Madeira

Madeira is an open-source iOS compatibility layer and gaming emulator designed to solve a notoriously complex technical hurdle: running x86-64 Windows PC games directly on non-jailbroken iPhones. Rather than demanding a desktop environment or an insecure device jailbreak, the project unites several modern translation technologies to bring native PC binaries straight to Apple hardware. At the core of the stack is FEX-Emu, which translates x86-64 instructions into ARM64 code for execution on modern iOS chips. To navigate iOS process sandboxing, Madeira integrates Wine ARM64EC within a single Mach process, running wineserver directly as an internal thread instead of relying on external processes. Graphics pipelines are bridged using DXMT, which translates Direct3D 11 graphics API calls into Apple's native Metal API for smooth on-screen rendering. Because JIT compilation is vital for playable emulation performance, Madeira leverages debugger attachments like StikDebug to enable JIT on jailed devices. While compiling and deploying requires hands-on technical effort—from building native Unix-side libraries to sideloading signed builds—it offers systems engineers and mobile gaming tinkerers a powerful blueprint for low-level Windows emulation on iOS.