WinUAE is the most developed Amiga emulator, but it is written for Windows. FS-UAE is Frode Solheim’s answer for everyone else. Its home page describes it as “the cross-platform Amiga emulator for Windows, macOS and Linux, with a particular focus on games”, “based on the excellent emulation code from WinUAE which again builds on the work by the earlier authors of the original UAE”. The accuracy comes from WinUAE; what FS-UAE adds is the way you get a game running.
Fast facts
- Author: Frode Solheim and contributors
- Started: 2011
- Runs on: Windows, macOS, Linux and Raspberry Pi
- Emulation core: WinUAE’s, merged in regularly
- Current stable version: 3.2.35, September 2025; version 5 in development
- Licence: GNU General Public License
Following WinUAE
FS-UAE does not have its own emulation of the Amiga’s chips. Its changelog is a long run of entries such as “Updated emulation core from WinUAE 3400”, and the version 5 notes promise emulation “based on WinUAE 6.x emulation code”. The FS-UAE source repository is now “a superset of the WinUAE repository”, so that the two can be compared and built from the same shared code. When WinUAE improves its timing or adds hardware, FS-UAE picks it up.
The early versions built the rest of the program around that core. Version 0.9.1 added a Mac OS X build; 0.9.3 made FS-UAE compile on 64-bit Linux; 0.9.4 brought CD audio for the CDTV and CD32, and the release after it added the A500+ and A600.
Built for games
FS-UAE was designed to be driven from a sofa with a gamepad as well as from a desk. The FS-UAE Launcher, a separate program, lists games from an online database, first OAGD.net and later OpenRetro, and sets up each game’s configuration. It can install and run games through WHDLoad, the Amiga program that lets floppy games run from a hard disk. Later releases added shader filters for the picture, and the launcher has an experimental net play mode.
The same approach covers the Amiga’s own hardware range. FS-UAE runs the models WinUAE emulates, from the A500 with the original chipset to the A1200, A4000 and CD32 with AGA, and it can use an AROS replacement Kickstart taken from WinUAE when no real Kickstart ROM is available.
FS-UAE 5
The next major version is a rewrite of the program around the emulation. The version 5 README lists a new interface system written in Python and built into the emulator, SDL3 for video and input, disk images that can be changed through native file dialogs while the emulation runs (“possibly the most requested feature”), and emulation code updated to WinUAE 4.2.1 and later. It also lists what is missing so far, including shaders, net play and the gamepad interface, which are to be rebuilt.
Released source code
FS-UAE is free software under the GNU General Public License (version 2), with its source published on GitHub.
Sources
- FS-UAE home page (web, secondary): its description, the platforms, the 2011–2025 copyright, version 3.2.35 of 7 September 2025, and the GPL. https://fs-uae.net/
- FS-UAE source repository,
README.md,od-fs/README.md,od-fs/ChangeLogandCOPYING(web, secondary): the WinUAE superset, “Updated emulation core from WinUAE” entries, early version features, shaders, WHDLoad and net play in the launcher, the AROS Kickstart replacement “from WinUAE 3.1.0”, the version 5 plans and limits, and the GPL version 2 licence text. https://github.com/FrodeSolheim/fs-uae