This promising PC game emulator just got support for Pixel 10

Winlator and GameHub are two of the more popular ways to locally run PC games on your Android device. However, GameNative has also emerged as one of the more impressive efforts in recent months. We’ve seen a few major updates recently, but the latest version might be the biggest one yet.

GameNative version 0.9.0 is now available to download as a pre-release version, and it brings a laundry list of changes and additions. Perhaps the most notable addition is initial support for the Pixel 10‘s PowerVR GPU. That’s a big deal, as most PC game emulators on Android primarily support the Adreno GPU in Snapdragon processors. These apps also have some support for Arm’s Mali graphics, but that’s usually where support ends.

Another major addition is support for Samsung Dex and other OEM desktop modes. More specifically, the team notes that you can expect better navigation with a mouse and keyboard, improved support for other peripherals, and several other desktop-related tweaks. In other words, you should have a more polished experience when playing PC games via an external monitor.

The app also brings other great quality-of-life additions. These include carousel UI support, Steam Workshop integration, Steam branch support, download and storage manager pages, per-game disabling of cloud saves, and a battery temperature metric in the performance overlay. Otherwise, GameNative v0.9.0 also fixes issues related to Steam cloud saves, crashes on pause, and much more.

Nevertheless, we’re glad to see initial support for the Pixel 10 series in particular. I wouldn’t hold my breath for good performance out of the box, but this is still a big step for emulation on these phones. It also comes months after our own testing showed that the Pixel 10 series lagged behind the Pixel 9 phones for PS2 and GameCube emulation. So between this new development and the Pixel 10 series gaining Vulkan 1.4 support in December, things are looking up for Google’s latest flagships.