Everything you need to play your PS Vita games with Project Nativ: what to bring, how to install it, the first run, the controls, online play, and what to do when something goes wrong.
- A computer: a Mac with Apple silicon (any M-series) on macOS 11 Big Sur or newer, a Windows 10 or 11 PC on x86-64, or a Linux PC on x86-64, including a Steam Deck.
- Your own copies of your games, with their updates if you have them. Nativ takes game folders copied from your Vita, PKG files, or a whole folder to search. See Supported games for exactly which releases play.
- Their licences. A game folder copied from your Vita carries its own. For PKGs, Nativ fetches the licence from your Vita over Wi-Fi, once.
- The PS Vita system software update file, free from Sony's website. Nativ uses the system libraries inside it and builds every game against them.
Nothing you add leaves your computer, and Nativ itself contains no Sony or game code.
On a Mac
- Open the
.dmgand drag Project Nativ into Applications. - Open it from Applications. macOS asks once whether to open an app downloaded from the internet: choose Open.
- If your Mac doesn't have Apple's free Command Line Tools, Nativ asks you to install them. Nativ uses them to build each game on your Mac. Install them from the window that opens, then open Nativ again.
On Windows
- Unzip the download anywhere you like, outside
Program Files. - Double-click Project Nativ.exe. Nativ isn't signed yet, so Windows may say it protected your PC: choose More info, then Run anyway. You only do this once per download.
On Linux and Steam Deck
- Put the
.AppImageanywhere you like and allow it to run as a program: in the file manager, its Properties › Permissions (orchmod +xon it). - Open it. On a Steam Deck, in Desktop Mode, add it to Steam as a non-Steam game, then start it from Game Mode.
Nativ keeps your games, builds and saves in its library, a folder apart from the install, so replacing the install never
touches them: ~/Library/Application Support/ProjectNativ/Nativ/library on a Mac,
%LOCALAPPDATA%\ProjectNativ\Nativ\library on Windows and ~/.local/share/ProjectNativ/Nativ/library on Linux.
Updating: when a new version is out, the launcher says so above your library, with a link to its download page.
On a Mac, drag the new Project Nativ into Applications and replace the old one; on Windows, replace the ProjectNativ
folder with the new one; on Linux, the .AppImage with the new one. Your library stays where it is. Each game rebuilds once with the new version the next time
you play it.
After a welcome screen, the launcher walks you through four steps. You can come back to them any time through Setup, at the top right.
- Firmware. Download the PS Vita system software update file (
PSVUPDAT.PUPorPSP2UPDAT.PUP, version 3.74; any recent version works) from Sony's page, which the launcher links to, then choose the file. Nativ decrypts it once. - Games. Add your games and their updates. Each one is decrypted and checked against its game pack, which knows which versions it plays. Licences are kept once, so later updates and add-ons of the same game just add.
- Online name. The name other players see when you play online. It shows as
ntv_plus your name, so they know you're playing on PC. Up to 10 letters, digits,-or_. - Done. Your library opens.
The first time you play a game, Nativ builds it into a native program on your computer. That takes a few minutes: about two for Shovel Knight, and longer for the bigger games, Killzone the longest. After that it starts straight away.
After you update Nativ, the next Play brings that game's build up to date before it starts. That's usually under a minute; when an update changes how games are translated, it's as long as the first build.
The first time you start a game, Nativ may pause it on a "Preparing shaders" card while it builds the game's shaders for your GPU. Killzone takes a few minutes; the other games take seconds and usually don't show the card. You can skip it and play at once: the shaders keep building while you play, with short pauses until they're done. Later starts are quick. The card comes back only when there's something new to build, such as after an update.
| Vita | Keyboard and mouse | Gamepad |
|---|---|---|
| D-pad | Arrow keys | D-pad |
| Cross, Circle, Square, Triangle | Space, C, F, E | Cross, Circle, Square, Triangle (Xbox: A, B, X, Y) |
| Start, Select | Enter, Tab | Options, Share or Create (Xbox: Menu, View) |
| L, R | Right and left mouse buttons (or Q and R) | L2, R2 (Xbox: LT, RT) |
| Sticks | WASD, and the mouse | Sticks |
| Front touch panel | Hold Alt (Option on a Mac) and click or drag. Where the mouse doesn't aim, a plain click works too. | The touchpad, or hold L1 and steer a cursor with a stick, touching with Cross |
| Rear touch panel | Right mouse button, the same way | The touchpad with R1 held, or hold R1 and use a stick and Cross |
| Motion sensor | A gamepad's gyro, such as a DualShock 4's or DualSense's; R3 recentres it |
On a touchscreen, touch the picture: that's the front panel. Hold R1 as a finger lands for the rear panel.
Buttons are named as on a PlayStation controller; on an Xbox controller, L1 and R1 are LB and RB, and Cross is A.
L and R buttons (Controls, in the menu and the launcher's Settings) swaps the shoulder pairs: L and R on the bumpers (L1 and R1), and the touch cursor on the triggers.
Controller layout (Killzone 1.12): the game decides as it starts whether it plays with its touch controls, as on a handheld, or with its own PS TV layout, which puts every touch action on buttons and sticks, and keeps that until you quit. The Standard layout, the game's touch controls, is the default and works with keyboard, mouse and controller (its touch cursor). With a controller connected, a card at the start offers the PS TV layout; tick Remember my choice to skip the card next time. The PS TV layout is for a controller only: keyboard and mouse don't play the game in it. In it the shoulder pair that isn't L and R becomes the game's L2 and R2, and the sticks click as L3 and R3. Change it in the menu: Game > Controller layout (Ask at start, Standard or PS TV), from the next start.
The first time you start a game, a card shows how to touch the screen with a keyboard and mouse, a controller or a touch screen, with the one you're using highlighted. Touch once the way it shows to carry on (Esc skips it). It appears only once.
Keys while playing:
- F10, or the PS button: the in-game menu, with display, controls, frame rate and field of view. The game pauses while it's open.
- F1: the frame-rate overlay.
- F2: cycle the render scale (sharper picture, more GPU work).
- F5: mark a moment for a bug report (see below).
- F7: switch the camera's light on or off, for Uncharted's hold-it-to-the-light puzzles.
- F8: switch direct mouse aim on or off (the mouse turns the game's camera itself, rather than acting as a stick).
- F12: capture a frame's graphics, for graphics bugs.
Closing the game's window (Cmd+W or Cmd+Q on a Mac, Alt+F4 elsewhere, or its close button) asks first, so a stray shortcut doesn't lose your progress: Keep playing or Quit, and closing it again quits.
Settings, at the top right of the launcher, holds the display, controls and sound for every game. Each game's card has a menu with that game's own options. Some worth knowing:
- Render scale: draws the game at up to six times the Vita's resolution.
- Aspect ratio: native, 21:9, 32:9 or your window's shape. The HUD keeps its own shape on wide screens.
- Frame rate: 30 or 60. 60 is experimental: parts of a game timed in fixed 1/30 second steps can run fast.
- Field of view (Killzone, Unit 13 and Uncharted).
Killzone: Mercenary plays online (multiplayer and Botzone), and Unit 13 plays two-player co-op. The Play online switch is on by default, in Settings, the first-run setup and the F10 menu's Game page. Unit 13's Network Pass counts as owned. If you haven't chosen an online name, Nativ asks for one the first time you start a game that plays online.
- On the same network, copies of Nativ find each other by themselves. If one computer has a firewall that blocks
incoming traffic, allow UDP ports 36580 and 36581 from your local network. On Linux with ufw:
sudo ufw allow from 192.168.0.0/24 to any port 36580:36581 proto udp. On Windows, choose Allow when the firewall asks about a game the first time it goes online. - Over the internet, copies meet through the public BitTorrent DHT and connect directly, with no setup.
- Starting a match: if two of you search at the same moment, you can both end up hosting. Let one person start the match, then join from the others.
- Unit 13 co-op: both players open ONLINE COOPERATIVE. One chooses HOST CO-OP and a mission; the other presses REFRESH until that game is listed and picks it. Once both operatives show, the host's DEPLOY starts the mission. Voice chat and the leaderboards don't work yet.
- Some networks can't connect. Behind some mobile, carrier or university networks, two copies can't reach each other directly, and Nativ has no relay of its own yet. Playing on the same network always works.
- What other players see: your online name and your computer's IP address, as in any peer-to-peer game. Copies that meet over the internet also list their address in the public BitTorrent DHT. Names aren't verified, so anyone can call themselves anything.
- Real Vitas: playing alongside Vitas on the Mirage community server is planned.
The F10 menu's Game page shows whether you're linked to other players.
Each game's saves live in your library, at decrypted/<title id>/recomp/fs/savedata0/. Nativ keeps them when you
update. Copy that folder somewhere safe to back them up.
- When something goes wrong, press F5 straight away. That marks the moment in the log and saves pictures of the last three seconds of frames.
- Note what you were doing.
- Back in the launcher, open the game's ⋯ menu and choose Report a problem. Nativ gathers the game's logs from its last two sessions, the launcher's log, your settings and the pictures from your last F5 into one zip, then shows it in its folder. It holds no game files, saves or keys, and your home folder's name is left out of the logs.
- Send the zip with your note. Without F5 pictures it's well under a megabyte; with them, up to a few tens of megabytes, too big for some chat apps, so share it through a file host.
- Killzone: Mercenary
- At 60 fps, the HUD (map, ammo, score) sometimes flashes out for a moment.
- Now and then a character's line plays twice.
- Uncharted: Golden Abyss
- In cutscenes, voices run about a third of a second ahead of the lips.
- All games
- 60 fps is experimental.
- The first build of each game takes minutes.
- A Linux game folder on another drive needs that drive mounted before you play. On a drive shared with Windows, shut Windows down fully (not Fast Startup) so Linux can mount it.
- macOS says the app can't be opened, or is damaged. Run the Terminal command from Installing, step 2. Or open System Settings, then Privacy & Security, and choose Open Anyway beside Project Nativ.
- A game won't build. On a Mac, check that the Command Line Tools are installed: run
xcode-select --installin Terminal. Sendsession.logif it still fails. - The game window closes as it starts. Check that the game's files are still where you added them from, for example a drive that's no longer connected or mounted.
- No other players online. Check the Play online switch, and the firewall note above.
- Windows says Smart App Control blocked a game. Windows judges each new program once, and every game Nativ builds is new to it, so now and then it refuses one. Choose Rebuild and try again in the dialog Nativ shows: the rebuilt game is a new file, and Windows checks it afresh. If that's refused too, turn Smart App Control off in Windows Security, under App & browser control, then Smart App Control settings. On most versions of Windows 11 it can't be turned back on without reinstalling Windows.