Quickstart

You can follow The Ultimate Noob Guide for Hacking your Nintendo Switch. This guide will explain you all of the steps required use a CFW on your Switch It is a good starting point if you want a clear overview of the process before installing cheats or other homebrew content.

Please consult the serial number checker. It will help you quickly confirm whether your console is compatible and whether you can reasonably proceed with a CFW setup.

The first step is to set your CFW in your profile. This will allow you to automatically download the cheat code in the correct format, which avoids having to reorganize the files manually afterward.

Then, once you have found the cheat you want, you just have to download it and extract it at the root of your sdcard. In most cases, this is enough as long as the archive already matches your CFW structure.

Be sure to extract the content of the archive at the root of your sdcard, something like that /<cfw>/[titles|contents]/<titleId>/cheats/<buildId>.txt, where each part of the path matters and must match your game and firmware layout exactly.

cfw

Depends of the Custom Firmware used. Maybe atmosphere, sxos, ...

titleId

This is the release number of the game.

buildId

This is the release number of the game. Each new version has a different BuildId. A cheat is made for a specific buildId, it may or not work for another buildId.

• Atmosphere or ReiNX: sdcard:/atmosphere/contents/<titleId>/cheats/<BuildId>.txt
• SX OS: sdcard:/sxos/titles/<titleId>/cheats/<BuildId>.txt

Here's an example for Animal Crossing: New Horizons. Using a real example makes it easier to compare the archive content with what should be present on your SD card.

Be sure to extract the cheat on the sdcard and to have a file at the following location : /atmosphere/contents/01006f8002326000/cheats/F829A27213D46F9F.txt if your cfw is atmosphere. If the file is somewhere else, the cheat menu usually will not detect it.

Double, triple check your Build ID, they MUST match. This is the most common reason why a cheat file is present on the SD card but still does not appear in the menu.

Update to the latest version your Custom FirmWare. Older CFW versions can cause detection issues or inconsistent behavior with newer games and updates.

Your cheat code should be lengthy. Keep it under ~100 lines and SHORTER than 32Kb, otherwise the file may fail to load correctly.

Check for strange characters in the title and keep it less than 64 characters. Remove any characters that aren't letters or numbers, especially if the file was copied from a badly formatted source.

Every time your game updates, you need to update or get new cheats for this specific release. Cheats are made for a specific version of a game, so a file that worked before may stop working immediately after an update changes the Build ID.

In atmosphere/config/system_settings.ini, there is a line that says the following. This setting controls whether cheats are enabled automatically when you open the cheat menu.

				; dmnt_cheats_enabled_by_default = u8!0x1.
				

Edit that to:

				dmnt_cheats_enabled_by_default = u8!0x0 (Yes, without the semicolon)
				

If you can't find the system_settings.ini, then you must copy it from atmosphere/config_templates to your config folder. Once the file is in place, you can edit it normally and keep the setting persistent.