Less than two weeks after the launch of the Nintendo Switch, hackers are already finding ways to access parts of the new console that they aren’t supposed to access. First, we saw a prominent iPhone hacker share a proof of concept for jailbreaking the Switch over the weekend, and now users have found a way to open the hidden browser on the Switch to browse the internet in a way that Nintendo never intended.
If you want to access the browser on your Switch to watch YouTube videos, see what your friends are doing on Facebook or simply get caught up on the latest news, you can do so by downloading the Fiddler proxy on your computer (available for PC, Mac and Linux) and following the instructions in this highly detailed tutorial from driverdis over on the GBAtemp forums.
This workaround was actually discovered back on March 4th, but it has only just come to our attention thanks to a video demonstration from Nintendo Life, which you can watch below:
As you can see in the video, the browser clearly isn’t ready for public consumption. Pages don’t load correctly and the volume controls of the YouTube videos are bugged and unusable. If Nintendo ever does plan on making its browser a feature that users can freely access, it has a great deal of work to do.
At the moment, this hack is more of a novelty than anything else, but it’s also further proof that the Switch is vulnerable to exploits. At this rate, homebrew might be right around the corner.
