How to Transfer Screenshots from Nintendo Switch

April 19, 2017 27 Comments

So you have taken several amazing screenshots on your Nintendo Switch, but you’ve thought to yourself, “Now what do I do? I don’t want to share all of them one by one on Facebook or Twitter! That would really annoy my friends!” Maybe you’re thinking about setting up an album on Facebook or sharing several together in one post on Twitter or Instagram. Or perhaps you want to keep an archive on your computer. Of course, we aren’t forgetting those of you who manage social media blogs or review sites who need those sweet screenshots to generate content and new followers as a result.

There are a few ways of getting your photos from your Switch onto your computer or mobile device, and we’re here to help!

Publish to Facebook 

The main idea here is to share the images privately to your account. You will still have to this one by one, but you won’t be overwhelming all of your Facebook friends’ newsfeed this way.

  1. Pull up the photo album on your Nintendo Switch and choose the photo you want to share.
  2. Hit the A button to activate the “Editing and Posting” menu.
  3. Connect to your Facebook account and make sure to choose the option for “only me” when choosing who will see the shared photo.
  4. Share your photo to Facebook.
  5. Log onto Facebook with your computer or mobile device, head to your profile, and download your screenshot.

Note: If you have already set your share settings to share with friends or public, you can head to your Facebook settings on a computer and change it to “only me.”

Publish to Twitter

Unlike Facebook, you cannot change settings to share some things privately on Twitter. You would need to first setup a new private Twitter account if you do not want to share the images publicly before downloading them.

Sharing screenshots is a good way to build up one’s follower count on twitter. Who doesn’t want comments, retweets, and likes after all? There are tools you can use in addition such as this Owlead alternative (https://www.twesocial.com/owlead-alternative/) but nothing beats a steady stream of posts. Without further ado, here’s how to upload screenshots to Twitter.

  1. Follow the same basic steps for Facebook, except login to Twitter, instead.
  2. Log onto Twitter with your computer or mobile device, head to your feed, and download your screenshot.

Use an microSD Card Reader

One way to copy over several screenshots at once requires a microSD card. If you do not have one, we have several we recommend.

  1. Turn off your Nintendo Switch. (This can be surprisingly tricky, so here’s a quick guide.)
  2. Install your microSD card (behind the kickstand on the back side of the Nintendo Switch), and turn the system back on.
  3. Make sure all your your images are saved to the microSD card. If you have screenshots previously saved to the system memory, head to the system settings and copy them over to the microSD card before continuing.
  4. Turn off your Nintendo Switch – very important to not damage any data!
  5. Raise the kickstand in the back and remove your microSD card.
  6. Connect the microSD card to an adapter or reader, and then connect it to your computer or mobile device.
  7. Open the album folder on the microSD card and save them to your device.

Transfer to Your Smart Devices via QR Code

This feature was added in the Firmware 11.0 Update on December 1, 2020.

  1. Pull up the photo album on your Nintendo Switch and choose the photo you want to share.
  2. Hit the A button to activate the “Sharing and Editing” menu.
  3. Select “Send to Smartphone.”
  4. Choose only one photo or up to 10 screenshots and 1 video.
  5. Open your smartphone or tablet and scan the QR code on the Switch screen.
  6. On your smartphone or tablet, select the photos and videos you want to save.

Copy to a Computer via USB Connection

This feature was added in the Firmware 11.0 Update on December 1, 2020.

  1. Connect your Nintendo Switch to your computer via USB cable. Your Switch USB charging cable [model HAC-010] or a USB-IF certified USB cable that supports data transfer is required to connect to a computer.
  2. On your Nintendo Switch, go to System Settings > Data Management > Manage Screenshots and Videos.
  3. Select Copy to a Computer via USB Connection.
  4. On your computer, select the screenshots and videos you want, and copy them to your computer.
  5. Once you are done, choose disconnect on your Switch screen.

If Nintendo updates the Nintendo Switch to include other ways to get your screenshots off the system, we will update this post accordingly.

What are some of your favorite screenshots? Feel free to share them with us in the comments!

27 thoughts on “How to Transfer Screenshots from Nintendo Switch”

    1. yeah turtles are great. i love their weird skeletons…how the spine is connected to the shell

      1. The spine IS the shell. The ribs and spine of an embryo turtle exit and wrap around its body, fusing together and forming the shell.

        1. This is why turtles make horrible gymnasts… but still I am in favor of expanded species representation in the olympics. We need even MORE diversity.

    1. yeah turtles are great. i love their weird skeletons…how the spine is connected to the shell

    1. The sad thing is that they developed something for us to transfer our 3DS data to PCs wirelesly. But nothing for Switch… yet.

  4. Is it really so hard for them to include some sort of web based file share? How about a SaMBa client? Just one step away from also being a network media player (which should be an obvious feature they didn’t include). And seriously, let’s not need to resort to removing the microSD card. Better idea! How about an OTG USB drive and a file manager which allows the user to “move images/video to USB storage”?

    FYI, I’m not a brilliant idea guy. Every idea which occurs to me has already occurred to people a lot smarter than I am. So if I’m making a suggestion, it’s either a seriously dumb idea for reasons I have yet to consider or it’s a really obvious idea and it hasn’t been done yet for reasons I have yet to consider.

    2. I’ll offer this. “Hard to do” is relative to the backlog of things you’re doing. If they make it a priority, I imagine it wouldn’t be *that* hard to implement. But every work hour a programmer spends on this feature is a work hour not being applied to something else. They have to develop it and support it and maintain it and bugfix it, etc.

      It’s like washing your windows. It’s probably stupid easy and quick to do. But I bet you don’t do it as often as you like, because you’re busy with other things and it’s just not a relative priority. (If you do wash your windows a lot, substitute some other task.) It’s the same principle, but applied on a company level.

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    1. That would be too easy. lol. Seriously, though, I hope they eventually do something like this. But I’m 99.9% sure the USB on the current Nintendo Switch is just for power and cannot transfer data.

  12. It’s retarded that you can’t just copy the screen shots via USB. Sorry for the language.

    1. I’d say the language is perfectly accurate. “Retarded” is a fitting expression for a system that is so far behind the times. That’s the very definition of “retarded”, after all.

      Not only is there no bluetooth file exchange option in the Nintendo smartphone app, but aside from twitter, which no sane person should have to endure, they only support facebook, which is all but dead by now. No youtube, no imgur, not a single file hoster.

      The media connectivity of the Switch is not just retarded, it’s outright antiquated.

  14. Firmware update 11.0 added 2 new ways to transfer screenshots and videos! And we have updated this post with both of those methods. (Reading through the comments, all of you are going to be very happy!)

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