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How to speed up game downloads on Switch

Purple and green Joy-Cons on the black charging stand. There's another charging stand next to it, but it's lying flat on the table with two white Joy-Cons.
Nintendo

If you want to play the best Switch games, there's no alternative than Nintendo's hybrid console and its successor, the Switch 2. Playing physical games is easy since all you need to do is pop them in and play. Unlike the best PS5 games and best Xbox Series X games, the almost all physical Switch games don't require an additional download. Games you buy digitally or play through Nintendo Switch Online, on the other hand, do require a lengthy download. It might seem like you're stuck with no way to speed things up, but there are a few ways you can power-up your download speeds.

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Difficulty

Easy

Duration

15 minutes

What You Need

  • Nintendo Switch

Home screen with game downloading on Nintendo Switch.
Nintendo

Increase your maximum transmission unit

This sounds complicated and technical, but is very simple to do and can be the biggest upgrade to download speeds on your Switch. By tweaking one value in the Switch's settings, you can cut multiple minutes off of giant downloads.

Step 1: Go to System Settings -> Internet - >Internet Settings.

The Switch internet settings.
Nintendo

Step 2: Select your network and select Change Settings.

The Switch MTU settings
Nintendo

Step 3: Scroll down until you see MTU. It should be set at 1,400 by default, but we want to change it to 1,500.

Someone picks up a Nintendo Switch OLED Model.
Nintendo

Clear your network

Along with the above method, you can also do a few things to make your network more friendly to downloading Switch games. Unlike speeding up PlayStation downloads, the Switch has no Ethernet port and relies on Wi-Fi, so that isn't an option. Instead, you can at least bring your Switch close to your router so there is less interference with the signal.

Additionally, see if you can turn off or disable any other phones, consoles, or computers sharing the same network as the Switch. Each additional device on your network limits how much speed the others can use, so if your Switch is the only thing connected then it will get as much speed as possible.

Jesse Lennox
Jesse Lennox has been a writer at Digital Trends for over four years and has no plans of stopping. He covers all things…
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