Last updated on December 17th, 2025 at 04:36 am
Folium – Game Review
Folium is a game from Jarrod Norwell, first launched in 31st May 2024.
It’s rated 4+ and currently has 777+ ratings on the App Store.
What Makes Folium Stand Out
Folium is a beautifully designed, high performing multi-system emulator that allows you to play video games from retro consoles and handhelds
— NOTE —
Folium does not provide any games or system files, these must be provided by the user
Emulation may be slow on older devices depending on the console or handheld emulated
— NOTE —
Supported Consoles
- Game Boy, Game Boy Color
- Game Boy Advance
- Nintendo 3DS
- Nintendo DS, Nintendo DSi
- Nintendo Entertainment System
- Super Nintendo Entertainment System
- PlayStation 1
Supported Controllers
- Backbone One
- Nintendo Switch Joy-Con
- Nintendo Switch Pro Controller
- PlayStation DualShock 4
- PlayStation 5 DualSense
- Xbox Series S
- Xbox Series X
Folium is in no way affiliated with Nintendo. "Nintendo" and all associated game console and handheld names and game controller names are registered trademarks of Nintendo Co., Ltd
Folium is in no way affiliated with Sony. "PlayStation" and all associated game controller names are registered trademarks of Sony Group Corporation
This game offers engaging gameplay and regular updates for mobile players.
Player Feedback
As a newer release, Folium is building its player community. Early feedback suggests .
Recent Updates & Development
Latest Update: 28th October 2025
Recent improvements include:
Added
- thumbsticks back to Cytrus on iOS and iPadOS 26 with an all-new Liquid Glass design
- multiplayer back to Cytrus on iOS and iPadOS 26 (chat is currently missing)
Changed
- the layout of several buttons with Cytrus and Grape on iOS and iPadOS 26 improving the overall layout and reducing the number of buttons on-screen
- the layout of Cytrus and Grape on iOS and iPadOS 26 to separate the screens, mimicking real devices
- multiplayer with Cytrus, rewriting the code to improve function handling and interface for user experience
Fixed
- all cameras with Cytrus significantly improving clarity and improving capture performance
- an issue with Cytrus improving the 5:3 and 4:3 aspect ratio screens
- an issue where save states for Cytrus would cause the app to crash when outdated
- an issue with Onboarding and What's New on iPad
Miscellaneous
- rewrote a large portion of Cytrus' bridging code in Swift 6 improving clarity and reducing the amount of code
- updated several dependencies and fixed a bunch of warnings related to C++2b
Download & Availability
Folium is available through the official App Store for iOS devices.
Requirements: Requires iPhone 5s / iPad Air / iPad Air (Cellular) / iPad Mini 2 (Retina) / iPad Mini 2 (Retina, Cellular) / iPhone 6 / iPhone 6 Plus / iPad Air 2 / iPad Air 2 (Cellular) / iPad Mini 3 or later.
Compatible with iPhone and iPad devices.
Player Experience Highlights
Community Insight:
We tried playing animal crossing but it was on the loading screen and kicked us out.. Idk if we need aes keys-.
This game is cool but we feel like it needs some tweaks.
Folium works perfectly fine on our IPhone 13 Pro Max and we had to tweak so many settings to achieve the quality of gaming we wanted and after about an hour or two, we finally made it work and Im currently having so much fun on Super Mario 3D Land.
We have been using this to play tomodatchi life but the new update has a slight problemTHE KEYBOARD DOESNT WORKI have looked for a solution and absolutely nothing im sorry folium devs but please fix!!! But besides the new update its a lifesaver if you dont have a 3DS or other Nintendo consoles.
Actually pretty good. Just cant play Nintendogs but thats like one out of thousands that it cant. It can play most others.
Its pretty good, but it needsmotion support for landscape mode.
We have them in the same folder, same file type. Now only one of our pokemom games shows up on the dashboard.
Not to be mean but folium has had some audio issues where the audio is breaking up. Also very laggy video quality. Just a little suggestion for a next update to fix the lag and choppy audio quality. Pls consider this review as some feedback.
Alguien que us diga que hacer tengo el iPhone 11.
Pokmon moon does work great, but pretty rhythmic service and primary series does not works. We hope it will be fixed soon. Because before update, though it cracked, worked, but not it wont. It always cracks on loading page. Thank you Okay, it fixed by turning off shader, but new problem occurred. When we have to type nickname, no popup and game stop. This is a serious problem.
Edit june 2025: the app definitely works a lot better, we gave it 4 stars instead of 2 because it pretty much works now, but dislike the $5 price for an unfinished app. Shouldnt charge $5 for an app that only kinda works on an iphone 14. Lots of performance issues. Isnt optimized at all. But we mean at least the games run (kinda). Also the joystick location is stupid and annoying and doesnt make for a very enjoyable experience. For some reason only half of the A button works too, and if you press too far to the right, the device gives you haptic feedback like youre pushing it, but the input isnt registered. We originally gave this app 3 stars but lowered it to 2 after playing for more than an hour and realized how frequent crashes are (every 5-10 minutes regardless of our settings). We will give this a better review if they fix the horrendous issues with this app, but until then, dont buy this garbage.
It gets slower when playing games.
Very good emulator, but please fix the keyboard bug. It keeps crashing our games.
Im so happy with the fact that we can finally go back and re-experience all the games we used to love playing on our 3DS with this app. The only issue is the keyboard thing that keeps happening. Im not super new to emulating, but Im definitely not as knowledgeable as we wish we were. If we could fix it ourselves, we would (and Ive tried) but we guess Ill just have to wait til it gets fixed for us to be able to play our favorite games again. </3.
Ever since todays update, the pop-up that should appear for keyboard entries doesnt show up and the game crashes. This happens for games where you make Miis (Mii Maker, Tomodachi Life, Miitopia), and maybe even more. Im unsure if this is a bug, or if CytrusAzahar doesnt support it, or something else, but please bring it back soon because it makes some games unplayable and turns away a large amount of possible downloaders. Also, make save and load state buttons movable, theyre in the way.
We believe that the buttons should be changed up a bit they feel clunky.
So far we enjoy the app but alpha sapphire keeps freezing please release an update to fix this.
Its been months, can you please fix the keyboard :c.
We cant find a away to enable cheats.
We spent five dollars on this app a few weeks ago. We downloaded Tamagotchi life because none of the other emulators work on this specific game and we wanted to feel like a kid again so once we started playing the game, we noticed we couldnt put the name of the island we wanted this is frustrating and can you please fix this.
For some odd reason we can't use the keyboard for some type of reason and we got the app yesterday but doesn't work :p we hope they fix it soon.
We were so excited to try this out and it works, but it is extremely laggy. Revised: it deleted our game:(.
We literally cant play our games. Every time we choose a specific option in-game it crashes. The new update screwed up everything, fix it please.
Some games crash whenever a keyboard input is required. Somebody uploaded a fix to this glitch, but with most recent update the fix no longer works. Will come back and edit review + give more stars if/when bugs are fixed which make games unplayable.
Better apps on they market this one seems to have bad performance compared to the competition.
Ive downloaded decrypted ROMs from trusted websites and had them processed to fit the file format Folium demands but even despite it loading and the buttons working its really hard to play because the loading time between scenes in games are long, the music is sometimes clunky and distorted, or something specific pop-ins or pop-outs where the terrain suddenly shows or disappears (our terrain disappeared so bad our character fell into a abyss and triggered a falling animation we didnt even know existed when you cant jump.).
When we bought the app we tried to login to our Apple ID but it just keeps not letting us login.
It worked well for a bit, then it keeps crashing. Hope they fix it soon.
Even if have the best iPhone , it dont run good . We play the least hardware heavy games and it still dont work.
Idk if Im just dumb but we put in the correct files and they didnt work it just showed the cytrus word but not the game or anything else.
Im trying to type an island but there is NO KEYBOARD.
Before we start this before the update it was working PERFECTLY. We dedicated a lot of time to Tomodachi life and our super mario bros game. Now we cannot even play any of our games. Everytime we load a game its stuck on a white screen. We dont know what to do. We havent been able to play since the update and we just want to play our games again. Please please please fix it :(.
We had this emulator for a few months, worked fine until a couple weeks ago when our games started disappearing (we still have the ROMS on our phone) and so we deleted the app and redownloaded it to see if it worked which in fact did NOT work, we even redownloaded the ROMS and to no avail it still didnt work, so we dont recommend paying for this emulator.
The game loads and we were able to select our character and partner. Our game crashes when our character looks at his reflection in the water. Please fix this we will update our review.
This app used to work fine when we used it a while back. But for whatever reason, when we install a 3ds rom, it adds Cytrus to the list of consoles but the game doesnt show up. And also, when we try to open a DS, game, with MelonDS, it just buzzes and is stuck on a white screen, and with the other core option, just crashes the app. Very confused, plz fix.
WHERES THE KEYBOARD AT??? WHY DO MY GAMES FREEZE THE SECOND THEY LOAD.
We see frequent updates being released but its hardly anything worth updating. Quick example, The save states dont even work so why are they still even there? Just fix the important stuff and folium will be great.
Owner, Im playing on our iPad , using this app, and we put a 3ds rom in, and it doesnt work? Why? Pls fix this, if you do, we,ll give you a 5 star.
The game was running a bit choppy sometimes, but it was working completely fine. We turned the graphics up slightly and suddenly we started crashing every time we tried to enter an area. We reinstalled the rom, deleted our save, reverted the settings, nothing worked. Really bummed about this :(.
Removed the custom layout feature for portrait viewing, making all the games unplayable as the buttons cover the screen and you cant change the screen size to move out of the way for it anymore in portrait.
Firstly,this is a great simulator,but our English is not very good and l am looking forward to joining Simplified Chinese.
This app had been a great experience and Im glad it runs some of our favorite games well. But hears the bad news when we try to plug in our backbone controller into our iPhone the screen would automatically go to black which is unplayable when not visible, secondly the layout options for how the screens look has now suddenly disappeared which was really nice to have. We really hope this gets fixed soon, we were really looking forward to playing games with our controller.
Amazing progress so far but the newest version games are running smoother then ever but freeze on any kind of progress you make this is the only problem im going through once thats fixed this emulator will be enjoyable.
Has a lot of promise. But the last update wont let us enter in any of the games plus we now have triplicates of each game. Ive heard good things about the recent update but as of then. Our iPad will have to wait.
The issue is any type of controller we try to connect even a backbone the screen goes back the game runs smoothly and everything but Id prefer to play with a controller and its not allowing us to do that could you please fix.
When first got the app it was working but now a month later when we try to tap on the game its not working.
This recent update (sometime within the last few days) + previous update boosted performance a lot!! For context, we have 13 pro max, usually play pokemon omega ruby & ultra moon & occasionally Spider-Man edge of time (purely to test max performance). Only problem is now when we try to use backbone controller the screen goes black. Before, it would show on screen controller with this plugged in, and before that controller-functioning was perfect but the games lagged. So basically the update was 2 steps forward, 1 step back. Im thinking one more update to fix controller compatibility will make this emulator close to perfect.
New update says it makes it so onscreen controls are removed when controller is connected we connected our backbone and the whole screen is black.
We purchased this to play Pokmon of course. Its super laggy, and we suppose its not calibrated to work with a PlayStation controller because when we try to link it up the whole screen goes black lol. Would give five stars if these things can be troubleshooted.
Before the update that came out a few days ago we would have said that this was not worth $5, but now that this new update has come out we would definitely say this is worth buying. The only bad thing we have to say is the layout but we know the developer has said they will be fixing it any day now.
User feedback from Apple App Store
App Details
- Version: 1.34
- Size: 63.65 MB
- iOS: 16.0 or later
- Languages: EN, ID
- Content Advisory:
- Developer: [Jarrod Norwell]()
Last updated: 28th October 2025 | Genre: | Developer: Jarrod Norwell