Safety Precautions¶
You are now able to run Hekate on your Nintendo Switch to launch the Atmosphere custom firmware. These next steps will make sure you’re being as careful as possible in regards to keeping your Switch from bricking and getting banned. These steps are optional but highly recommended
Step 1: Backing up your NAND and BIS keys¶
By backing up your NAND (the Switch’s internal memory), you will later be able to restore it in the event that anything goes wrong, essentially rewinding it back to a previous state. BIS keys are also good to backup so you can reinstall any firmware version manually should your NAND backup become corrupted or lost.
Enter RCM and send the Hekate payload provided in the SDSetup download to your Switch (refer to Section 1: Accessing RCM for instructions about sending the Hekate payload)
In Hekate, select ‘Tools > Backup eMMC > eMMC BOOT0 & BOOT1’
When finished, remove your SD card (you don’t need to shutdown Hekate), insert it into your PC, and copy the ‘backup’ folder to a safe location on your PC. Afterwards, delete the ‘backup’ folder on your SD card.
Insert your SD card back into your Switch
In Hekate, select ‘Tools > Backup eMMC > eMMC RAW GPP’
If your SD card has less than ~32GB free space, Hekate will provide additional instructions every few minutes about pulling files off of your SD card so it can continue.
If you weren’t required to copy files during the backup process, once again copy the ‘backup’ folder off of your SD card and put it in a safe location on your PC. Delete the ‘backup’ folder on your SD card.
Close the Backup menu, go back to the Home tab and tap ‘Reboot > RCM’
Send the “Lockpick_RCM.bin” payload provided in the SDSetup download to your Switch (if you do not have this payload, you can obtain it from GitHub).
Select Dump from SysNAND and press Power to confirm; press again Power when finished to go back to the Lockpick menu
Select poweroff from the menu once finished.
Insert your SD card into your PC.
Copy the /switch/prod.keys file to a safe location.
Warning
It is highly recommended that you store these backups and keys in multiple locations (ex. cloud storage, external harddrive, etc) as they may be critical to restoring your Switch if anything goes wrong in the future.
Step 2: (EU Only) Enabling GDPR Protections¶
Users with EU Nintendo Network accounts have the option of enabling GDPR protections in their account settings. Doing so has been confirmed to disable lots of telemetry that can get you banned. This setting will not appear if your account is not from the EU.
Login with your NNID
Under ‘Other settings’, Edit ‘Usage information’ and set it to ‘Don’t share’
Save your changes
Step 3: Blocking Updates & Telemetry with 90DNS¶
You can configure your WiFi settings to use a custom DNS server that blocks all connections to Nintendo servers (except the internet connection test server). This will prevent your Switch from communicating telemetry to Nintendo which could result in your console being banned, while still allowing Homebrew to access the internet. Note for this to be effective, you must enable these settings before doing anything bannable and keep them enabled until that NAND (either emuMMC or sysMMC, these will be explained later) is factory reset, or a NAND backup is restored to a time before you did anything bannable.
Simply running Atmosphere CFW and using basic homebrew has not been a known cause for console bans.
Doing this will make games unable to be played online, block eShop, game updates and system updates. If you are OK with this, follow these instructions:
Boot your Switch with or without CFW.
Open settings and go to the Internet tab
Configure a WiFi connection if you have not already done so
Select your Wifi network and pick Change Settings
Set DNS Settings to Manual
Set ‘Primary DNS’ to ‘163.172.141.219’
Set ‘Secondary DNS’ to ‘207.246.121.77’
Save and perform a connection test by connecting to the network. The connection test should pass.