Azahar, the poster child of continuing lobby across the lost project that was Citra, has updated to finally implement true dual-screen emulation for Nintendo 3DS games.
Starting with release 2123.3, the emulator can drive two displays independently and inject touch for either at once – this is a key feature that opens up much more realistic Android handheld experiences and dock setups built around a second screen.
The timing matters. A wave of dual-screen handhelds and peripherals is coming, but short of native twin-panel output, most worked through kludgy mirroring or overlay gimmicks. Just as an update replaces those workarounds with real compositing, better input handling and a rotation fix more suited to the common add-ons.
What This Update Really Delivers for Dual Screens
Release 2123.3 adds split-screen support for two displays with touch input working on either panel, meaning games that scatter their UI and action across the handheld’s displays work as intended. The emulator now treats each surfaces as separate framebuffers, so that optimizes the placements of images and reduces judder when one view is composited on another random view.
There’s also a specific fix for the Retroid Dual Screen Add-on, which comes with a vertically oriented screen. Azahar has now made it so that the 3DS top screen will rotate properly, solving a common source of input lag and incorrect aspect ratios of certain devices.
Under the hood, these changes include some modifications to how Azahar syncs the two views with the renderer, so button presses and touch taps land on the correct frame. Which is important when playing games like Kid Icarus Uprising or Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate and you need to alternate quickly between action gameplay and the UI as part of your gameplay loop.
Why Two Screens Matter Now for Modern Handhelds
Dual-panel hardware is back in fashion for handheld makers, but the software stack has been the sticking point. Earlier models like the transforming SUGAR 1 used mirrored output or floating windows to simulate a second screen for 3DS games. That method introduces lag, makes touch mapping complex and takes you out of the action.
Native two-screen output is the best pairing with new hardware that everyone will be getting. Announced handhelds like the potentially 7-inch AYANEO Pocket DS with its rumored Snapdragon G3x Gen 2 chip or even smaller such as the AYN Thor have plans to ship with a dual-screen layout that’s beggarly asking for emulator-level support and not ad-hoc hacks. Accessories such as retired Retro-X’s Dual Screen Add-on also stand to gain when emulators handle orientation, scaling and input routing.
The Developer Behind This Dual-Screen Emulator Breakthrough
Most of the code is courtesy developer SapphireRhodonite, who has been stealthily constructing dual-screen forks for several other emulators such as Azahar, MelonDS and even Cemu. Per project notes and community feedback, he partnered with AYANEO to test using an early Pocket DS unit to confirm behavior on real dual-screen hardware rather than simply on external displays.
It’s his first official Azahar release with two screens. Segments of these have also been combined in the MelonDS Android port, suggesting a trend toward native multi-screen support among Nintendo handheld emulation projects.
How to Use It and What to Expect from Release 2123.3
The update is out now via the app’s authorized distribution outlets. Once release 2123.3 is installed, dive into display settings to turn on dual-screen mode and set the rotation and scaling options that work with your hardware – whether that’s just your monitor or an external one using the Retroid add-on.
Games that use the bottom screen for maps, inventories and touch-centric mechanics should look more faithful. In practice, titles such as The Legend of Zelda A Link Between Worlds or Fire Emblem Awakening seem a lot more like original hardware when you don’t have the UI and the action fighting for space on a single screen.
As with any sort of emulation, performance will vary depending on your device. The 3DS’ native top screen is rendered at 400×240 (800×240 effectively for stereoscopic), so Azahar’s scaling and frame pacing can affect GPU load. Modern Android chipsets will easily handle the majority of 3DS workloads, but native dual output combined with high-res upscaling might need tweaking.
A Better Signal for Android and Handheld Emulation
Azahar’s move is a sign of the broader maturation of Android emulation. Issue trackers for key projects on GitHub reveal ongoing effort for multi-display pipelines, better touch passthrough and latency when rendering. Hardware makers have taken notice, seeding developers with prototypes ever more frequently to better close the loop between devices and software.
For players, the upfront win is obvious: less settling when that back catalog you’re revisiting was done for a pair of screens not meshing into one. For developers, it’s a testament to how being coördinated—community forks participating in official builds, vendor testing, open patch review—can move niche features into the platform mainstream at breakneck speed.
One last time to say it: only use legally created game dumps from your own cartridges. With that box ticked, Azahar’s new release enables relatively good dual-screen 3DS emulation on Android for the first time.