Switch:Minecraft world management

Required Reading

The Nintendo Switch release of Minecraft Bedrock edition does not permit importing worlds from external sources in-game. However, there is a trick to import your world to Minecraft that involves using a save manager and creating a blank world to replace with your downloaded world.

When Minecraft was ported to the Switch, the developers made it so that internally, the world folders are not named whatever you named the world; hence why we have to look for the world using its levelname.txt. Consequently, this is also why we can't just put the world inside the save and have it work.

Importing worlds works on emuMMC as well as sysCFW, but be warned: there is always a ban risk when messing with sysMMC. While people have reported successes with using this guide in sysMMC without getting banned, this can change.

What You Need

• A copy of Minecraft
• Checkpoint (the Checkpoint.nro file) or JKSV (the JKSV.nro file) in your /switch folder

Exporting Minecraft worlds

Section I - Backing up your save

1. Boot to Atmosphère on your switch
2. Launch the Homebrew Menu using either title takeover (recommended) or the album applet and load either Checkpoint or JKSV
3. Select your user if needed, select Minecraft, back up the save (any name works), then exit

Section II - Copying the world files

1. Reboot to Hekate
2. Go to Tools -> USB Tools -> SD Card and connect your Switch to your PC
3. These next steps will differ depending on if you used Checkpoint or JKSV:
   • Checkpoint users: Navigate to /switch/Checkpoint/saves/0x0100D71004694000 Minecraft/ and enter the folder for your dumped save
   • JKSV users: Navigate to /JKSV/Minecraft/, extract the zip archive corresponding to your save and enter the created folder
4. Navigate to games/com.mojang/minecraftWorlds/
5. For each subfolder:
   1. Inside the subfolder, open levelname.txt and see if the contents of the file matches your world name you set in section I step 3
   2. If it is the correct name, copy the subfolder to your PC
   3. If it isn't the correct name, move on to the next subfolder
6. Eject your Switch and disconnect it from your PC

Your Minecraft world has been successfully exported!

Importing custom Minecraft worlds

Section I - Creating a dummy world and backing up your save

1. Boot to Atmosphère on your Switch
2. Launch Minecraft
3. Once it is loaded, create a new world with a name distinct from your other worlds, if you have any. This is used to identify the world save later in the guide.
4. After it has been created, exit the world, then close Minecraft
5. Launch the Homebrew Menu using either title takeover (recommended) or the album applet and load either Checkpoint or JKSV
6. Select your user if needed, select Minecraft, back up the save (any name works), then exit

Section II - Copying the world files

1. Reboot to Hekate
2. Go to Tools -> USB Tools -> SD Card and connect your Switch to your PC
3. These next steps will differ depending on if you used Checkpoint or JKSV:
   • Checkpoint users: Navigate to /switch/Checkpoint/saves/0x0100D71004694000 Minecraft/ and enter the folder for your dumped save
   • JKSV users: Navigate to /JKSV/Minecraft/, extract the zip archive corresponding to your save and enter the created folder
4. Navigate to games/com.mojang/minecraftWorlds/
5. For each subfolder:
   1. Inside the subfolder, open levelname.txt and see if the contents of the file matches your world name you set in section I step 3
   2. If it is the correct name, delete the contents of this subfolder (not the subfolder itself) and replace it with the contents of your downloaded world (file and folder structure should match)
   3. If it isn't the correct name, move on to the next subfolder
6. Eject your Switch and disconnect it from your PC

Section III - Importing the modified save

1. From Hekate, boot into Atmosphère
2. Launch the Homebrew Menu using either title takeover (recommended) or the album applet and load either Checkpoint or JKSV.
3. Select your user if needed, select Minecraft, select your save, restore it, then exit

You should now have your custom world imported into Minecraft!