Guide | VPX on Android
Visual Pinball X.
On your
Android phone.
Yes, you can play VPX tables on Android. Two free apps run the real Visual Pinball X engine on a phone: Pocket Pinball and the official Visual Pinball app. They play the same .vpx tables people play on PC, and you can be playing your first one in a few minutes.
The short answer
VPX on Android
- Engine
- Visual Pinball X, the open-source pinball simulator
- Apps
- Pocket Pinball, or the official Visual Pinball app
- Price
- Both free, with no ads and no in-app purchases
- Phone
- Pocket Pinball needs Android 13 or later, 64-bit
- Tables
- .vpx files, built and shared free by the community
- ROMs
- Only for recreations of real machines
- Controls
- Touch, or a Bluetooth or USB gamepad
What you need
Three things. No PC.
01
Android 13+
An Android phone
Android 13 or later on a 64-bit phone, tablet or handheld. These are PC-grade tables, so a recent mid-range phone or better gives the most headroom, and a 120Hz screen gives the smoothest flipper feel.
02
Free
A VPX player
Pocket Pinball or the official Visual Pinball app, both free on Google Play. Both run the Visual Pinball X engine, so tables play with the physics, lighting and sound their creators built.
03
.vpx files
Some tables
Tables are .vpx files made by the virtual pinball community and shared free. Download them from community sites, or tap Download on any table in the Pocket Pinball Fan Arcade.
Two apps
Two ways to run VPX on Android
Pocket Pinball
Built for playing on a phone
A pinball app built around the VPX engine and made for phones: touch controls with layout presets, portrait play, and a library that loads your tables from any folder or SD card, with cover art filled in for you.
On top of the tables it adds online play: a new Table of the Week, tournaments, worldwide leaderboards with scores read from the game, and free fan-made tables you download in a tap.
Visual Pinball
The official app
The official app from the volunteers who build Visual Pinball, on Google Play and the App Store. Its listing describes the full desktop in-game menu, button remapping for keyboards and controllers, and imports of .vpx, .vpxz and .zip files.
Free and open source, with no ads and no in-app purchases.
In Pocket Pinball
Your first table in a few minutes
01
Install the app
Get Pocket Pinball free from Google Play. You can play straight away, and sign in later for the leaderboards.
03
Share it in
Hand the zip or rar to Pocket Pinball from your browser or Downloads. The app files the table, ROM, videos and music where they belong.
04
Coin, then start
On touch, the top-left zone inserts a coin. On a gamepad, A starts the game. Then pull back the plunger.
Real machines
Tables that need a ROM
A table that recreates a real machine needs that machine’s ROM: the program from its circuit board, which PinMAME runs inside the app so the table plays by the real rules. Original tables, designed from scratch, need no ROM at all.
A ROM stays zipped, with its exact file name, in pinmame/roms. When a name is wrong, Pocket Pinball shows the name the table is looking for.
For legal reasons, Pocket Pinball does not provide ROM files or links to them.
Saved settings
Some tables need NVRAM
Some machines, Gottlieb System 3 most often, start in a setup state and refuse credits until their saved settings exist. These tables usually ship with a .nv file: put it in pinmame/nvram and the table boots ready to play.
Optional
The extras
PuP videos, FlexDMD and music are companion files that bring a table to life. Share the whole download and the app sorts them. The extras guide covers each one.
Controls
Touch, gamepad or both
Touch
Touch zones
Flippers, plunger, nudge and coin each have a zone, with layout presets to choose from. Controls, then Show Touch Layout, draws them over the screen.
Gamepad
Bluetooth or USB
L1 and R1 flip, A starts and D-pad down pulls the plunger by default. Thumbsticks nudge, and every button can be remapped.
In-game menu
Pull up from the bottom
Audio, the camera view, service mode for the machine’s coin-door buttons, and the table’s rules, without leaving the game.
Performance
Making tables run well on a phone
These are PC-grade tables, so phones work hard to run them. Some heat is normal and will not harm the device. These settings make the biggest difference.
Battery mode
Settings, Performance, Battery runs heavy tables cooler and steadier.
Switch the GPU backend
Try Vulkan and OpenGL ES. One often runs a given phone better than the other.
Turn down heavy effects
Lower the graphics quality and effects such as ball reflections, which some tables overdo.
Leave room for tables
Keep a few gigabytes free. A table with a PuP pack and music can pass a gigabyte on its own.
Keep going
Find your next table
Catalogue
Every machine with a VPX table, with its versions, extras and where to download them.
Charts
The Top 100 on Pocket Pinball, counted from real games and updated every hour.
Release feed
Every new VPX table file in the last 30 days, newest first.
Reference
ROM, NVRAM, PuP, FlexDMD, nFozzy: every term, explained in a sentence.
Is there an official VPX app for Android?
Yes. The volunteers behind Visual Pinball publish the official Visual Pinball app on Google Play. Pocket Pinball is a separate app, made by Retro Eki, that runs the same open-source engine. It is not affiliated with the Visual Pinball project.
Do I need a PC?
No. Download tables on the phone and share them into the app. A computer only helps if your tables are already on one: the built-in web server takes files from any browser on the same Wi-Fi.
Can I play the VPX tables I have on my PC?
Yes. Both apps play the same .vpx files as desktop VPX. Bring their ROMs and extras with them. A few tables push a phone hard, and some play better in a different release.
Do the apps include tables or ROMs?
Neither includes ROM files. Pocket Pinball comes without tables, and its Fan Arcade has free fan-made tables to download in a tap. Other tables come from community sites such as VPUniverse and VPForums.
Will it run on an Android handheld?
Many Android handhelds, such as Odin and Retroid devices, run Pocket Pinball well. It needs Android 13 or later and a 64-bit chip.
Is it really free?
Yes. Pocket Pinball and Visual Pinball are both free, with no ads and no in-app purchases.