The Nintendo Switch app is getting some excellent new features

While sharing screenshots and videos from the original Nintendo Switch has always been an excessively complicated process, it’s going to be much easier for the Switch 2.

Now simply called the “Nintendo Switch app,” the application will continue to support Nintendo’s old voice chat feature for specific titles like Splatoon 3 and Animal Crossing: New Horizons on the original Switch. But for Switch 2 owners, the Nintendo Switch app will serve as the easiest way for you to move screenshots and videos from the console onto your phone, computer, or internet.

To move screenshots previously, you had to pop a Switch’s SD card out from behind its kickstand and slot it into another device. You could also share images and videos directly to Facebook and, until last year, X / Twitter by linking your Switch to accounts on either of those platforms. It was also possible to move media straight from your Switch to your smartphone by going into the Switch’s Album section, hitting share, and then taking a picture of the QR code generated by the console. That last option was as clever as it was cumbersome, but it won’t be an issue for the Switch 2.

According to Nintendo, Switch 2 users will be able to access the console’s 100 most recent screenshots and videos directly from the smartphone app. Obviously, a Nintendo Account will be required to make this work, but the company noted that you will not need a Nintendo Switch Online membership to take advantage of the smartphone app’s media transfer feature.

The media transfer details alone are already a significant upgrade for the application, which never felt all that well-integrated into many of Nintendo’s games. But, as if to emphasize that it really does see the application as an important part of the Switch’s future, Nintendo also announced the forthcoming release of Zelda Notes, a special set of features designed specifically for the Switch 2 editions of Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and Tears for the Kingdom. Located within the smartphone app, Zelda Notes is meant to serve as a useful tool to help guide you through the Zelda games with features like spoken directions to specific locations you’ve marked on a map. You can use Zelda Notes to hear Princess Zelda recall memories of places she’s been as you guide Link to them. The application will also give players a way to share blueprints for their unique Autobuild creations.

Zelda Notes feels like a very smart way to get people excited about coming back to two older games many people have already spent quite a bit of time playing. It’s kind of wild to think of Nintendo’s smartphone app being one of its more promising Switch reveals, but these kinds of surprises are how you keep things interesting.