c/SwitchPirates - Switch Custom Firmware Installation

Introduction

If you want to pirate, run emulators, mods, or homebrew apps on your Switch, you need to install custom firmware. Today, that means Atmosphere, since SX-OS and ReiNX, Atmosphere's only competitors, have been dead for quite a long time now.

Guides

There are three well-known guides for the Switch, but I can only recommend two of them. We'll go over them below:

Recommended Guides

NH-Server Guide - This one is my favorite. It has great organization, goes more in-depth about CFW usage, and provides a clean and functional Atmosphere setup, along with a basic set of homebrew apps.
There are two routes: SysCFW-only, or emuMMC. If you are on an unbanned Switch, use an emuMMC. If you are banned, use SysCFW.
Note that this guide doesn't set up sigpatches, which are required for piracy. Complete the linked sigpatches guides below after you finish the guide. Choose based on which route you completed in the main guide:
- emuMMC Users - Sigpatches Setup
- SysCFW Users - Sigpatches Setup
Raccoon Guide (AKA SwitchHackingIsEasy) - This is a guide by r/SwitchPirates contributors. While overall a decent choice, it has a few pros and cons, and can be a bit messy organization-wise. It's main advantage is that it provides sigpatches as part of the main guide, unlike the NH-Server guide linked above.
There are also some disadvantages to this guide that should be kept in mind. Currently, it recommends using Exosphere to blank PRODINFO, which causes a crash on 17.0.0. Second, it configures Hekate to chainload Fusee on the Atmosphere CFW launch button rather than booting via Hekate's FSS0 directly. Fusee has a characteristic that can make this slightly dangerous - it will boot an emuMMC if available, and sysCFW instead if one isn't available. This means if anything happens to emuMMC, making it unavailable or disabled, you could accidentally boot into SysCFW without knowing. Third, using Fusee as your bootloader means you can't easily reboot back to Hekate from HorizonOS using the "Restart" button like you can with NH-Server's setup. Lastly, this guide provides no basic set of apps to get you started.

Non-Recommended Guides

Switch.Homebrew - This configures a setup similar to NH-Server, but it uses an AIO pack (SDSetup) that often contains outdated Applications, CFW and Bootloaders. It also bundles a ton of sysmodules and apps that cause crashes when firmware is updated, causing confusion to users who didn't even know the sysmodules were part of the pack.

Other Garbage to Avoid

All CFW Installation Video Guides
BetterGaming - Both their Discord and AIO Pack
DeepSea CFW Pack
Sthetix HATS Pack
All Other Random CFW AIO Packs.