Introduction The Nintendo Switch V2, often referred to as the "Mariko" model (after the codename for its revised processor), was released in August 2019. Its primary advertised feature was a significant increase in battery life. However, for the homebrew and custom firmware (CFW) community, the V2 model represented a major hurdle. Unlike the original "Erista" model (2017-2018), the V2 is not vulnerable to the Fusée Gelée bootrom exploit, making a traditional "softmod" (software-only modification) impossible.
This article explores the current state of modding the Switch V2, detailing why a classic softmod doesn't exist and what alternatives are available for running custom firmware. The original Switch had a hardware-level flaw in its Nvidia Tegra X1 chip (Erista variant) that allowed an attacker to send a malformed USB packet during recovery mode (RCM). This provided arbitrary code execution before the operating system even loaded, leading to an unpatchable softmod. softmod switch v2