Over the last couple of days, an X post detailing how to improve your Nintendo Switch 2 download speeds has gone viral, with thousands of likes and countless users thanking the original poster for saving hours of their lives waiting for games to install. With that in mind, we thought we'd put the method to the test to see whether we can improve one of the few frustrations surrounding what is otherwise one of the best handheld consoles.
For this test, I opted for a game with plenty of data to download, namely Monster Hunter Stories 3: Twisted Reflection. With the default settings, the estimated download time was around 48 minutes for 29.3GB of data. Then I cancelled the download and followed the instructions listed on @TheNintendoGoof's X post, and, well, the results were not what I expected. The download was now estimated to take over ten hours, getting longer all the time.
Okay, so that was disappointing. This is an experiment, though, so I tested it again, using my parents' Wi-Fi, which is usually considerably slower than my own. This time, the estimated download time at default internet settings was around six hours, give or take 15 minutes. I changed the setting again, and weirdly enough, it essentially didn't affect anything. It was the same six hours to download the almost 30GB of data.
Looking at a Reddit post detailing the method, it looks like I'm not the only one who didn't get the desired results. While plenty of users suggest it dramatically increased their download speeds, a few are in the same camp as me, with the alterations leading to the opposite effect. What's clear is that it seems to depend more on your Wi-Fi router than on your Switch 2 unit, so even if I didn't get fast speeds after changing the settings, it could still be worth trying yourself.
If you want to try to improve your own Switch 2 download speeds, we've laid out the method in simple instructions below:
- Go to the System Settings menu
- Scroll to Internet
- Hit Internet Settings
- Select your network and Change Settings
- Turn off IPv6 Connection
- Change MTU number from 1,400 to 1,500
- Save the settings and connect to your Wi-Fi again
If the method doesn't work for you either, we recommend changing your internet settings back to the default, just to be on the safe side. Fortunately, not all the best Switch games require downloading massive amounts of data, so it's not too inconvenient to deal with sluggish speeds, but it is still frustrating for bigger games.