Project Overview

Dolphin emulates GameCube and Wii hardware so that those consoles' games can run on Windows, Linux, macOS and recent Android devices, typically with higher resolution and other improvements over the original hardware. It is a C++ project released under GPLv2 or later and is aimed at players who want to revisit their libraries on modern hardware, as well as developers interested in emulation internals.

Quick Start

1. Check the FAQ and confirm your machine meets the requirements: on desktop, Windows 10 1903 or newer, Linux, or macOS 11.0 or newer, a CPU with SSE2, and a GPU supporting Direct3D 11.1/OpenGL 3.3 (Direct3D 11.1/OpenGL 4.4 recommended); on Android 7.0 or newer with a 64-bit CPU and OpenGL ES 3.0 support. Unsupported devices refuse installation.
2. Get a build from the project's homepage or the CI build service, or build it yourself from the repository.
3. If you are building from source, pull all submodules first:

git submodule update --init --recursive

Then follow the platform guide for Windows, Linux, macOS, or the Android instructions. Android projects live in ./Source/Android and are built with Gradle, which invokes CMake for the native component. 4. Launch Dolphin and load a disc image. Command-line options can select a file, set config values, load a save state, or run headless:

Dolphin.exe -e /path/to/game.iso
Dolphin.exe -b -e /path/to/game.iso

The -b batch mode requires --exec or --nand-title and runs without the UI.

Command-Line and Disc Tools

Dolphin exposes options for user folder selection, movie playback, NAND titles, per-run configuration (-C System.Section.Key=Value), video backends (D3D, D3D12 on Windows, OGL, Vulkan, Null, Software Renderer), and audio emulation (HLE or LLE; LLE is slower but more accurate).

The bundled dolphin-tool handles disc images: convert rewrites images to RVZ (default), ISO, GCZ or WIA with optional scrubbing and compression; verify computes CRC32/MD5/SHA1/RC hash digests; header prints container metadata; and extract pulls partitions or individual files out of an image, with --gameonly limiting extraction to the DATA partition.

Usage Constraints

• Desktop requires Windows 10 1903+, Linux, or macOS 11.0+; other Unix-like systems are not officially supported.
• Android requires 7.0+ on a 64-bit device with OpenGL ES 3.0; performance varies heavily with driver quality, and installation fails on unsupported hardware.
• LLE audio is more accurate but slower than HLE, and its Interpreter/Recompiler submodes cannot be chosen from the command line.
• The Software Renderer is intended for debugging, not normal play.
• The project is licensed under GPLv2 or later.

HotRepo's Take

On the C++ daily list for 2026-11-05, Dolphin recorded 9 new stars and reached position 10, with a total of 15,769 stars and 3,382 forks. This is a long-running emulator rather than a new project, so the single snapshot only confirms a modest daily bump and a top-ten slot in the C++ ranking on that date; it does not establish a trend. What stands out in the supplied material is the tooling around emulation—the command-line switches and the separate dolphin-tool for converting, verifying, and extracting disc images—which gives the project practical value beyond simply launching games.