The Nintendo Switch Home Screen
Even though it was released in 2017, the Nintendo Switch still has minimal customization options compared to other modern devices. The Switch still doesn’t offer custom wallpapers or user-generated themes. It also doesn’t have support for folders or categories, which Nintendo eventually added to the Nintendo 3DS and Wii U. Because of this, if you own a lot of games, your home screen can get cluttered very quickly.
However, there are a few simple things you can do to make your home screen appear more organized and customize it to your liking. Here are a few of the things you can do.
Sorting and Ordering Games
By default, the 12 games shown on your home screen are the 12 most recent games that you either played, installed, or inserted into the Switch. There is currently no way to manually arrange these games, other than by opening a game to push it to the start of the screen or by switching the inserted cartridge in the console.
However, if you have accumulated more than a dozen games in your library, scrolling all the way to the right of the home screen leads you to the “All Software” menu, which shows you all of your owned and downloaded titles in a grid.
From here, you have several options for sorting all the games in your library that you can access by pressing R on your console. You can sort by:
Most Recently Played: Similar to the way that the default home screen is sorted. Longest Play Time: This will sort games by how long you’ve played them. Games that you have never played are automatically at the bottom of the list. Title: This will sort all software in alphabetical order. Publisher: This will sort your titles by the name of the publisher, in alphabetical order. You can see the publisher of a title by pressing the plus button on a game in the menu.
Removing Rarely Played Games
With the number of games frequently going on sale, there’s a good chance you have at least a couple of games you no longer play or rarely ever play. Another way to make your games list more streamlined is by removing your rarely played games from your Switch and decluttering your games list. This has the bonus of freeing up space on your internal storage or microSD card.
You can only do this for digital titles that have been downloaded from the Nintendo eShop. Here’s how you remove a title from your Switch:
Select the game, either from your home screen or the “All Software. ” Press the “+” button on your right joy-con to bring up the menu. From the game menu, select “Manage Software” on the left. Select “Delete Software. ”
This deletes the title from your library and from your home screen. However, this does not remove the game from your account, as your purchases will still be linked to your Nintendo profile. You can still add the title back to your Switch at any time by navigating to the eShop, clicking on your profile at the top right, and selecting “Redownload” from the menu. From here, you can download any games that you own but that aren’t currently on your system.
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Changing Your Background and Home Theme
The last thing you can do to customize your Switch’s home screen is to change your background and home theme.
From the home screen, select the “System Settings” button at the bottom. Select the “Theme” option on the left side of the screen. From here, you can select between the available themes for the Switch: Basic White and Basic Black.
At the start of 2020, the Switch only offers these two themes. You’re basically just deciding if you want a dark theme or a light theme.
However, both the Nintendo 3DS and Wii U eventually gained support for purchasing and downloading themes, so the Switch will likely also get the feature in the future. Stay tuned for updates to your Switch’s firmware.
