I want them to when they live inside the system: sharing state with the core, drawing with the system's own UI, owning the input path. So this fork builds them in, takes on the maintenance cost that comes with that, and answers to no roadmap but mine.

What's Different

Core experience:

• Redesigned UI with consistent styling across the system.
• Rewrote the Settings app in C with a redesigned UI.
• Game art fallback for titles without save states in the game switcher.
• Game Switcher lists only resumable games by default — switch to All recent games in Settings → System.
• Quitting a game now auto-saves to a hidden save slot (minarch cores, N64 and Dreamcast), so the Game Switcher always resumes exactly where you left off.
• Main menu shortcut for quick access to frequently used Tools and Games
• Option to disable the emulator folders (ideal for users who prefer listing only selected games via shortcuts in the main menu)
• Added Search function in main menu (Press START to activate)
• Added a game-list context menu (press MENU on a highlighted game):
  • Built-in ROMs collection management — add a game to an existing collection or create a new one on the spot.
  • Pin or unpin a game to the main menu.
  • Rename a game — its box art, saves and save states are renamed along with it.
  • Delete a game.
  • Remove a game from Recently Played.
  • Refresh the ROMs list.
  • Edit per game emulator options
• Added slide transition animations (can be disabled in Settings)
  • Game Switcher slides up on enter and down on exit
  • Page Navigation slides in from the right on enter and out to the left on exit
• Added top and bottom scroll indicators to all menu lists.
• Added a semi-transparent progress overlay for blocking actions.
• Added confirmation dialogs for actions that require them.
• Added Simple Mode in Settings — a simplified menu for children or casual users.
  • Hides Tools from the main menu and replaces Options with Reset in-game.
  • Settings stays on the main menu, protected by a 4-digit PIN set when enabling Simple Mode.
  • Forgot the PIN? Delete .userdata/shared/enable-simple-mode from the SD card to turn Simple Mode off.

Available when you want it (Tools, pause menu and OSD):

• Added On-Screen Display (OSD) for quick access to common actions from anywhere — in the menus or in-game.
  • Opened with the Home button on devices that have one (Smart Pro S), or by long-pressing the MENU button (Brick / Brick Pro / Smart Pro).
  • Volume slider with mute toggle, brightness slider, and rumble toggle.
  • Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and LED toggles with live state.
  • Built-in Screenshot and Screen Recorder:
    • When Screenshot is enabled, press L2 + R2 to capture the screen — an on-screen hint shows the shortcut, and a toast confirms each saved capture.
    • When Screen Recorder is enabled, recording runs automatically in the background (the record icon turns red while recording).
    • The OSD closes itself when either is activated, so it never gets in the way of the capture.
  • System monitors: CPU frequency, memory usage and temperature (plus fan control on the Smart Pro S).
  • Power off button.
  • The entire OSD (layout, widgets, icons) ships on the SD card, so it stays consistent regardless of the stock firmware version.
• Built-in Music Player
  • Audio settings: sample-rate mode (Device default / Follow source for bit-exact hi-res playback on USB DACs), resampler quality and buffer size.
  • Live sample-rate badge on the now-playing screen (e.g. 96kHz when playing natively, 44.1→48kHz when resampling).
  • Internet radio streams through the same high-quality resampler, with cover art fetched for the currently playing song.
• Built-in Media Player with audio and subtitle switcher.
• Bundled Drastic Nintendo DS emulator.
  • Hold SELECT + Left / Right to cycle the screen layout.
  • Hold SELECT + Y to cycle the theme.
• Bundled Mupen64Plus Nintendo 64 emulator.
  • Support for high resolution textures (with limitations due to 1GB RAM)
    • Place Rice-format texture packs in Roms/Nintendo 64 (N64)/.hires_texture/<ROM NAME>/, where <ROM NAME> is the ROM's internal header name (e.g. MARIOKART64), not its filename. To find it, run the game once and look for the Core: Name: line in .userdata/<platform>/logs/N64.txt.
    • On the game's first launch the pack is converted into a cache in Roms/Nintendo 64 (N64)/.cache/ with an on-screen progress display — large packs take several minutes and need extra free space on the SD card (e.g. a 2.6 GB pack produces a ~450 MB cache). Later launches load straight from the cache and start fast.
  • Netplay with up to 4 players for Nintendo 64 games:
    • Player-count depends on the device's GPU. N64 renders a separate split-screen viewport per player, so 3–4 players need a Smart Pro S on every seat. On the Smart Pro / Brick / Brick Pro the GPU can't hold full speed past a 2-way split, so N64 netplay there is limited to 2 players (as host or joiner).
• Bundled Flycast Sega Dreamcast emulator.
  • Runs out of the box without a BIOS (HLE boot); drop dc_boot.bin into Bios/DC/ on the SD card to boot through the real BIOS instead.
  • GGPO netplay for Dreamcast games, up to 2 players.
• PortMaster installable on-device from the Xtras store (Tools tab).
  • Configured by default with Nintendo input layout (configurable)
• All standalone emulators now support USB-C and Bluetooth audio.
• All standalone emulators now include a custom in-game menu with UI styling consistent with the system.
• All standalone emulators now support save states with screenshots.
• Added sleep by pressing power button support for all standalone emulator and Portmaster games.
• Added Netplay for local wireless multiplayer. Press Y on a supported game in the list to host or join over Wi-Fi or a device-hosted hotspot — no manual IP entry, no persistent toggle to remember to turn back off, and save data is synced automatically before the match starts.
  • GB Link support for Game Boy (gambatte) — link cable games like Pokémon trades and battles.
  • GBA Link support for Game Boy Advance (gpSP) — wireless adapter and link cable games.
  • Classic lockstep netplay for the other supported cores.
  • Supported Dreamcast and Nintendo 64 standalone emulator.
  • Save states, fast-forward and rewind are automatically disabled during a session to protect the connection.
• Added RetroAchievements with full offline support (powered by rcheevos).
  • Earn achievements while completely offline — they are journaled to the SD card and submitted automatically the next time you play online.
  • Achievement data (definitions, unlock state and badges) is cached as you play and can be pre-downloaded for your whole library, so games work offline even if you have never launched them online before.
  • Softcore only by design — NX Redux is not an RA-approved hardcore emulator, so hardcore mode is intentionally omitted to keep your account safe.
  • New RetroAchievements tool as the single home for the feature:
    • Sign in and manage all achievement settings here (moved out of Settings).
    • Browse every cached game and its achievements — unlocked, pending-sync and locked — with box art and badges, fully offline.
    • Per-achievement details: description, points, unlock date, unlock rate and type (Progression / Win Condition / Missable), honouring your chosen sort order.
    • Sync now to push pending offline unlocks, and Download all game data to cache your whole library with a live progress bar.
    • Reset account data (for switching accounts) and Erase all achievement data options.
  • In-game achievement unlock and progress notifications, with a per-achievement mute toggle.
• Added Device Sync to sync game saves, states, user settings, and ROMs (optional) across devices.
• Added Artwork Manager to fetch custom mix box art for ROMs.
• Redesigned the Game Tracker tool with a cleaner play-stats list (total · average · play count per game).
  • Any game's play record can now be deleted (press X, with a confirmation dialog). The record starts fresh the next time the game is played.
• Added joystick calibration in Settings → Input.
• Added Developer options in Settings:
  • Toggle SSH service and autostart
  • Disable system sleep (useful for ADB)
  • Keep device awake over USB
  • Clean up macOS-specific dotfiles (if any were copied)

Under the hood:

• Refactored nextui.c, splitting the monolithic code into smaller, focused components (game list, game switcher, search, launcher, image loader and more).
• Introduced a reusable UI component library in common/ui/ for consistent design across tools.
  • Strict one-component-per-file layout (menu bar, button hint bar, dialogs, overlays, lists, keyboard, toast, etc.), each with its own header — apps include only what they use.
  • Single ui.mk fragment wires the components into every app build, so adding a component is a one-line change.
  • Shared drawing primitives (rounded rects/pills, scrim surfaces, centered button rows) replace previously duplicated rendering code across the UI files.
• Applied various bug fixes and optimizations across the refactored components.
• Added clang-format tooling with enforced code style and VSCode support.
• Split release builds into per-platform zips packages (brick/brickpro/smartpro/smartpros).
• Sink-aware audio sample-rate negotiation across the whole system (music, radio, video and all emulators):
  • The audio device opens at the rate the active output actually prefers — 48 kHz on the speaker, the negotiated Bluetooth rate, or a USB DAC's supported rates — with high-quality in-app resampling instead of silent low-quality system resampling.
  • Hot-plugging a USB-C DAC or connecting Bluetooth mid-playback reroutes audio automatically, and a headphone icon appears in the status bar while an external output is active.
  • New Audio page in Settings: current output device and rate, a Force 48 kHz escape hatch, and the Bluetooth max sample rate setting.

Removed or consolidated:

• Merged the standalone LED Control, Input, Clock and Updater apps into the Settings app — one place to configure the device instead of five separate paks.
• Integrated the Remove Loading feature directly into the install script — it's a one-time tweak, not something that needs a resident app.
• Removed the Battery monitoring feature — it needed an always-on daemon logging to a database on the SD card to power a history graph, while the status bar already shows the charge level.
• Hardcore RetroAchievements mode is intentionally omitted (see the RetroAchievements notes above — account safety).

Merged from upstream:

• Modular minarch split (ma_* modules: game, saves, rewind, config, shaders, options, input, video, audio, core, menu and more) — from carroarmato0's work in NextUI #721, adapted here.

Upcoming Features:

• CPU mode switch in the OSD — quickly change the CPU governor (e.g. performance mode) from anywhere; defaults to mode configured in launch.sh script.
• Background Music Player — keep music playing while you browse, with playback controls in the OSD.

Ongoing focus areas:

• Cleaner, more maintainable core code
• Improved file and module structure
• Refactoring for readability
• Selective feature improvements as needed

Additional Emulators

Some emulators are not bundled with NX Redux. If you want to run PPSSPP — or any other system that isn't included — you can install a community pak instead:

• PPSSPP (PlayStation Portable) — ben16w/minui-psp

⚠️ These paks are built for NextUI (which NX Redux is based on), not for NX Redux. They will generally work, but they are not developed, maintained, or supported for NX Redux. Please do not report issues you hit while using them on NX Redux to their developers — those developers build for NextUI and cannot help with NX Redux-specific behavior.

Upstream

This project is a derivative of LoveRetro/NextUI.

Upstream changes may be merged selectively. Architectural decisions here prioritize clarity and maintainability over strict parity.

Credits

• ro8inmorgan, frysee and all contributors for developing NextUI
• clintonium-119 for the original RetroAchievements integration in NextUI that our offline support is built on
• carroarmato0 for the minarch modularization that the ma_* split here is based on
• sinedied for the shaders that were originally proposed for NextUI in LoveRetro/NextUI#796.
• KrutzOtrem for the overlays
• timbueno for the Artbook theme
• anthonycaccese for the Artbook artwork
• ben16w for the Minui-Portmaster

License

Licensed under GNU GPL v3.0, the same license as the original project.

All original copyrights are retained. Modifications in this repository are also distributed under GPL-3.0.

See the LICENSE file for details.

NX Redux is an independent fork and is not affiliated with the original NextUI project.