[loki-inu]

Fix or feature

• Fix
• Feature

Feature from outside: #1272 (ready for milestone and maintainer review by @LNPANDY and @v0lumehi).

What and why

Problem. Players on iPhone and iPad cannot launch a game directly from the Home Screen, Lock Screen or StandBy.
Change. Add an optional WidgetKit extension, App Group snapshots, configurable AppIntents and nx2apple:// deep links across seven widget families.

Checked

• Tests: frontend, frontend-ios, frontend-qt, tools, l10n_shell_catalogs.py --check and generic iOS xcodebuild all passed.
• Visual QA: Rendered all seven widget families and localized states via NX_SHELL_CAPTURE_DIR using synthetic placeholder art.
• Not checked: Live Simulator or device widget gallery runs, since this Mac has no iOS Simulator runtime.

Screenshots

No existing desktop or iOS library view changed. New iOS and iPadOS widget renders:

Details

Architecture and provisioning compatibility

• ShellHostModel writes a compact snapshot.json (up to 48 games) and downsampled cover thumbnails into the shared App Group container (group.<app-bundle-id>) whenever library state or launch recency changes.
• ShellWidget implements ContinuePlayingWidget and Switch2DeckWidget across systemSmall, systemMedium, systemLarge, systemExtraLarge, accessoryCircular, accessoryRectangular and accessoryInline, backed by WidgetConfigurationIntent (All Games, Switch 2, Pinned Game) and a zero-artwork EntityQuery.
• ShellDeepLink routes nx2apple://play/<title_id>, nx2apple://settings/<title_id>, nx2apple://controllers and nx2apple://library from cold start (ShellMain.m and ShellApp.swift) and warm start (onOpenURL) with 16-hex Title ID validation.
• ShellInstall, ShellExport, AppSignature, build_shell.sh, build_shell_template.py and frontend-qt/nspb_qt/win/shell_export.py re-sign PlugIns/DmShellWidget.appex when a matching extension provisioning profile is present, and strip PlugIns/ cleanly on free Personal Team accounts so standard device installs keep working.

Commands and test results (bff5164 on d0adbda, macOS 26, MacOSX27.2.sdk and iPhoneOS27.2.sdk)

• python3 tools/l10n_shell_catalogs.py --check — passed (all 10 locales synced)
• python3 -m unittest discover -s frontend-qt/tests — 492 tests passed (46 skipped)
• python3 -m unittest discover tools/tests — 249 tests passed (29 skipped)
• swift test --package-path frontend — 1,195 tests passed (49 skipped, 0 failures)
• swift test --package-path frontend-ios — XCTest plus 223 Swift Testing tests in 26 suites passed (0 failures)
• xcodebuild -project frontend-ios/Demo/ShellDemo.xcodeproj -scheme ShellDemo -destination 'generic/platform=iOS' CODE_SIGNING_ALLOWED=NO build — BUILD SUCCEEDED
• bash frontend-ios/Shell/build_shell.sh --build — DmShell.app and embedded PlugIns/DmShellWidget.appex built cleanly

Scope

• No engine file (dm/, scripts/, docs/, ref/) is added to the repository: a change there is a patch in patches/ (a commit in engine/, then tools/engine.py export, and tools/engine.py check passes), with its Upstream-Status
• A change to a launcher view has before and after screenshots above
• No keys, game files or data extracted from a game in the change or the attachments