I jailbroke my Switch last year when they went after Yuzu because fuck Nintendo. It’s a launch model, so no soldering or external hardware besides a jig was required. If it were a newer model I wouldn’t have gone through the trouble, but it’s been great not having to give Nintendo any money to play Switch games as well as to be able to run homebrew and emulators. I think I’m going to go with a Steam Deck rather than a Switch 2 - I’ll miss the exclusives, but $400+ for an underpowered console is just too much to be worth it any more, and I’ve gotten used to being able to just load on whatever games I want.

If your Switch is the one in the picture, I dont think jailbreaking it is going to do much for you.

First step, use a soldering iron and a good quality glue to piece it carefully back together. Make sure the glue dries fully before switching it on again. Then follow the steps others have guided you on.

Depending on the Switch in question (I.e. is it a V1 switch) you can soft mod it - firmware level doesn’t matter). The first thing you should do is check your serial number with a tool like https://ismyswitchpatched.com/ . If that comes back with “Your console is not patched. Hooray!” then your switch is soft mod compatible. If your switch is not compatible then you are stuck with a mod chip most likely.

the first step if you have 0 clue is find out if the switch you have can be hacked via software. yhr ones yhat can be hacked via software, are the ~20M switched produced before May 2018. If your switch was made after (e. g model with the better battery life switch lite, switch oled, the few patched oh switch after 2018) it requires a hard mod to hack, or alternatively use a switch cart.

firmware for the switch im particular doesnt matter much unless youre hacking it with pegasus(?), which means you had an ancient swotch that eas never updated past like fw 4.0

Between your bad experiences and the fact that your switch is updated, and most likely would require a modchip, I recommend selling it and getting a Steam Deck instead.

Basically, and I’m p sure someone here can ackshually me if needed, there’s three “unlock groups”. All modern and even mid-era Switches comprise the first group, which requires a modchip (hardware intervention): it’s not quick, not cheap, not safe, not anything. That said once it’s installed and working your Switch is jailbroken forever.

Of the remaining ones, group two is can be jailbroken via a hardware injector (a rig that goees in the joycon slot) - that’s by far the easiest, safest and cheapest method if you happen to be that lucky but remember, we’re talking old Switches here. Like, almost 3DS old.

And the remaining group can still be jailbroken via software only, but the entrypoint is volatile (so if you reboot the console you have to unlock it again) and depends on an internet connection that is risky because if your Switch manages to connect to Nintendon’t servers’s, you’re SOL as it will require upgrading the firmware. The method is called either Caffeine or Pegascape I think. To make it worse the original Pegascape project is dead so unless you host your own local fake DNS to redirect the wifi portal and your own Pegascape server, you’d have to look for someone who is running a third-party Pegascape entrypoint that you are willing to trust.

In comparison, a Steam Deck is basically Linux with a coat of paint, so you can just pkg install retroarch (or whchever other method to install Retroarch) and get access to all the consoles that supports. Forever.

Search “switch hacking is easy” - there’s an ancient site that got dcma’d (or something) that is defunct but someone rehosted it under “switch hacking is still easy” on github.

That’ll help you tell whether you’re able to use the joycon jumper method or not. If not, it’s a very fiddly modchip install that I wouldn’t recommend unless you’re experienced in soldering.

Be sure you understand the difference between launching directly and installing a parallel OS (sysmmc vs emummc, I think?)

Someone might need to check me but if you do sysmmc then boot into it without the hacks and Nintendo domain blocking, it’ll connect up to Nintendos servers and report the hack and ban your console

If you enjoy playing your switch online for whatever reason, I don’t recommend jailbreaking. Mine spends all time in airplane mode and only a game or two complain they want to connect to the internet, but I ignore