Nintendo Switch Releases: Atmosphère 0.9.2 with greatly improved emuMMC functionality supporting proper power management & more; hekate 5.0.0 released with FW 8.1.0 support alongs & Nyx 0.8.0 configuration GUI
Yesterday, it was the 3DS’ day to shine with Luma3DS and 3DS Homebrew Menu getting sizeable updates but today, the spotlight is back on the Nintendo Switch. In this article, we’ll be looking at a couple of recently-released software including Atmosphère 0.9.2 and Hekate 5.0.0 which comes with Nyx, a GUI-based configuration system.
Atmosphère 0.9.2 released with emuMMC fixes and Stratosphere being rewritten
Atmosphère is one of the major CFWs available for hackable Nintendo Switch consoles (fusee-gelee vulnerable or ipatched on FW 4.1.0), with the others being SX OS and ReiNX.
This CFW allows you to do numerous things such as running homebrew, overclocking your Switch, putting on custom themes and various other things but one thing that makes it stand out is probably the high amount of support and updates it receives.
Around 12 hours ago, Atmosphère 0.9.2 was released which is the emuMMC fix update mentioned in Atmosphère 0.9.0‘s release notes as Atmosphère 0.9.1 was an unexpected update pushed out in order to add support for FW 8.1.0 which was released last week. This updated version of Atmosphère brings along:
- A whole slew of fixes/improvements to the recently-introduced emuMMC functionality which is similar to emuNAND on other CFWs/platforms. These fixes and improvements include:
- An overhaul to the way that it handles power management; this brings along support for low voltage mode, improved shut down support which should eliminate corruption/sync issues and support for more SD Card types.
- Support for file-based emuMMC has been fixed but it must be noted that this way is much slower than partition-based emuMMC although its speed will likely be improved in the future
- emuMMC now works properly on lower firmwares as a bug relating to missing SVC access was fixed
- The configuration scheme has been changed as emummc_ prefixes have been removed so update your INI files!
- The Stratosphere part of Atmosphère is currently being re-written in order to make the code cleaner, easier to maintain and reduce the memory footprint of modules. As of right now, the sm, boot, spl, ro, and loader modules have been tackled.
In order to grab Atmosphère 0.9.2, check out this link and report any issues in the Issues Tab.
Hekate 5.0.0 released with Nyx 0.8.0 for much easier configuration
The Hekate bootloader is an instrumental part of the Nintendo Switch hacking scene as it’s the starting point for loading CFWs and Linux, dumping/restoring your NAND and a multitude of other functions. Up till now, the configuration menu it presented was a simple ClockwordMod-esque text-based menu that worked as intended but wasn’t really fun to work with since you had to control it with the volume/power buttons.
However, this release of Hekate spices things up with a greatly improved configuration menu alongside new features such as FW 8.1.0 support! Now, let’s look at what Hekate 5.0.0 comes with:
- Support for booting FW 8.1.0 and emuMMC
- Reduced boot times
- The backup/restore features are now much faster thanks to Nyx
- External KIP1 patching support
- Nyx 0.8.0 which is a GUI-based configuration menu that has touch support so no more fidgeting around with physical buttons! This comes with:
- All the options found in the previous menu
- An emuMMC manager allowing you to create file/partition-based emuMMC and migrate it to other types
- Greatly increased speed when it comes to requesting information and backing up/restoring
- Customisation support which currently allows for custom boot icons and backgrounds
- Support for taking screenshots
- Numerous other minor features and additions to automation
In order to get Hekate (CTCaer Mod) 5.0.0 with its great new configuration menu, check out this link and report issues to the Issues Tab. You may also donate to CTCaer for his excellent work maintaining Hekate (which was originally released by naehwert) by following this Patreon link.
Conclusion
Other than Atmosphère and Hekate, other tools saw some love in the last few recently including AtlasNX with version 13 and Switch-pl getting FW 8.0.1 support. Furthermore, Switch Homebrew Guide has been updated with instructions for hacking ipatched (non-fusee gelee vulnerable) systems on FW 4.1.0 so you should check it out if you want to hack your patched Switch!
So, just how safe is it using emuMMC? I’ve seen a bunch of people saying that even if you use that or emuNAND, then you will definitely get banned at some point no matter what. Is that accurate? The only thing I care about hacking my switch for is emulators.
Personally I’d wait it out if you enjoy online. I hacked my Switch very early on for that exact purpose and now no online for me, takes a lot of the enjoyment out of the console for me.
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ooh, thanks for the mention! <3