Madeira Runs x86-64 Windows Games on a Stock iPhone, but Needs a Debugger for JIT

A GitHub project called Madeira runs x86-64 Windows PC games on non-jailbroken iPhones by combining Wine, the FEX-Emu translator and the DXMT graphics layer inside one iOS process. Its author, Will Faust, lists two games as playable and says the whole thing is "a research project, not a product: expect rough edges, per-title quirks and breaking changes."

The repository showed 1.1k stars, 188 forks, 9 open issues and 310 commits on 30 September 2026. GitHub's trending list credited it with 81 new stars that day, a small daily gain next to the other repositories on the list, which ranged up to 4,758.

What is in the stack

The README says Madeira "combines Wine (ARM64EC), FEX-Emu for x86-64 to ARM64 translation, and DXMT for D3D11 to Metal, running as a single Mach process on iOS with wineserver as a thread rather than a separate process."

Component	Job	Licence in the fork
Wine (ARM64EC build)	Windows API layer	LGPL-2.1-or-later upstream, relicensed GPL-3.0-or-later under LGPL-2.1 section 3
FEX-Emu	x86-64 to ARM64 translation	MIT upstream, modifications GPL-3.0-or-later
DXMT	Direct3D 11 to Metal	MIT upstream, modifications GPL-3.0-or-later

FEX-Emu is a userspace x86 and x86-64 emulator for ARM64 Linux, MIT licensed, with a modular core that lets it act as a WoW64 and ARM64EC backend for Wine. Madeira's contribution is getting that combination to run inside iOS's process rules.

The JIT problem

A translator has to generate machine code at runtime, and iOS restricts that. The README says JIT "on iOS requires a debugger to attach" and that StikDebug is what the project uses. The StikDebug repository describes itself as an on-device debugger and JIT enabler for iOS 17.4 and later. Search results describing it say it works for sideloaded apps that carry the get-task-allow entitlement.

That is why the README says the project cannot go through the App Store. It also needs an Apple ID for signing, and provisioning profiles from a free account expire after 7 days, so the app has to be rebuilt weekly. The build itself spans several toolchains: the Unix-side Wine libraries, the ARM64EC PE modules, FEX, DXMT and the iOS app, driven by build/*/build.sh scripts and xcodebuild.

What actually runs

The README's games section is short. Thumper and ULTRAKILL are "playable". Marvel Cosmic Invasion "has reached gameplay, though a run has also ended in an unexplained termination and its controls are not yet reliable." Other titles "reach gameplay at low frame rates."

There are no frame-rate figures, no memory numbers and no minimum iOS version in the README. The development device named is an iPhone 13 Pro with an A15 chip. A demo is not a compatibility list, and three named titles is what exists.

Licensing and AI-assisted code

The project is GPL-3.0-or-later, and the README says distributed derivatives "must remain open source." It also acknowledges AI-assisted contributions and tells contributors not to submit AI-generated changes from the fork upstream to FEX-Emu, citing that project's policy.

Stars are not adoption here: sideloading, weekly re-signing and a debugger dependency filter the audience to people who already run emulators on iPhones. See the VoiceStudio star count against its actual engine and the Paperclip advisory tally for the same gap between stars and readiness.

The README lists no roadmap and no target date for anything beyond the three named games.