PKForge Brings a Pokémon Bank to Android Handhelds as the Real One Closes

PKForge is a free Android app that turns a retro handheld into a Pokémon save editor and storage Bank. It reads the save folders of the emulators you already use, finds every Pokémon game in them, and lets you edit, legalise and move Pokémon between any two of them, from Red and Blue to Scarlet and Violet. It is open source, built on the engine behind the PC editor PKHeX, and designed first for dual-screen handhelds like the AYN Thor. The current version, 3.1.1, came out on 16 October 2026.

Everything below comes from the developer's GitHub repository, its wiki and release notes, read on 3 November 2026, plus Retro Dodo's report on the 3.0 launch. We have not run it ourselves. The screenshots are the developer's own.

A Black 2 box on the main screen, the inspector on the second. Image: PKForge on GitHub (GPLv3). The header combines the home screen and the Mystery Gift gallery. PKForge is not affiliated with this site, Nintendo, Game Freak or The Pokémon Company.

Download it from GitHub, nowhere else

Search for PKForge and one of the first results is pkforgeapp.com, a polished site with download buttons. The project's README carries a warning in a caution box: "pkforgeapp.com is not an official PKForge site and is not run by the maintainer. Do not download anything from it." The only official source is the GitHub releases page.

The same goes for YouTube. Search results for PKForge include playlists offering a "PKForge for PC" crack. PKForge is free, and there is no desktop version yet, so anything sold or "cracked" under that name is not from the developer.

What PKForge does

The README calls it "a Pokémon save editor and bank for Android." In practice it does four jobs:

• Reads your emulator saves. You link a folder once through Android's folder picker and PKForge lists every Pokémon save inside it. It does not need root and never touches save states, only the in-game battery save.
• Edits Pokémon. Stats, IVs, EVs, moves, nature, ability, held item, Tera type, shininess and more, with PKHeX's legality checker running on the device and a one-tap Legalize button from the built-in Auto Legality Mod.
• Moves Pokémon between games. Any supported game to any other, in either direction, with a preview of every change before anything is written.
• Stores them in a Bank. A cross-game collection, like Pokémon HOME, kept in PKForge's own storage, with a Living Dex tracker for all 1,025 species.

Around that sits a long list of tools: a bag and trainer editor, about 4,300 Mystery Gift Wonder Cards that work offline, RNG and breeding tools, a Nuzlocke report, Showdown import and export with QR codes, and fixes for old problems such as the dead clock battery in Ruby, Sapphire and Emerald. A Hardcore mode switches all editing off so RetroAchievements players can still move Pokémon around without breaking their run.

The transfer preview for a Gen 5 Pokémon sent back to Gen 3, which no official game allows. PKForge lists every consequence and asks you to confirm. Image: PKForge wiki.

Games, ROM hacks and emulators

Five ROM hacks have their own data: Pokémon Unbound, Radical Red, GS Chronicles, Luminescent Platinum and Pokémon Compass. Hacks that keep an official save format open as their base game. Any other hack opens read-only with an "Unsupported ROM hack" warning, because writing to an unknown layout can corrupt it.

On the emulator side, the developer lists RetroArch, Linkboy and Pizza Boy for Game Boy and GBA, melonDS and DraStic for DS, Dolphin for GameCube, Azahar, Lime3DS and Citra MMJ for 3DS, and Eden for Switch.

What 3.0 and 3.1 added

PKForge's repository went up on 17 July 2026. Version 3.0.0, released on 24 September, is the one that drew attention. Its 29-second trailer had passed 1.1 million views on YouTube when we checked, and Retro Dodo's launch report counted support for over 40 games, five ROM hacks and 11 emulators.

The 3.1.1 APK is about 79 MB. The 3.x releases had been downloaded more than 58,000 times from GitHub on 3 November. One catch from the 3.1 notes: owners of Xiaomi, POCO and Redmi devices need to install that version by hand once, because the built-in updater cannot handle it on HyperOS.

Who made it, and how it relates to PKHeX and PKSM

The developer, who publishes as sofianeelhor on GitHub, says PKForge "started as the PKSM I wished I had on my AYN Thor." PKSM is the long-running save manager for modded 3DS consoles. PKForge is not a fork of it, though its look is a tribute and it reuses PKSM's interface graphics under that project's licence.

The engine underneath is PKHeX.Core, the core of the PC editor PKHeX. PKForge keeps a small fork of it for save formats PKHeX does not cover, such as Luminescent Platinum and Compass, and the app, the Bank, emulator linking and the ROM hack support are its own code. The project's FAQ is direct about the choice: if you edit saves on a PC, PKHeX is still the right tool.

Retro Dodo also reported the developer's answer to questions about how the app was made: a local AI setup is used for testing and verification, the app was not generated from a prompt, and "the foundations of PKForge are mine." Retro Dodo added that Windows and Linux versions are in the works, with no date given.

Why the timing matters

The Pokémon Company announced on 13 August that Pokémon Bank will shut down on 25 February 2027 at 7pm PT, as Video Games Chronicle reported. Bank is the 3DS service that carried Pokémon from the 3DS games into Pokémon HOME, and anything still stored in it after that date will be lost.

PKForge is not a substitute for that if your Pokémon are on real cartridges and in the official services. It never connects to them. What it gives emulator players is the same idea in a local form: one place to keep a collection that would otherwise be stuck in a dozen separate save files.

The Bank keeps each Pokémon's original data, so a Gen 3 Pokémon stays a Gen 3 Pokémon until you send it somewhere else. Image: PKForge wiki.

Before you try it

• It needs a 64-bit ARM Android device. That covers current phones and handhelds such as the AYN Thor, Retroid and AYANEO lines. On dual-screen handhelds the second screen becomes an inspector; you can switch that off to run an emulator there instead.
• Close the emulator before editing. Emulators rewrite the save from memory when they close, which wipes out any changes made while they were open.
• Never load an old save state after an edit. A save state made before the edit brings the old save back.
• Export the Bank before uninstalling. The Bank and restore points live in PKForge's private storage, and uninstalling the app deletes them.

Our PKForge setup guide walks through installing it, linking each emulator's save folder, moving a Pokémon between games and undoing a mistake. If you are choosing a device to play Pokémon on in the first place, our Pokémon handheld guide covers that, and the dual-screen handheld guide covers the devices PKForge suits best.