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Being in the writing-about-video-games business, we spend quite a bit of time transferring screenshots from our devices to our phones or PCs — perhaps more than most. Some of us have nifty capture cards set up that save to hard drive immediately, but the rest of us rely on Nintendo’s own screenshot transfer solution, which involves either transferring the micro SD card to your PC or scanning a QR code on your Switch with your smartphone and saving each screenshot to your Camera Roll individually.
It’s fine — it works — but the process could be smoother, which is where SwitchBuddy comes in. Developed by Filip Němeček, this mobile app has been around for a while now and aims to make the transfer a little less painful by essentially streamlining the laborious ‘Save to Camera Roll’ bit.
You’ll still have to select the images you want on your Switch and ‘Send to Smart Device’ (feel free to check out our guide if you need more info on that), but whereas Nintendo’s option requires you to tap and hold each image individually to save them to your device, SwitchBuddy has an interface which does the same with a simple button press. On iOS it also has the ability to save the screengrabs directly to iCloud Drive if you don’t want to clog up your Camera Roll.
SwitchBuddy also lets you tweet or forward the selected image(s) via various apps to any recipient of your choosing without downloading it yourself, if you prefer. Observe our own tests where we transferred these rather fetching Blasphemous and Metroid Dread shots:
Is this a game-changer? Well, no. It’s hardly a massive difference — and it does mean you have to have another (free) app on your phone — but it is admittedly slicker than Nintendo’s own solution and it will save you time and thumb taps, which could be invaluable if, like us, you transfer a lot of shots from your Switch into the wider digital world. It also comes with a few nifty colour themes to choose from.
Improved speed and usability? Folder selection? Colour themes? Seems like Nintendo could learn a thing or two. The app is free to download/use and is available on App Store, Google Play, or the SwitchBuddy website.
Let us know below if you use this app already, or if you might check it out in the future.