Having the ability to take the Nintendo Switch with you wherever you go can be a beautiful thing. Taking advantage of its expansive, iconic library whilst also having the capabilities of portability, you never have to worry about leaving it behind. Though, having more than one of your own Switch consoles or game sharing with others has its intricacies when it comes to how your Switch library is handled. Today, we’ll explain all there is to know about how your primary Nintendo Switch console and your Nintendo account work together so that you can fully utilize the fantastic systems that Nintendo has put in place for game sharing amongst consumers’ own consoles or even friends’.
How to Change the Primary Console for Your Nintendo Account
When it comes to your primary account on a Nintendo Switch console, it’s important because when an account makes a console its primary then all other accounts on that console can download and play the games of said primary account. For example; if I own Smash Bros. and wanted to play with my wife online, I would make her console my primary so that she could download and play it while I simultaneously play from my own Switch. The way this works is that while the primary console can download anything, as long as I’m connected to Wi-Fi on my own console, I’ll be able to use the licenses tied to my account.
- To make a Nintendo Switch an account’s primary console, all you have to do is head to the eShop and click on your profile in the top-right section of the screen.
- Once there, scroll down to the “Primary Console” portion and select to make it the primary console.
- After that’s done, you or the console’s user just has to download the game’s from your profile in order to play them on their own account.
How Often You Can Change the Primary Console
Game sharing does have the downside of you not being able to play your own games if the internet goes out when your own console isn’t set to primary. But luckily, there’s an easy fix for that too. Unlike its competitors, Nintendo makes switching primary accounts on its consoles easy as pie. To restore your own Switch to the primary console, all you have to do is deactivate the current primary console as the primary using the same steps we used to activate it as such.
In order for you to then make your Switch the primary once more, just head to the eShop, and your Switch will then be the primary again. It’s an extremely easy process, one that can actually be done as often as you’d like to without any punishment or walls. There is a limit to how many times this can be done via the Nintendo Switch website, which is once a year. The fact that you can swap primary consoles so much is great for folks that share with their kids, travel a lot, and so on.
So that’s all there is to know about how to change the primary console for your Nintendo Account!
