How To Download Switch Games To Sd Card

This page contains instructions for how to install an SD card and upgrade your system storage on Nintendo Switch. This process requires a MicroSD card, such as the 400GB SanDisk Micro SDXC Card. I bought a 128 gb microsd and put it into the switch. It sees the storage but if I delete a game completely it keeps downloading to the internal memory on the switch. How do you download games to the micro sd?

Many cameras and smartphones come equipped with or feature support for SD cards, making these memory cards great for storing photos. While there are a few ways to access the photos on your SD card, the process of downloading the photos to your computer is generally the same.

Connecting to the Computer

How your SD card connects to your computer depends partially on your computer and partially on how you use the card. The three most common options are connecting the card directly via a built-in SD card slot, using an external reader or adapter or by connecting your phone or camera to the computer via a USB cable.

  • For built-in card readers, locate the SD card slot on your computer and insert the card. Make sure you're putting the card in correctly or you won't be able to access the data. You also risk damage to the card. If you're using a microSD card, you need a microSD-to-SD adapter card.
  • For external card readers or adapters, insert your card into the reader or adapter and connect the reader to your computer. Typically, readers or adapters connect via USB.
  • For direct connection between cameras and phones, switch your device to computer or USB mass storage mode, then connect it to the computer via a USB cable.

Using Autoplay

Autoplay is a Windows feature that helps you set a default action for Windows to take when you connect a device, in this case an SD card. Options include opening the SD card in File Explorer as a folder, opening the pictures in an app like the Windows 8 Photos app or Google's Picasa, or in image editing software like Adobe Photoshop or GIMP. What options you're presented with depend on what software you have installed on your computer.

Tips

If you change your mind about how you want Autoplay to handle your card when you connect it, insert the card while holding down the Shift key. The Autoplay prompt returns, so you can choose a new default action.

Using File Explorer

Use File Explorer to look through the SD card's contents as a file folder. Press Windows-X to bring up the power user menu and select File Explorer, then select the card from the list of devices and drives. What drive letter is assigned to your card depends on what other storage devices you have connected to your computer.

Downloading the Files

Downloading pictures from the card is a simple copy/paste operation. Before you get started, make sure you have a destination folder ready in your Pictures folder.

Direct from Card

Open the SD card's folder in File Explorer by double-clicking it.

Select the picture(s) that you want to copy to your computer.

Right-click one of the pictures and select Copy if you want to just copy the pictures, or Cut if you want to move them off of the card. Alternatively, you can also press Ctrl-C on your keyboard to copy and Ctrl-X to cut.

Go to the destination folder in File Explorer and right-click it. Select Paste from the list. Alternatively, you can press Ctrl-V on your keyboard to paste. The pictures are now in your folder and can be viewed at any time.

From a Camera or Phone

The process is very similar for cameras or phones. The primary difference is that the photos are stored in a named folder on the SD card. In most cases, the card is listed as DCIM.

Ejecting the device

After you have finished downloading the pictures, eject the card before removing it from your computer. Properly ejecting your card finalizes all read and write operations, so there isn't a chance of losing or corrupting data when you remove the card.

Nintendo Switch

  1. Click the ^ button on the System Tray.
  2. Right-click the Safely Remove Hardware and Eject Media icon.
  3. Select the SD card from the list of connected devices and wait for the pop-up declaring it safe to remove the card.
Nintendo switch sd card slot

You can also eject the card from File Explorer by right-clicking the drive and selecting Eject.

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The Nintendo Switch comes with a meager 32GB of storage. You can expand your storage with an SD card, but that’s still a pretty small amount of space on your console. Here are several ways you can clear up internal storage space, or at least offload some of that data to an SD card.

By default, if you have an SD card installed in your Switch, the console will automatically store downloaded games and screenshots to it until it’s full. If you started using your console without an SD card, or if you don’t have one, you might need to clean house once in a while.

There are two ways to delete games on the Switch. You can either delete them, which will take all your game save data with it, or you can “archive” them. Archiving a game will delete all of the game data (which takes up the bulk of the space on your console) but leave your game saves where they are. That way, if you download the game again in the future, you don’t have to start over.

This is important because your game saves are only stored on your console. Nintendo doesn’t sync your game saves, let you back them up, or even copy them to your SD card. If you delete a game from your console, your game save is gone forever. So if you haven’t played Breath of the Wild for a bit and want to delete it to make room for something else, archive it instead. For that reason we almost always recommend archiving instead of deleting games if you ever want to come back to them.

If a game is installed on your Switch’s internal storage, you’ll also need to archive it in order to move it over to your SD card. Start by inserting your SD card, then archive the game you want to move. Once it’s gone, re-download the game from the eStore and it will be installed on the SD card by default.

Free Games For Sd Cards

To archive a game, select it on your home screen and press either the + or – buttons on your controller.

This will open up an Options menu. Scroll down to Manage Software and select Archive Software. If you are 100% certain that you never want to play a game again and want to free up a little more space, choose Delete Software. Again, though, there is no way to recover your game saves if you delete the game from your console.

You can also see which games are taking up the most space and uninstall those—as well as manage other data hogs like screenshots—from the Settings menu. First, select Settings from the home screen.

Scroll down to Data Management. Here, choose Manage Software.

On this screen, you’ll see a list of your games, sorted by how much space they take up on your console. Select one of the games and you can either archive or delete it.

Nintendo Switch Sd Card Support

Back on the Data Management screen, you also have one other option labeled Manage Save Data/Screenshots.

Under this menu, you can either choose Delete Save Data or Manage Screenshots. We’ll start with Delete Save Data.

This screen will list all the games that you have save data for, as well as how much space those game saves are taking up. Select a game to delete some saves.

If you have saves from multiple player profiles, you can delete them each individually on this screen. This is particularly handy if you’ve let someone else use your console, but they won’t be playing again. Remember, if you delete game save data from here, it can never be restored.

Under the Manage Screenshots menu, you’ll find a few different options. You can change the default save location for your screenshots (when you insert an SD card it should become the default, but you can change this if you’d rather save screenshots to your internal storage), copy your screenshots from one storage to another, or delete all of your screenshots at once. If you choose Manage Individual Images, you’ll be taken to the Album app where you can browse screenshots, delete just certain photos, or even share them to Facebook and Twitter.

For the most part, game downloads will take up the bulk of the space on your console, but you can archive the games without losing your save data. If you’re done playing with a game for a while, just archive it and keep your saves. Between that and easing up on the screenshot button a bit, you can manage with that 32GB of internal storage just fine.

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