Switch Update Lets You Remap Buttons, Transfer Games To SD Card

Nintendo’s servers are having a bit of a moment, but when they calm down, you’ll get a firmware update that will let you remap all the buttons on your Nintendo Switch.

Most people won’t want to mess with the normal button maps, but there are definitely some scenarios and use-cases — accessibility reasons, for instance – where this will come in super handy.

According to the official patch notes, users will be able to remap buttons for individual JoyCons, the Switch Pro controller, as well as any button on the Switch Lite. You can save up to five custom binding maps for each individual device as well, so if someone in your family likes a particular layout for the left Joy-Con, but wants the layout you’ve established for the right Joy-Con, then you can do that.

Added an option to remap the controller buttons.

• Analog stick and button configurations can now be changed for each paired controller.
• Custom configurations can be saved as favourites in System Settings > Controllers and Sensors.
• Custom configurations are stored on the Nintendo Switch system.
• Configurations can be customised for the following controllers: Joy-Con (L), Joy-Con (R), Nintendo Switch Pro Controller. Button configurations can also be customised on the Nintendo Switch Lite system.
• This feature is not available for other controllers.
• On each system, up to five favourite custom configurations can be saved for Joy-Con (L), five for Joy-Con (R), five for Nintendo Switch Pro Controller. Five configurations can also be saved as favorites for Nintendo Switch Lite.

The firmware update will also let you transfer downloadable games, updates and DLC to and from the SD card and internal memory. This isn’t as helpful a feature given that most people would have installed the majority of their games onto SD storage anyway, but if you’ve got something on the internal drive you want to move off – so you can have more room for screenshots, or something – then there’s the option.

Added an option to transfer software data between the system memory and an SD card.

Users can now transfer downlopadable software, update data, and DLC from the system memory to an SD card (and vice versa).
Note that save data and some update data cannot be transferred to an SD card.

The update is available now through your Nintendo Switch, although at the time of writing my console is telling me that “the server is currently undergoing maintenance”.