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One of the biggest draws of the Nintendo Switch 2 is an enhanced suite of social features, allowing you to chat and share gameplay with your friends. It also means new ways to accidentally erode your own privacy. Whether you’re still setting up your Switch 2, or you’ve been playing for a while, there are a few settings you should check right now.
If you migrated from an existing Switch, most of your settings should have been imported, so some things you might not need to tweak. However, there are enough new changes and new features that it’s worth doing a quick audit of your privacy settings.
Manage who knows when you’re online, and what you’re playing
The most common social feature you’ve probably seen are the alerts that let you know when a friend comes online, and what games they’re playing. It’s a nice little touch that was present on the original Switch, but it can feel a bit invasive if you’d like to play games without broadcasting it.
To adjust these settings, from the Home screen on your Switch 2, select your profile icon at the top of the display. From there, follow these steps:
On the left, scroll down to User settings.
Under Play-Activity Settings, you can change Visibility of Play Activity to everyone, your friends, a smaller list of best friends, or no one. (Below this setting, you can also select Delete Play Activity to erase the history of your gameplay that Nintendo has stored.)
Under Friend Settings in the User settings menu, you can change Online-Status Display to all friends, best friends, or no one. This will affect whether friends see you as online, separate from gameplay activity. You can also disable incoming Friend requests, or get a new Friend Code if you want to prevent invites via your old one.
While you’re here, you can also select Edit Nickname to change how your name is displayed. Handy if you initially used your real name, but have added a few too many acquaintances or strangers over the years.
These settings were on the original Switch so, again, if you had these adjusted on your original console, they should still be in place after migrating to the Switch 2.
Learn how the new GameChat system works
GameChat is such a big part of the new Nintendo Switch 2 that they gave it its own button on the right Joy-Con. This new feature lets you join Zoom-like audio and/or video calls, and even share your screen with your friends. However, that also means it’s one more thing you can forget to hit mute on.
First, when you initially set up GameChat—which requires verifying your email address and phone number tied to your Switch account—you’ll be given the option to manually approve which friends are even allowed to send you chat invites. This is a good opportunity to only allow invites from the people you actually play with, and avoid giving a blanket open door to that one person you met at a con five years ago.
At any point, in a game or in menus, you can press the GameChat button to pull up the chat overlay and start a session with your friends—as long as you both have set up GameChat and allowed invites from each other. Once you start a chat, your game’s screen will shrink a bit and you’ll see a Zoom-like array of invited players along the bottom.
From here, press the GameChat button again to get quick shortcuts for muting your mic, video (if you have an external camera plugged in), or screen sharing. This is also where you leave the chat.
While by default it’s pretty hard to not notice you’re in a chat, this can be changed. In GameChat’s settings (more on these below), you can change the Screen Layout setting to use smaller boxes for other players, or hide them entirely. In the latter case, you could be in a chat where other users can hear your microphone without a visible indicator on the screen.
This isn’t a huge security risk in the absolute sense—since it requires you to change settings on your own physical console—but it could be an annoyance if you forget you started a chat.
Dive deeper into GameChat’s privacy settings
Once you’re in a GameChat session, there are a few more settings you can tweak. While in a chat, press the GameChat button and select the Settings gear icon to the right. Here, you’ll find options for your screen layout, audio, camera, and screen sharing settings.
As mentioned above, Screen Layout lets you adjust how other players appear in your GameChat call. If you choose to put the game in full screen mode, an indicator will appear by default in the lower right corner of your screen to show who’s speaking at the moment. You can change where this appears, or disable this entirely as well.
Under Chat Audio, there’s a toggle to automatically mute your microphone when entering a chat session. I highly recommend enabling this. It’s simple to unmute yourself, so it’s a handy precaution to make sure your friends don’t accidentally hear something they weren’t meant to before you’re ready to talk.
Under Camera Video you can adjust background filters or how much your camera is zoomed in on your face. This is the one feature that isn’t built in to the console, so unless you have an external camera connected, you won’t be able to see anything here anyway.
Finally, under Screen Sharing, there’s a single toggle to enable sharing your screen while you’re on the Home menu. By default, this is turned on, but if you don’t want your friends to know the embarrassing games you play, you can switch it off.
Use the Nintendo Switch App to adjust your console’s settings
The Nintendo Switch App—formerly the Nintendo Switch Online app—is one of the best upgrades to the Switch 2. In addition to game-specific features like Zelda Notes, it’s also a handy way to access your console’s settings and communicate with your friends.
Some settings here are the same ones you find on your console, and sync to your device. For example, if you tap your profile icon in the app, you can change who sees your online status or play activity. Changing the setting here in the app, and your console will already be updated the next time you use it.
You can also find Account Information on the profile menu, which will take you to an external site to manage your overall Nintendo account. Here, under Account Settings, you can manage things like whether your usage information gets sent back to Nintendo, or used to personalize recommendations.
Manage your kids’ screen time with Parental Controls
If you’re a parent managing privacy settings for your child, you have extra controls via the Nintendo Switch Parental Controls app. This is a separate program from the Nintendo Switch App, that lets you set time limits, manage who can chat with your children, and even set spending limits for their accounts.
The most relevant feature here, for privacy concerns, is controlling who is allowed to initiate GameChats with your child. As mentioned above, even being friends with someone doesn’t necessarily mean they’re allowed to initiate GameChat calls, unless the user specifically adds them to the approved list.
As a parent, the Parental Controls app lets you decide which users are on that approved list for your child’s account. So, for example, you could allow them to use their friend codes to add friends at school or from games, while still only allowing a few core people you know and trust to start a voice or video call.
