The Nintendo Switch has a built-in screenshot function, but it's a pretty closed ecosystem for actually sharing content. There are a few ways to share to some social media sites if that's all you care about, but if you want to edit it or use your in-game highlights in more creative ways, that's pretty limited.
Fortunately, the Switch recently picked up the ability to send those screenshots directly to your smartphone, and we'll show you how. Just follow these steps.
Step 1. Open the Switch Album app
Once you've taken a few screenshots or videos you'll find everything in Album application from your Switch home screen. Open that app to browse everything saved on your Switch's internal storage and SD card.
Find the screenshot or video that you want to send to your smartphone and open it. Press the A button to open the sharing menu, and select “Send to Smartphone” to get started. You can also send batches of screenshots if you need to grab a few.
Step 2. Connect to your smartphone
After you've opened the smartphone connection screen, you'll see a QR code and some brief instructions.
To make this happen, you'll need to open your camera app or a QR code scanner on your smartphone. Most modern cameras these days can read QR codes to open links, but if not there are plenty of free and safe QR code readers on the Play Store.
This first QR code is going to prompt you to switch to a new WiFi network. This is a temporary network that's created by your Switch that will allow some inter-network transfer during the next step. You won't have internet access while you're connected, but that's okay, we'll get this knocked out pretty quickly.
Step 3. Use the second QR code to download your screenshot
For the last step, we're going to back to the QR code reader or camera. You'll probably have noticed that your Switch has changed to a second QR code now that it's connected to your smartphone, and we need to scan that code this time.
This code is just a link that will open up in a web browser, but the page will only be available on this temporary Switch network and should contain the screenshot you're trying to transfer.
Long press that image and you'll get the standard share menu for your device. Simply save/download the screenshot to your phone, and you're set! It'll show up in your devices gallery so you can edit it, upload it to Google Photos, or whatever you're planning to do.
Lastly, you'll want to close the application on the Switch and make sure your phone reconnects to your actual WiFi network once you're done. Rinse and repeat anytime you have a new screenshot you want to download on your phone.
