Today is an exciting day. I’m proud to announce the first official release of an app I’ve been writing to help import your Nintendo Switch screenshots and video recordings. I call it, the Nintendo Switch Screenshot Manager. Yes, it’s pretty self-explanatory.

A few weeks ago, I was importing some screenshots from my SD card for an upcoming article, when I realized what an absolutely pain it is to do so. The way the Switch stores screenshots on the SD card is very messy, with a folder structure that’s a huge pain to deal with. The file names are also a mixture of a unique ID that differs per game (and per region), as well as a date and time stamp.

If you’ve ever put your Switch microSD card into your computer and browsed where the screenshots are stored, you’ll see a complex folder structure of Year > Month > Day > 20200520120000-[SOME-UNIQUE-ID].png. This means your screenshots are spread all over the place and also need to be manually renamed one file at a time, throughout multiple places. This is no good if you’re constantly importing photos. I found myself giving up on correctly naming files because of how long it took.

The flow for the app is simple: you select your SD card, what folder you want them exported to, and (if you want) change the output file names however you’d like using predefined variables. The game ID in the screenshot name is matched to a table with the actual game names, so you can take that messy format and turn it into something readable.

What I see as the ideal solution to this problem of screenshot management is 1-button importing: once you’ve set everything up, importing all your new screenshots should be as simple as inserting the SD card, opening the app, and clicking Import. And that’s exactly what it does!

Oh yeah, and it also runs on Windows, Mac, and Linux machines, so whatever you’re running, you are in luck.

So I present to the WordPress gaming community, the Nintendo Switch Screenshot Manager, free for all to use and enjoy. Keep in mind this is the very first alpha release (version 0.0.1!) and it’s still buggy (particularly when it comes to importing large videos), but overall, it works quite well, and I’ve imported my entire SD card to my Mac, Linux laptop, and gaming PC running Windows 10.

If there is no match for a game ID, it will ask you to resolve the ID to the game title, and you’ll have a screenshot for reference. In this case, simply input the name of the game and click Save. This also only needs to be done one time per game, since the IDs never change, but once your games are all set up, the hard part is out of the way. This sounds far more complicated than it actually is, so the image below should explain it better.

In time (and as people send me their manually entered game titles), the game ID to title database will grow, so there won’t be so much manual work, but in the meantime it doesn’t take very long at all and you’ll only have to enter the game title once per game, as the mapping will be saved locally.

It’s also got a little file browser that supports drag-and-drop as well as searching, although it’s currently in a very early phase. That being said, you can drag and drop screenshots right into the WordPress editor, so you don’t even have to manually upload screenshots when you’re writing a post.

I hope that all of those reading who have a use for this, can take advantage of it and make their lives a bit easier when it comes to Switch screenshots. This is still in active development and like I said, quite buggy, but it does its main job well. I built in an update checker so as I release new versions, you’ll be notified.

It’s all open-source as well, and the code can be checked out right here. The official website of NSSM is located here, but currently it’s just a placeholder page with some generic information. Feel free to leave any questions here, suggestions, you name it.

Download Nintendo Switch Screenshot Manager Now

In my Google Drive link you’ll see four files – simply grab the file for your operating system, and you’re good to go. I’m looking forward to hearing feedback!