Red Dead Redemption 2 is running on an iPhone, on the phone itself, through a new experimental tool called Madeira. It is rough, slow in places and a long way from something you would actually want to play, but it runs and that’s important because it’s a good start and a precursor to what’s coming next.
This is all possible because of Madeira, an open-source app that gets unmodified Windows PC games running on non-jailbroken iPhones. It does not emulate a whole PC from scratch. Instead it translates the game on the fly, converting the PC code into something Apple’s chips understand, faking the parts of Windows the game expects and turning its DirectX graphics into Apple’s Metal. Technically it is a translation layer, closer to Wine on a Mac than to a classic emulator, allowing it to run something as graphics intensive and heavy as RDR2.
| Stage | What happened |
|---|---|
| Early build (late September) | Launched with glitches at single-digit, slideshow-level frame rates |
| Later build (a few days on) | The developer claimed 30-plus FPS near 720p in open areas |
| Independent footage | Denser scenes looked closer to 18 to 25 FPS |
| The verdict | It runs, but it is a tech demo, not a playable port |
The RDR2 demos are the headline because it is one of the most demanding games anyone has thrown at this. Developer Will Faust showed the PC version running on an iPhone 18 Pro, with no remote hardware involved. The first builds in late September were glitchy and dropped to single digits, closer to a slideshow than gameplay. A later build looked far better, with Faust claiming 30-plus frames per second near 720p in more open areas, though analysis of the footage put busier scenes lower, around 18 to 25.
As always with these types of releases, there’s a caveat. In this case, there’s plenty. For starters, this isn’t a polished emulator. It’s a research project that requires a recent iPhone, iOS 26 or later, sideloading the app rather than grabbing it from the App Store and a debugger trick to enable the just-in-time compilation that makes it fast enough to bother with. Crashes, graphical glitches and wildly variable performance are all expected, at least for now.
RDR2 is not the only thing it runs, either. The same tool has Grand Theft Auto V booting along with the likes of Fallout 4 and a handful of others, with heavier titles still rough around the edges. However, RDR2Â is the one that’s grabbing the headlines because if it can get Rockstar’s dense, detailed open world onto a phone at all, anything else is possible.
It also continues a run of Rockstar’s biggest games turning up on hardware they were never built for, prompting Rockstar to make this announcement. RDR2 and its cousins have been pushed onto all sorts of unexpected machines lately, and a non-jailbroken iPhone is one of the more surprising entries. Apple silicon has quietly gotten powerful enough that a full PC build of RDR2 can even launch on a handset, an idea exclusive to science fiction years ago.
So no, you are not going to replay the Arthur Morgan story on your phone this week. Madeira is a tech demo that shows what is becoming possible. Still, a demanding PC game running on an iPhone with no streaming, no jailbreak and no remote PC is the kind of milestone that tends to look primitive right up until it does not. Watch out. It’s only a matter of time before we see Dan Houser’s personal favorite running on an iPhone smoothly.
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