SynoPiia/PSXS5

PSXS5 (PlayStation X Super 5) is a PlayStation 1 emulator that installs as an app on the PS5 home screen.

• Two emulators are built into the app:
  • Beetle PSX HW (Mednafen), accurate, and drawn on the PS5's GPU through Vulkan at up to 16x the PS1's resolution, with PGXP.
  • PCSX-ReARMed, on the CPU. It needs no BIOS.
  • PSXS5 picks Beetle when it can, game by game.
• You pick a game from a cover-flow shelf with your covers.
• RetroAchievements, cheats for every game, save states and quick resume.

The in-game shots show a test picture; your games appear there.

PSXS5 is a hobby project, made for the love of the PS1 library. No company or schedule is behind it, and nothing is for sale. Expect rough edges. Bug reports that come with /data/PSXS5/logs/psxs5.log are the most helpful.

• Up to 16x resolution on the GPU. Beetle PSX HW renders through Vulkan: native, 2x, 4x, 8x or 16x, at full speed.

• No more wobbly 3D. PGXP (precise geometry) keeps polygons still and textures straight.

• The right emulator, automatically. Emulator: Automatic uses Beetle when the BIOS for the game's region is there, and PCSX-ReARMed otherwise. Both share one memory card per game.

• Five themes. Classic, Neon Arcade, Memory Card (light and dark, a grid of covers) and Record Shelf (spines on a shelf), each with its own colours and fonts.

• The DualSense as a light gun. Point the controller at the screen in GunCon and Justifier games (Time Crisis, Point Blank...); R2 fires.

• Adaptive triggers. R2 feels like a gas pedal in racing games, and R2 / L2 can be the gas and brake.

• Profiles. Each person keeps their own memory cards, save states, settings, play time and RetroAchievements sign-in.

• Text guides and manuals. Read a walkthrough .txt or a manual's pages from the in-game menu.

• Game art. Title screens and gameplay pictures in Details, the game's own artwork around the picture, and an idle slideshow.

• Quick resume. Leave a game and pick it up later: the shelf offers Continue (with a picture of where you were) or Start over.

• Rewind and fast forward. Hold the touchpad and press L2 to go back a few seconds, or R2 to speed through cutscenes.

• Save states with pictures. Ten slots per game, each showing a thumbnail and how long ago it was saved.

• One-switch widescreen. Turns on a game's widescreen code from the cheat library and shows 16:9.

• CRT look. Light or strong scanlines, and a soft glow or a 90s TV around the picture.

• Up to 4 players. A multitap for the games that support it: each PS5 controller is a player.

• Fan translations. Put a .ppf patch next to a game and PSXS5 applies it when the game starts.

• Memory card manager. See the saves on every game's card, export cards for other emulators, import .mcr, .mcd, .srm or .gme cards.

• Achievements list. Every achievement of the game you're playing, with badges, in two tabs: Achievable (closest first) and Achieved.

  • Counted achievements (18/80 dragons) show a progress bar, and a small tracker pops up in game when they move.

• Settings from your phone. Turn it on and scan the QR code: a settings page opens on any phone on the same network.

• Updates from GitHub. PSXS5 tells you when a new release is out and installs it from Settings → About.

• Native app. A real home-screen title (PPSA97510) with its own icon and art. Nothing is streamed and no PC is needed while you play.

• A shelf for your games. A 3D cover flow with reflections and a soft click as you browse.

  • Covers are matched by the serial read from each disc, so every region gets its own art.
  • Missing covers download on the console.
  • Your own art wins: a cover.png/.jpg in the game's folder, or an image in /data/PSXS5/covers/ named like the game's title, its disc file or its serial (Crash Bandicoot.png, SCUS-94900.jpg).
  • Or pick one by hand: on the shelf press Triangle (Details), then Square, and choose any image from covers/ or the game's folder.

• Plays every common format. .cue/.bin, .chd, .pbp (including multi-disc), .iso, .img, .mdf, .ccd and .m3u playlists for multi-disc games.

• Sharp on a 4K TV.

  • Internal resolution: native up to 16x with Beetle PSX HW and SwanStation, up to 2x with PCSX-ReARMed.
  • Upscale: 1x to 4x, with three filters:
    • Sharp pixels
    • Smooth pixels (Scale2x/3x)
    • xBR, the smoothest edges for 2D art
  • Aspect ratio: auto, 4:3, 16:9, 16:10, 1:1 pixels or stretch, and Crop black edges to hide the black lines at the top and bottom.
  • Integer scaling, bilinear smoothing and dithering on or off.

• Built for full speed. 60 fps (50 for PAL games). Beetle renders on the GPU; the picture and the menus reach the TV through Vulkan.

• RetroAchievements. Earn RetroAchievements as you play.

  • Unlocks and leaderboard results pop up on screen.
  • Optional hardcore mode.
  • See RetroAchievements.

• Cheats for every game, automatically. PSXS5 knows all 1,961 PlayStation cheat files of libretro-database (GameShark, Action Replay...), and DuckStation's cheat database (about 4,500 more files) for games libretro has nothing for.

  • When a game starts it finds that game's file and downloads it: no setup.
  • Toggle codes per game from the in-game menu.

• Save states. 10 slots per game, plus memory cards saved per game.

• DualSense ready.

  • DualShock analog with rumble.
  • On digital-only games, the left stick drives the D-pad.
  • Cross confirms and Circle goes back in the menus.

• Your BIOS, or none. Beetle PSX HW needs a BIOS dump of your own console for the game's region (scph5500.bin Japan, scph5501.bin USA, scph5502.bin Europe in bios/; the PC tool names them for you). Without one, PCSX-ReARMed runs the game with its built-in BIOS.

• Five languages. English, Français, Português (Portugal), Español (Latinoamérica) and 日本語, under Settings → System → Language.

• Quiet interface sounds. Five styles (Soft, Wood, Pop, Chime, Classic), a volume setting, or off.

• A PC tool for your library. tools/psxs5_sync.py prepares your games on Windows and uploads them over FTP:

  • unpacks archives
  • writes missing .cue sheets and .m3u playlists
  • fetches covers and cheats

• Logs that help. A session log and a crash report (with addresses for the symbol map) stay on the console.

• A jailbroken PS5 with etaHEN and kstuff loaded. Development happens on firmware 13.60.
• ShadowMountPlus, loaded at every boot. It puts PSXS5 on the home screen from /data/homebrew/PPSA97510/.
• An FTP client, such as etaHEN's FTP server on port 2121 with FileZilla, or the included PC tool.
• Your own games, dumped from discs you own.
• Optional: your own PS1 BIOS, dumped from your own console. Without one, the built-in HLE BIOS is used and most games run fine.

No BIOS files, games, keys or cheats with copyrighted content are included with PSXS5, and none will be provided. You have to supply your own legally made backups.

1. Download the PSXS5-v*.zip from the newest release (the top one) and extract it. Inside is a PPSA97510 folder and the PC tools.

2. Install the app. Copy the PPSA97510 folder to /data/homebrew/ on the PS5 over FTP. Then set its permissions to 777: in FileZilla, right-click the folder → File permissions → 777, recurse into subdirectories. Without this, the PS5 says "Can't start the game or app" (CE-107750-0). The PC tool does all of this for you:

   python tools/psxs5_sync.py app --app-dir PPSA97510 --host <PS5 IP>

3. Restart ShadowMountPlus (or the console). PSXS5 appears on the home screen.

4. Start PSXS5 once. It creates its folders in /data/PSXS5/ (see below) and shows an empty shelf that tells you where games go.

5. Add your games to /data/PSXS5/games/, one folder per game, with every file of the game inside it:

   /data/PSXS5/games/Final Fantasy VII/   FF7 Disc 1.cue, FF7 Disc 1.bin, ... (any format above)
   /data/PSXS5/games/Crash Bandicoot/     Crash Bandicoot.chd
   

   Or let the PC tool prepare and upload a whole folder of games (see PC tool).

   On a USB drive: put them in PSXS5/, PSXS5/games/ or data/PSXS5/games/ on the drive (any USB drive or extended storage). A BIOS in PSXS5/bios or data/PSXS5/bios there is used when the console's bios folder has none.

   Shelf still empty? When etaHEN doesn't unlock /data, PSXS5 can't look into the games folder and only shows the games listed in /data/PSXS5/library.txt, which the PC tool writes when it uploads. For games you copied another way (FileZilla, a file manager, a USB drive), let the tool list them:

   python tools/psxs5_sync.py index --host <PS5 IP> --fix-cues

   --fix-cues repairs .cue files that point at a .bin that was renamed, for example to BREATH~1.BIN by a FAT32 copy.

6. Optional: add your BIOS. Put your own dump directly in /data/PSXS5/bios/, not in a subfolder, and keep its standard name: scph5501.bin (US), scph5500.bin (Japan) or scph5502.bin (Europe) are the best choices; scph1001.bin and scph101.bin also work. Settings → System shows whether it was found. From a PC: python tools/psxs5_sync.py bios scph5501.bin --host <PS5 IP>.

7. Restart PSXS5. Covers download the first time, then the shelf opens with your games.

Where do things go? Games: /data/PSXS5/games/<Game name>/. BIOS: /data/PSXS5/bios/. PSXS5 creates both folders the first time it starts; you can also create them yourself over FTP.

A PS5 app can read and write files in /data, but it can't list folders unless something running on the console unlocks it. PSXS5 asks every time it starts. Any one of these answers:

The log shows the result: storage: unlocked, or storage: sandboxed (...) with the reason. Sandboxed still works, but PSXS5 then only knows the games in /data/PSXS5/library.txt (written by the PC tool's upload and index commands).

/data/homebrew/PPSA97510/     the app
/data/PSXS5/
├── games/<Game name>/        your games, one folder per game (a cheats.cht here overrides the library)
├── bios/                     optional: your BIOS dump (scph*.bin)
├── covers/                   your own cover images (named like the game, or picked on the shelf);
│                             downloads in default/ and 3d/, picks in custom/
├── cheats/                   the .cht library
├── saves/                    memory cards, one per game
├── states/                   save states, 10 slots per game
├── logs/psxs5.log            the session log (send this with bug reports)
├── retroachievements.ini     RetroAchievements sign-in (token only)
└── psxs5.ini                 settings

On the shelf

In a game

The PSXS5 menu has:

• resume
• save and load state (slots 0–9), and the auto-saves
• disc change, for multi-disc games
• cheats, and Find a code to make your own
• achievements
• the manual and text guides, when the game has them
• settings
• reset
• quit to the shelf

It also shows the time and how long you've been playing.

Text guides: put a walkthrough or FAQ (.txt) in the game's folder, or in a guides folder inside it, and read it from the PSXS5 menu → Guide. Manuals: page images (1.jpg, 2.jpg...) in <game folder>/manual/.

Video settings apply while you play. Emulator, internal resolution, PGXP, region, BIOS and controller apply from the next game.

PSXS5 never asks for your password on the console. You sign in once from your PC: the tool swaps your password for a login token, and only the token is copied to the PS5.

python tools/psxs5_sync.py ra-login --host <PS5 IP>

Restart PSXS5 and it signs in by itself. Start a game, and if it has an achievement set, a banner shows how many you have unlocked.

With several profiles (Settings → System → Who's playing), each person signs in for their own profile, using its name as shown on the console:

python tools/psxs5_sync.py ra-login --host <PS5 IP> --profile "Player 2"

• Your profile (Settings → Achievements) shows your points, the games you've mastered, recent unlocks and the games closest to mastery. Covers show a trophy badge with your progress.

• Hardcore mode (Settings → Achievements) turns off loading states and cheats, as RetroAchievements requires. Turning it on restarts the running game.

• Without a connection, unlocks are kept and sent when the console is back online.

• Games are recognised by the same disc hash RetroArch uses, so the usual RetroAchievements-compatible dumps (Redump) work. When a version isn't in any set (some PlayStation Store or patched images), PSXS5 says so.

Nothing to install: when a game starts, PSXS5 finds its file among libretro-database's PlayStation cheats and downloads it (the first time, the list appears a few seconds into the game). Games without a file there have no cheats.

In a game, open the PSXS5 menu → Cheats and switch codes on and off. Cheats tied to one level ("... Stage") can freeze the game when the level ends: turn them off before. Your choice is remembered per game. To use your own codes, put a cheats.cht in the game's folder.

tools/psxs5_sync.py runs on Windows with Python 3 (and 7-Zip for archives).

python tools/psxs5_sync.py plan    --source "D:\Games\PS1"                 # what it would do, read-only
python tools/psxs5_sync.py sync    --source "D:\Games\PS1" --host <PS5 IP>  # prepare + upload, one game at a time
python tools/psxs5_sync.py covers  --host <PS5 IP>                     # covers for your games
python tools/psxs5_sync.py cheats  --host <PS5 IP>                     # the cheat library
python tools/psxs5_sync.py bios    scph5501.bin --host <PS5 IP>        # your own BIOS dump
python tools/psxs5_sync.py ra-login --host <PS5 IP>                    # RetroAchievements
python tools/psxs5_sync.py app     --app-dir PPSA97510 --host <PS5 IP> # install or update the app

sync handles the whole library, one game at a time:

• unpacks .7z / .rar / .zip archives, including archives inside archives and split archives
• writes missing .cue sheets and .m3u playlists for multi-disc games
• skips duplicates
• uploads to /data/PSXS5/games/
• sets the permissions

It remembers what is already on the console, so you can run it again whenever you add games.

• Beetle PSX HW needs a BIOS for the game's region; without it PSXS5 uses PCSX-ReARMed (up to 2x).
• Sandboxed mode. If etaHEN won't unlock /data, PSXS5 still runs: it reads the game list the PC tool uploads (library.txt) instead of listing the folder.
• Closing from the PS button crashed the console once during testing while /data was unlocked through etaHEN. If it happens to you, set Settings → System → Unlock /data with etaHEN to Off and let us know.
• The PS5's own keyboard and on-screen keyboard aren't used, so text entry (like the RetroAchievements sign-in) happens on the PC.

The PS5 app is built by GitHub Actions on every push (Actions → latest run → PSXS5-PPSA97510 artifact). To build it yourself on Linux or WSL (Ubuntu 24.04):

sudo apt install clang-18 lld-18 llvm-18 make ninja-build ccache pkg-config python3 python3-venv tar unzip wget
git clone --recursive https://github.com/SynoPiia/PSXS5.git
cd PSXS5
make            # -> dist/PPSA97510/
make desktop    # optional PC test build (needs libsdl2-dev libcurl4-openssl-dev zlib1g-dev)

make builds PCSX-ReARMed (tools/build-core.sh), Beetle PSX HW (tools/build-beetle.sh) and rcheevos (tools/build-rcheevos.sh) as static libraries, links the RADV Vulkan driver (tools/fetch-radv.sh), compiles src/ and signs eboot.bin. APP_VULKAN=0 builds without Vulkan and Beetle.

PSXS5 is built on the work of a lot of people. Thank you all.

• notaz, the PCSX / PCSX-Reloaded teams and the libretro contributors, for PCSX-ReARMed, and for libretro, the interface PSXS5 drives both emulators through.
• Ryphecha and the Mednafen team, the Beetle PSX contributors and Themaister (parallel-psx), for Beetle PSX HW, and Mihawk-99 for its PS5 port and for the PS5 port of Mesa's RADV Vulkan driver.
• BlackBearReloaded, for ps5-native-app-boilerplate, the build pipeline, runtime and deploy tooling that turn PSXS5 into a home-screen app.
• John Törnblom, for the ps5-payload-dev SDK, and PacBrew's SDL2 and libcurl ports.
• SvenGDK, for SharpProspero, whose ELF converter and FSELF writer sign eboot.bin.
• The etaHEN team, for etaHEN: the HEN, its FTP server and ELF loader, and the on-demand jailbreak PSXS5 asks for to reach /data. Thanks also to the kstuff authors and maintainers.
• drakmor, for ShadowMountPlus, which puts PSXS5 on the home screen, and VoidWhisper, for ShadowMount, which it's based on.
• ArkSama / Team PHU and mpereiraesaa, for PS5-Lapy-JB-Daemon, the fallback sandbox elevation.
• RetroAchievements, for the achievements, the community that makes the sets, and its rcheevos library.
• xlenore/psx-covers, for the covers the shelf downloads.
• The libretro-database contributors, for the PlayStation cheat library.
• Swordpdf, for PS5SX2. Its shelf and project page inspired PSXS5's, and studying it and the other PS5 emulator ports showed how a native emulator title runs on the console.
• Hyllian, for the xBR upscaler, and Andrea Mazzoleni (AdvanceMAME), for Scale2x / Scale3x.
• Sam Lantinga and the SDL contributors for SDL2, Daniel Stenberg for curl, Sean Barrett for stb, Rasmus Andersson for the Inter font, Google and Adobe for Noto Sans JP (the Japanese text), and Doug Lea for dlmalloc.
• Microsoft's DirectXTex, Pillow and 7-Zip, for the art pipeline and the PC tool.
• Developed with the help of Claude Code.

Licences for everything above are in THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.md.

PSXS5 is free software under the GPL-3.0-or-later. PCSX-ReARMed is GPL-2.0-or-later, with parts under LGPL-2.1-or-later. SwanStation is GPL-3.0; its PS5 port builds on darkxex's SwanStationPS5.

PSXS5 is not affiliated with or endorsed by Sony Interactive Entertainment. "PlayStation" is a registered trademark of Sony Interactive Entertainment Inc. It is used here only to describe what the emulator does.

PSXS5 doesn't include and won't provide BIOS files, games or keys. Only use dumps of discs and consoles you own.