Hacking Can I set up a safe cfw with just a phone?

rufuszombot

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I just bought a large micro sd card and plan on buying an SXOS license, my goal is to set up an emunand to play offline only while trying to keep my sysnand clean with a seperate sd card so I can play stuff online. I no longer have access to a PC after a fire so all I have is my phone and an OTG cable. I tested to see if I could run homebrew and that was easy enough.

Is there anything that I would need to do that would require a PC? I have been out of the loop for a while, so im not 100% sure what's "safe" and what isnt. I'm trying not to be banned, eat my cake and have it, too.
Thanks in advance .
 

blahblah

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As has been said about 18 million times but for some reason is not yet drilled into people's heads, there is no such thing as a safe CFW. Not even emuNand. Not anything. If you aren't willing to accept a ban, don't mod your console. There are so many ways for Nintendo to tell that you played around with your system, too much to even go over. Emunand is not an effective barrier to prevent checks for things we don't know if they are checking for - you can envision Nintendo evolving their anti-hax measures to an Xbox Live style 'challenge/response/' system, where things ranging from autorcm to errata relating to essentially having two copies of the Switch OS on one console (TX's emuNand is pretty bad, there is no full blocking of writes to the real eMMC; it lacks the level of isolation needed to seriously attempt hiding from Nintendo) - where those things are checked in a manner preventing visibility into what is being checked. And they just hand out a ban for violations. And we can't see what they are doing in a viable manner.

Vendor targeting of select consoles, the changing the checks frequently and adding new stuff on the fly, all manner of badness on Nintendo's part is possible. We don't really know what they are doing now, because there is no Switch Scene equilviant of the ABGX360 people - experienced scene figures that constantly monitor what the vendor (MS, Nintendo, whoever) checks for and devise ways to fight it. The Switch scene is stuck in the guessing state. Nintendo doesn't make it easy, either, with them delaying banning people for some semi-random amount of time, making deducting the cause of the ban a real challenge.

All of the above assumes that you don't make the mistake of forgetting which mode you are booted into for half a second and going online, which is not remotely a safe assumption. Everyone makes mistakes.

Paranoia over bans is silly. A Switch is $300. $300 isn't that much money to intended audience for illegal stuff - adults. It's not $50, but it's not exactly $2000, you know? Just buy another Switch. Call Nintendo, have them unlink your NNID from your soon-to-be-modded system, link it to your new patched Switch, redownload your games and mod the old one. Nintendo doesn't ban NNIDs (on Switch, anyway) when you get caught haxing, so that is relatively safe. Though they could change their policies, of course.

And, come on, get a computer. PCs are essential parts of modern life. Screwing around with USB-OTG is just silly. PCs aren't that expensive. Become an adult. Understand how things work, what you can get away with and what you can't. Trying to make one Switch act as both a clean system and a dirty one is doomed, will lead to disappointment. Trying to jury rig a phone to be a (crappy) PC is going to be unpleasant. Use the right tools for the job - a PC and a dedicated hax Switch.
 
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rufuszombot

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As has been said about 18 million times but for some reason is not yet drilled into people's heads, there is no such thing as a safe CFW. Not even emuNand. Not anything. If you aren't willing to accept a ban, don't mod your console.

And, come on, get a computer. PCs are essential parts of modern life. Screwing around with USB-OTG is just silly. PCs aren't that expensive.

I had a few PCs, but like I said they all burned up when my town burned down, so since I'm not trying to spend too much money on something I dont really have the space for at the moment just to hack a switch, I'm trying to use what I have at my disposal.
And I understand there is no such thing as safe, and a ban wouldnt be too bad since all I have is a hotspot for internet at the moment anyway. But if there is a "safest" I would prefer to go with that.
So I get that my resources are limited and there are better ways to do it, but im just trying to figure out if I can do it, and the best way to go about it with what I do have.
 

blahblah

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I had a few PCs, but like I said they all burned up when my town burned down, so since I'm not trying to spend too much money on something I dont really have the space for at the moment just to hack a switch, I'm trying to use what I have at my disposal.
And I understand there is no such thing as safe, and a ban wouldnt be too bad since all I have is a hotspot for internet at the moment anyway. But if there is a "safest" I would prefer to go with that.
So I get that my resources are limited and there are better ways to do it, but im just trying to figure out if I can do it, and the best way to go about it with what I do have.

I hear what you are saying, but circumstance does not change the fundamentals of modern life. You need a computer to do pretty much anything in hax world without substantial pain. USB-OTG is not a replacement for a computer.

You're welcome to try to go the safest route you can envision. Just don't expect it to ultimately matter.

You can probably jury rig some USB-OTG adapter plus an MSD reader to be able to move files around on your Switch mSD card. And you can try to run TX emuNand, sure. Don't expect it to matter as far as bans are concerned, though. Expect the experience of setting things up with just an Android phone to suck.
 
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Just make the decision, don't hack your switch, or hack it and risk a ban.
 

rufuszombot

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I hear what you are saying, but circumstance does not change the fundamentals of modern life. You need a computer to do pretty much anything in hax world without substantial pain. USB-OTG is not a replacement for a computer.

You're welcome to try to go the safest route you can envision. Just don't expect it to ultimately matter.

You can probably jury rig some USB-OTG adapter plus an MSD reader to be able to move files around on your Switch mSD card. And you can try to run TX emuNand, sure. Don't expect it to matter as far as bans are concerned, though.

Worst case scenario is I get banned and I can just buy another one later that I can go online with. Trust me, I miss my computers, I did everything with them; I just cant afford to put any money into one since im still recovering from the fire. I just want to play the games I lost (and others) without spending an arm and a leg to replace them.
 
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Worst case scenario is I get banned and I can just buy another one later that I can go online with. Trust me, I miss my computers, I did everything with them; I just cant afford to put any money into one since im still recovering from the fire. I just want to play the games I lost (and others) without spending an arm and a leg to replace them.
if you are going to hack you should probably use a pc to hack your switch, instead of a phone, its just a lot easier.
 

blahblah

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Worst case scenario is I get banned and I can just buy another one later that I can go online with. Trust me, I miss my computers, I did everything with them; I just cant afford to put any money into one since im still recovering from the fire. I just want to play the games I lost (and others) without spending an arm and a leg to replace them.

No fire insurance?
 
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Make a nand backup before you hack your switch
then go offline until you don't want a hacked switch anymore
then restore it.
if you are so concerned with getting a ban just dont or either stay offline forever or get another switch so you have one for hacks and one for online.
 
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fodder

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I mean it wont be difficult to set up CFW with just a phone and OTG cable but it will be incredibly tedious. Also, as others have said, there is no such thing as a "safe" CFW. As soon as you touch CFW, your chance of getting banned increases massively (say from 0.001% counting false positives, to 80%+). Of course things can be done to mitigate bans, but in a sense they are like self inflicted bans.

With that being said, I would suggest possibly saving the $30 for SXOS and trying to get a laptop or something, but that's obviously your decision and you probably shouldn't let a stranger on the internet tell you how to live your life. However, I will say, that with the exception of some arguably useful features not being implemented yet, the current open source CFW options are pretty good alternatives to paying so much for something that is using stolen, unlicensed code (from previously mentioned open source CFWs and other projects) with a few extra features and slight QoL additions. But, as I mentioned before, its up to you to decide, and each has their own upsides and downsides.

As for the main question, you should get along fine with Rekado and probably a more fully featured file manager on Android. One thing though, is that if your phone's SD card slot is one where you need to pull out a tray that requires an pin to remove (Eg. Galaxy S9), it is going to be hell. You need to access the SD card a fair amount depending on what you plan on doing. One more thing is that I am not sure exactly how Android handles SD cards, and if you can safely eject them while the phone is on or not. If you can, you should be fine. If not, you should still be fine, but it will just be another tedious aspect.
 
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lordelan

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Apart from that "safe" point of your question I'd say the main thing you asked for is if a phone is enough and yes it is enough. Put the SD card in your phone, download Kosmos or SX OS to it, put it in your Switch and have fun.

Optional but recommended step: Make a NAND backup with hekate, insert your card back into your phone and push it to a cloud (mega.co.nz has enough space for the 32 gig NAND) or NAS.
 

charlieb

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using a phone is childsplay. I use A 3g router these days but with andoird ( Samsung phone) it was trivial.

Then got the router as i needed a solution that didn't need my phone when I was away from home.
 
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always first phone question: Android or iOS?
Android yeah.
iOS naaaah only if u have a Custom Firm already then with FTP and NXBoot (Jailbreak required)
 

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