PlayStation 2 games on iPhone and iPad.
The install source for ARMSX2 on iOS.
Add it once, and your sideloader keeps the app up to date.
Open ios.armsx2.net on your iPhone or iPad and pick your sideloader. LiveContainer, SideStore and Feather each get a button that hands the source straight over.
Those buttons only work on the device itself, so if you are reading this on a computer, paste the URL in by hand instead:
https://ios.armsx2.net/apps.json
Library |
In game |
Pause menu |
Appearance |
- iPhone or iPad on iOS 17 or later, with JIT. Without JIT the emulator falls back to an interpreter and most games are too slow to play.
- Bring your own PS2 BIOS and your own game files. Neither ships here, and neither is linked from here.
- Not every game runs. How well one does depends on your device, your iOS version and the game. Some are perfect, some are slow, some do not boot — the compatibility list is worth a look first.
| ARMSX2 iOS | ARMSX2 Nightly | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | The released build | The latest code, built automatically |
| How often | When upstream ships one | Most days |
| Testing | Release testing | Less than a release gets |
| Pick this if | You want to play | You want new features early |
Both live in the same source, so adding it once gets you both. The nightly appears once one has been mirrored.
They use different bundle identifiers, which means they install as two separate apps with separate save states, memory cards and settings. Installing a nightly cannot disturb a stable install, and the two never share data. Different icons and tint colours, too, so you can tell them apart in a list.
- armsx2.net — builds for other platforms, docs and the FAQ
- Compatibility list — check a game before you start
- Discord — where to ask when something breaks
- ARMSX2 source code — GPL-3.0
- Support development on Patreon or Ko-fi
Working on this repo
apps.json and checksums.json are generated, never edited by hand. npm run check:source fails if they drift from what the tooling would produce.
| Command | What it does |
|---|---|
npm run generate:source |
Rebuild apps.json and checksums.json |
npm run check:source |
Fail if the generated files are stale |
npm run validate:source |
Schema, asset, IPA and ledger checks |
npm run sync:upstream |
Publish the newest upstream stable iOS release |
npm run mirror:nightly |
Mirror the newest upstream nightly iOS build |
npm run smoke:live |
Check the published site against what it claims |
npm test |
Unit tests |
Entry points are named verb-first, the libraries they pull in are named noun-first. That holds for every file in scripts/.
| Script | Run by |
|---|---|
generate-source.js |
npm run generate:source and check:source |
validate-source.js |
npm run validate:source |
sync-upstream-ipa.js |
npm run sync:upstream, and the update workflow |
mirror-nightly.js |
npm run mirror:nightly, and the nightly workflow |
prune-nightly.js |
The nightly workflow — reads filenames on stdin, prints the ones safe to delete |
smoke-live.js |
npm run smoke:live |
The pieces they use:
source-builder.jsassemblesapps.jsonandchecksums.json.source-news.jsbuilds the news items.source-schema.jsonis the shapevalidate-source.jsenforces.ipa-metadata.jsreads an IPA: version, size, hash and the permissions it declares.nightly-releases.jsfinds upstream nightly builds.nightly-ipa.jsrepacks one so it installs beside the stable app.legacy-references.jsscans the repository for strings left over from the old hosting setup, and is the reasonvalidate:sourcetouches files that have nothing to do withapps.json.github-releases.jsandgithub-assets.jsare the only things that talk to GitHub.github-releases.jsalso turns a release body into store text.cli.js,constants.js,errors.jsandsource-utils.jsare the small shared pieces — argument parsing, the canonical URLs and bundle identifiers, typed errors, and JSON and URL helpers.- Tests live in
scripts/tests/.npm testrunsscripts/tests/*.test.json Node 22 or later.
Listing copy lives in metadata/, not in code. metadata/store.json holds the stable app and the source header; metadata/nightly.json holds the nightly app and the ledger of mirrored builds. Assets live in assets/ — icon.png for stable, icon-nightly.png for nightly, and the screenshots both channels share. index.html is the page served at the root of the site; it is hand-written and has no build step.
Published image URLs carry a ?v=<hash> fingerprint taken from the file's own
contents. The edge caches assets for years under a stable filename, so without it a
replaced icon or screenshot keeps serving the old bytes — which is exactly what
happened to assets/icon.png. index.html spells its fingerprints out by hand, and
validate:source fails if they drift from the files.
Release notes open with a link to the upstream release, because sideloaders preview only the first few lines and that link is the most useful thing to put there. Notes are written once and then left alone, so an edit to an upstream release body cannot make an unrelated push fail check:source. Run npm run generate:source -- --refresh-changelogs to deliberately re-pull them.
apps.json also carries a news array. Sideloaders render those as cards above the app list, one per iOS release plus the newest nightly, newest last because the carousel draws them back to front. When GitHub cannot be reached the already-published news is kept, so an unauthenticated CI run does not rewrite the file.
Stable builds are committed to ipas/ and their versions come from the IPA's own CFBundleShortVersionString. Nightly builds are mirrored straight to the server and recorded in metadata/nightly.json; the binaries are never committed, and retain in metadata/nightly.json decides how many are kept.
ARMSX2 is open source under GPL-3.0 and builds on PCSX2. It is not officially associated
with PCSX2, and not affiliated with Sony Interactive Entertainment or PlayStation.