You are legally required to dump your games from your Nintendo Switch. To do so, please follow our in-depth [Quickstart Guide](https://yuzu-emu.org/help/quickstart/).
yuzu requires console keys to play your games. Please follow our [Quickstart Guide](https://yuzu-emu.org/help/quickstart/) to dump these keys and system files from your Nintendo Switch.
### **yuzu starts with the error "Unable to start application: Os { code: 2, kind: NotFound, message: “The system cannot find the file specified.” }"**
This problem is usually caused by a false positive of your antivirus software, most commonly by Avast and AVG. These applications will often incorrectly detect yuzu as malicious software and delete the executable as a result.
Afterwards, follow the instructions below for `yuzu will not update further or starts with a Qt platform error` to delete any residual files of the failed installation.
* Close all instances of yuzu and any installer processes you may have running.
* Press Win+R, in the opened window type `%localappdata%` and press Enter.
* Select the `yuzu` folder and delete it. If it is being used by another process, please double-check that you do not have any yuzu related applications running.
You are likely experiencing Shader Caching. Shaders are small programs running on a graphic card, responsible for rendering graphics like terrain, explosions, characters, etc. Since a PC cannot directly execute switch shaders, It first has to translate them to a format a PC can understand. This translation process is time-consuming and you'll notice it in two ways:
* While playing, if yuzu needs to translate a new shader, the game will stutter. Loading into a game for the first time can give long freezes due to the number of shaders. As you keep playing, the amount of stuttering will decrease.
* When launching a game, the shader cache is loaded. To speed up this process there exists an additional "precompiled" cache. This cache may get reset every time you update yuzu or install a new GPU driver. The precompiled cache will then be compiled from scratch, causing a longer load time.
Currently, the Vulkan renderer does not have a disk shader cache. This means that subsequent game loads will require the building of shaders each time.
To add mods to a specific game, simply right click the game in yuzu's games list, select `Open Mod Data Location` and structure your mod files similar to this example:
The mods provided on our [Switch Mods](https://yuzu-emu.org/wiki/switch-mods/) page are already structured accordingly and only need to be extracted into the mod directory folder as is.
Once added to the correct mod directory, simply right click the game again, select properties and activate the installed mod. The same process can be followed in reverse for de-activating mods
Installing updates and DLC is simple. In the top left corner of the emulator window, select `File / Install Files to NAND`, then select the file you wish to install. Once installed, your files should load automatically and the installed update or DLC will be shown in the games list add-ons column of the corresponding game.
If you wish to activate/deactivate a specific update or DLC then right click your game in the games list, select `Properties`, then enable or disable as needed.
Afterwards, go to `Settings / System / Filesystem tab` and click on `Reset Metadata Cache` on the bottom. This will refresh the games list addons column.
Since the Nintendo Switch is a complicated device controller input wise, you will need to change some input settings depending on the game you wish to play.
yuzu is an experimental open-source emulator for the Nintendo Switch from the creators of Citra.
It is written in C++ with portability in mind, with builds actively maintained for Windows, Linux and macOS. The emulator currently can play various commercial titles and homebrew applications with varying degrees of success.
yuzu is actively tested and supported on various 64-bit versions of Windows (7 and up) and Linux. macOS is no longer supported due to Apple deprecating OpenGL.
yuzu currently requires an OpenGL 4.5 capable GPU and a CPU that has high single-core performance. It also requires a minimum of 8 GB of RAM. For more details, see our [Quickstart Guide](https://yuzu-emu.org/help/quickstart/#hardware).
yuzu has an active team of open-source developers. The list of contributors can be [found on GitHub](https://github.com/yuzu-emu/yuzu/graphs/contributors).
