Your games.
Your phone.

1. From inside the app. Tap + on the library screen and pick the files. You can select several at once, and they can come from iCloud Drive, Google Drive, Dropbox or anywhere else that shows up in the Files picker.
2. From the Files app. Open Files → On My iPhone → iGBA and drop your files in there. Then go back to iGBA and pull down on the library to refresh.

You can also long-press a game file anywhere in iOS, choose Share or Open With, and pick iGBA. That works from Safari downloads, Mail, AirDrop and Messages.

• Games: .gba, .gbc, .gb (also .agb and .bin).
• Archives: .zip, .7z and .gz. You do not need to unpack them — drop the archive in and iGBA pulls the games out of it.
• Saves from elsewhere: .sav battery saves and .sgm save states.
• iGBA files: .igbasave (a save state with its screenshot) and .igbabackup (a full backup).

No, and it never will. iGBA ships with no game and no BIOS, it does not download any, and I cannot tell you where to find any. Bring files you are legally entitled to use — for example a copy you made from a cartridge you own, or homebrew the author gives away.

In its own folder, which you can open yourself: Files → On My iPhone → iGBA.

• Games sit at the top level of that folder.
• Battery saves are the .sav files next to them, with the same name as the game.
• Save states live in Save States, in a subfolder named after the game.
• Delete the app and all of it goes with it. Nothing is stored on any server of mine.

• iPhone and iPad: iOS and iPadOS 15 or newer.
• Apple Watch: watchOS 10 or newer.
• The app is in 33 languages and works completely offline.

• A save is the game’s own save — the one you make at a save point, in the menu, in the certain games Centre. It is the .sav file, and it is the one that survives everything.
• A save state is a snapshot of the exact moment you are in, taken by the emulator. It restores instantly, mid-jump if you want, and it is the .sgm file.

Use both. Save states are a safety net; the game’s own save is the real one.

1. The name has to match. A .sav only loads for a game file with exactly the same name. Golden Sun.gba pairs with Golden Sun.sav — Golden Sun (E).sav will not load.
2. Check the flash memory size. A few games need more save memory than iGBA guesses. certain games Fire Red is the famous one. Go to Settings → Saving → Flash memory size and pick Flash 128K, then reopen the game.
3. Try a save state. Pause → Save States, and load the newest one. The automatic ones are in there too.
4. Check free space. A phone with no room left cannot finish writing a save, and that is what usually corrupts one.

Yes, as long as you have not played on much. iGBA keeps one generation back of every automatic save.

• Pause the game and open Save States. Alongside each automatic save there is the previous one, labelled as such. Load that.
• If the game auto-loaded a save when you opened it and that turned out to be the wrong one, the pause menu has Recover In-Game Save — it puts back the save from before that auto-load. It only appears when there is something to put back.

If you are on iGBA 2.12 or older, update. This safety net was made visible in 2.13.0, after a player lost the same Golden Sun save three times and wrote a review about it. He was right, and it is fixed.

Open Settings → Saving → Backup and export. You get one .igbabackup file with your saves, your save states, your settings and your button layouts inside it. Put it in iCloud Drive or mail it to yourself.

To restore it, open the same screen on the new device and import the file. You can also share a single save state on its own as an .igbasave, screenshot included.

Do this before you change phone, and do it before you start using cheats.

Usually yes. Battery saves (.sav) are a standard format, so a save from another the handheld emulator normally loads straight into iGBA. Import it from the game’s entry in the library, or drop it in the iGBA folder named exactly like the game.

Save states are a different matter: they are tied to the emulator that made them, so a state from another app will not load here.

1. Start the game, then tap the pause icon.
2. Open Game Cheats.
3. Pick one from the list that comes with iGBA, or tap + to paste your own.
4. Switch it on and go back to the game.

GameShark, Game Genie, Code Breaker and Action Replay codes all work. You do not need a master code first — iGBA does not require one.

Make a save state before you switch a cheat on. Some codes write into parts of the save the game never expected, and that is how a file gets corrupted.

• Check the type. Choosing the wrong format for a code is the single most common cause. A Game Genie code entered as GameShark reaches the emulator as nonsense. If a code cannot be applied at all, iGBA now tells you instead of showing a tick and doing nothing.
• Check the revision. Codes are written for one specific version of a game. iGBA reads your game’s revision and warns you when the code you added was made for a different one — that is the “cheats are all over the place” problem, and the warning tells you before you waste an hour.
• Some codes need a trigger. Item and encounter codes often do nothing until you walk into a new area or open the PC.
• Turn cheats off before saving if you are unsure about one.

Load the save state you made before turning it on. If you did not make one, look in Pause → Save States: the automatic saves keep several points in time, including one generation back of each. Turn the cheat off first, or you will corrupt the restored file too.

Yes. This works, and it is one of the things iGBA does that most iPhone emulators do not.

1. Both players open the same game on their own device.
2. Both put the devices on the same Wi‑Fi, or close enough for Bluetooth.
3. Pause → Link Cable on both. Allow the local network prompt the first time.
4. Walk into the Cable Club, or whatever the game calls it, and trade or battle as you would with a real cable.

It has to be the same game on both sides. Two different games cannot talk to each other, and iGBA will say so rather than leave you waiting.

On the handheld and GBC, linking restarts the game on both devices. iGBA asks first and saves a state called Pre-Link so nothing is lost.

Yes — that is what Self Trade is for. Pause → Self Trade and iGBA runs a second copy of the game as your trading partner, so you can move a certain games from one save to the other, or evolve the ones that only evolve by trading.

To stop it, use the red button at the top of the screen, or Pause → Stop Self Trade. It stays there the whole time, so you are never stuck inside a trade.

• Both devices need the local network permission. Check Settings → Privacy & Security → Local Network and make sure iGBA is on, on both phones.
• Same Wi‑Fi network, and not a guest network or a public hotspot — those usually block devices from seeing each other.
• A VPN on either phone will stop it. Turn it off for the session.
• Keep the app in the foreground on both sides while you connect.

Pause → the event-distribution feature delivers the event items that were originally handed out at the console maker events and are otherwise unobtainable — the Eon Ticket and friends. Pick the game, pick the gift, collect it in-game where the game tells you to.

Move them. Pause → Controls, or Settings → Controllers. Everything is on one page: position, size, colour and transparency, per button. Drag a button and it stays exactly where you dropped it — the editor, the preview and the game all agree since 2.13.0.

• Choose a d-pad, a d-pad with diagonals, or a joystick, and try each one in the tester right below it.
• 8 skins, a colour per button, light and dark themes.
• Hide any button you never use.
• Landscape and portrait keep their own layout.

Yes. MFi and Bluetooth controllers work — pair it in iOS Settings and iGBA picks it up. On iPad a keyboard works too. Buttons can be remapped in Settings → Controllers.

• Rewind for when you fall in the pit, and turbo up to 3× for grinding.
• Hold button, so you do not have to keep a finger on B for twenty minutes.
• Macros and TAS for repeating an input sequence exactly.
• Record clip and screenshot to share what just happened.
• Restart console, and a restart that reloads the game’s own save.

You can hide any row you never use: Settings → Video & Audio → Pause menu. The rows that get you out of a game cannot be hidden, on purpose.

• Close other apps. Emulation wants the whole processor.
• Low Power Mode throttles the phone — turn it off while you play.
• Settings → Performance has frame skip. A small amount of skip buys a lot of smoothness on older devices.
• Heavy screen filters cost more than they look. Try turning the filter off to see if that is what it is.

Settings → Video & Audio and Settings → Appearance. Screen filters, full screen, and colour palettes for the monochrome the handheld games — the palette applies while you are playing, so you can flick through them and keep the one you like.

Yes. The game has its own volume, separate from the phone’s. Turn the game music down, keep the sound effects, and play whatever you want over the top. There is also a three-band equaliser in Settings → Video & Audio.

• Your library shows up on your wrist.
• You can play with the iPhone locked in your pocket.
• The Digital Crown can press A and B.

Set it up in Settings → Apple Watch. It needs watchOS 10 or newer.

Because iGBA is free, and the ads are what pay for it staying free for the people who cannot pay. I build it on my own.

iGBA PRO turns them off for good — monthly, yearly, or one payment for life. The price for your country is shown in the app. If you would rather not pay, watching an ad now and then helps just as much.

Open Settings and tap Restore Purchases, signed in with the same Apple Account you bought it with. That asks Apple what you own and puts PRO back.

If it still does not come back, write to me with the date of the purchase and I will sort it out. Since 2.13.0 PRO is no longer dropped when you are offline, which was the usual cause of this.

Refunds go through Apple, not through me — I never see the payment. Use reportaproblem.apple.com. If something in the app is broken, tell me first; fixing it is usually faster than a refund.

1. Update it. Check the App Store — the fix may already be out.
2. Restart the phone. It clears a surprising number of these.
3. Free up space. A device with nothing left cannot write a save and starts behaving strangely.
4. Back up before reinstalling. Export your .igbabackup first. Deleting the app deletes your games and saves with it.

If it still crashes, write to me. Tell me your device, your iOS version, the iGBA version and the game you were playing, and I can usually find it.

Tell me which one, and exactly what happens. Emulation is a long list of individual games behaving differently from each other, and almost everything on this page got fixed because someone took the time to describe one game properly.

Write to me. Most of what is in iGBA today came from people writing reviews and emails saying what was broken or missing — the movable buttons, the cheat warnings, the link cable fixes, the pause menu you can trim down. It is worth your time to send it.