ARMSX3 Setup Guide
Table of contents
Best devices for PS3 on Android
If you’re curious what the best devices are, here’s a few of my top picks:
- Snapdragon 8 Elite Device! AYN Odin 3 – (Review)
- Best All-Rounder Device! AYN Odin 2 Portal – (Review)
- Dual Screen Device! AYN Thor – (Review)
What is ARMSX3?
ARMSX3 is a Sony PlayStation 3 emulator on Android, based on RPCS3 which is the typical PS3 emulator everyone uses on PC.
ROMs & BIOS
Alright, now before we actually start the setup, you’re going to need PlayStation 3 games, of course.
I would suggest simply creating a ROMs folder on your internal storage or your SD card if you’re using one and then a ps3 folder inside of it, as that’s where we’re going to put our PS3 games.
PS3 ROMs are typically in one of three formats (and it must be decrypted):
- ISO
- JB Folder
- PKG
PS3 emulation also needs one other thing and that’s the PS3 firmware.
You can find that firmware here.
Scroll down to Update using a computer, and then click Download PS3 Update (sometimes you need to push and hold and select open in a new tab for the download to start).
The file should download as PS3UPDAT.PUP.
Installing ARMSX3
Alright, at this point, let’s finally install ARMSX3.
Head to the ARMSX3 Github, and download the latest release.
There are multiple options, so you have to choose the one that matches your Android version.
For example:
- A11 is Android 11
- A13 is Android 13
- A15 is Android 15
- Legacy is pre-Android 11
To see your Android version, on your Android device, go to Android settings > About > Android version.
Just grab whatever the latest is – you can see the Latest tag next to the title if you’re unsure.
Once you’ve installed it, go ahead and open it.
Click Next bottom right.
The first thing we need to do is tell ARMSX3 where to store all of our data, and we do not want the default option of the private Android/data folder as you’ll never be able to touch those files on a lot of devices.
Click Custom folder and then allow permission access.
Now, navigate to where you want to store the data – if you have an SD card, I’d suggest there otherwise internal storage is fine.
Create a folder right on the root of either just called ARMSX3 then select use this folder and allow.
That’s where all of your data will be. Click Next bottom right.
Remember that PS3 firmware file from earlier? We have to select it.
Choose Install PS3 firmware and navigate to the PS3UPDAT.PUP file from earlier and select it.
It should say installing firmware and might take a few minutes.
My app was trying to crash at this point – just keep choosing Wait if that happens to you, it should end up installing.
If you did it right, it should say Firmware installed.
Click Next bottom right.
Now we have to tell ARMSX3 where our PS3 games are located.
Click Pick ROMs Folder and navigate to your ROMs > ps3 folder and select use this folder and allow. Click Next bottom right.
Look over what we’ve done and click Let’s Go bottom right.
If your app is still trying to crash at this point, go ahead and close the entire app and reopen it.
Settings
Now we’re on the home page of ARMSX3 and you should see all of your games populated.
Use the top right to change from grid to list and vice versa.
You can also choose how to sort and some other preference related settings top right.
If you ever add new games, use the refresh button so ARMSX3 can see them.
Settings > App
Next, let’s jump into Settings through the three lines top left.
Let’s start with the App tab.
Enable Check on launch so you can get new updates, important since this app is still early and getting updates frequently.
Go ahead and choose Download Config Database to download all the per-game settings for each game.
This will take a few minutes to do.
I personally turn off the Boot animation, just to make things quicker.
Settings > Performance
I don’t touch any performance settings, however this is where you’d make changes you’d find online for specific games that need them or aren’t running well.
But I’d suggest doing that per-game which we’ll cover later.
Settings > Renderer
In Renderer, we can leave Graphics API as Auto, but sometimes higher end devices will want to choose Vulkan, and then if your device supports it, you can choose Download to see custom drivers.
StevenMXZ drivers are usually pretty good, but this is more for advanced users that know what they’re doing.
As of this written post, August 31st 2026, I use the StevenMXZ’s Turnip Gen8 V35 custom driver for Snapdragon 8 Elite and Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 devices.
Scroll down and if you want to use RetroArch Shaders, you can.
Just click the Download button, then Get on the right.
Then enable RetroArch Shaders and use Shader Preset to choose whichever shader you want to use.
Settings > Controls
Next head to Controls and scroll down to Button Mapping.
Depending on your controller or device, it may have automatically mapped your controls, but if not, just click each mapping and push the corresponding button on your device to map it.
My AYN Thor’s Left and Right sticks weren’t mapped, so I had to manually do those.
Scroll down and set On-screen controls to Off.
Settings > Hotkeys
Head to Hotkeys and there’s a few I like to use.
- Menu/Pause as my device’s back button or L3+X if I don’t have that
- Close Game or Close Game & Quit depending on what you want to do as L3+Y.
Settings > On-Screen
Scroll the tabs to On-Screen and if you want to see performance information, you can enable FPS and so on here, but there is a toggle in-game that’s easier to use.
Settings > Patches
Scroll the tabs to Patches.
Go ahead and click Download / update patch database.
Patches are essentially cheats, but also let’s you unlock framerate and a whole bunch more.
We’ll come back to this, exit Settings.
Per-Game Settings
Back on the main home screen, push and hold on a game to get a new menu and if you click settings, this is per-game settings.
Any settings you change here only applies to this game – great if you need to apply certain fixes and so on.
Patches
Scroll all the way over to the Patches tab and if your game has Patches, you’ll see them here.
You can enable or disable whatever you want from this screen.
In-Game
Otherwise go ahead and launch any game by tapping it on the home screen.
The first time you load any game, it’ll take a while to compile everything – might be a few minutes, might be a half hour – just be patient.
Go ahead and push your Menu hotkey to get the in-game menu.
You can do a whole bunch of things here, like swap discs or you can use close to exit, but scroll down a bit and turn on Tap to reveal pause to remove the on-screen Pause icon top right.
Where’s all of your data?
Last for today is where is all of your data, and it’s where you set it to when we did the setup at the beginning of the guide, which if you followed my instructions, would be a folder called ARMSX3 on the root of your internal storage or SD card.
Syncthing
ARMSX3 can easily be sync’d across all operating systems using Syncthing.