Nexvyn OS brings a windowed desktop, app store and six-language SDK to Switch

A new Switch homebrew project called Nexvyn OS has been announced on GBAtemp by a member who posts as SnX7. It is a windowed desktop shell for Atmosphère. It ships as a single .nro file that you launch from the Homebrew Menu. The post lists a window manager, a browser, office apps, an on-console code editor, a game engine and an App Market.

What it is

According to the GBAtemp thread, Nexvyn OS is not an operating system in the boot sense. It is a normal homebrew application. You copy it to the switch folder on the SD card and open it from the Homebrew Menu. The author says it needs no reboot and no sysmodule, and that it writes nothing to the system. Closing it returns you to the Homebrew Menu. Its data stays in a NexvynOS folder on the SD card, and an erase option in Settings removes that folder. The official repository describes it the same way, as a desktop shell for Atmosphère users. It is licensed GPL-3.0-or-later.

The desktop

• Draggable and resizable windows that snap to halves and quarters, with minimize and full screen.

• Two layouts: a Dock with a menu bar, or a taskbar with a Start menu.

• Window Overview, a Launcher, Quick Search, Control Center, Notification Center, widgets and virtual desktops.

• Separate layouts for handheld and TV, with a touch-friendly UI in handheld mode and 1080p output on TV.

• Input from touch, Joy-Con or Pro Controller (with remapping), and a USB keyboard and mouse through USB-C OTG or the dock.

Apps and tools

The author lists 79 built-in apps. The repository README says more than 70. They include a browser with its own HTML and CSS engine plus QuickJS for JavaScript, and a video app called YousTube that uses FFmpeg. There are also live TV with IPTV and M3U playlists, radio, music, photos, and a camera app that uses the right Joy-Con's IR camera. Office software covers a word processor, a spreadsheet with formulas, slides, notes and a calendar. The thread also mentions an AI chat client that needs the user's own key.

A set of Switch tools is gathered in one place. It covers a mod manager, a GameBanana-based mod finder, cheats, sysmodules, overlays, sys-clk, Atmosphère settings, save backup, crash reports and exefs patches. It also has Turkish game patches through a port of YamaNX by SertAy, which the author says is credited and used under its own license.

Developing on the console

The part aimed most at developers is Nexvyn OS Studio. It is a code editor with syntax highlighting, autocomplete, templates and a Run button, and it opens the app in a window beside the editor. The SDK covers six languages: Lua, JavaScript through QuickJS, Python (pocketpy and CPython 3.12), Squirrel, C compiled on the console with TinyCC, and Java through miniJVM. The author says the API is the same across languages. A game engine builds a playable game from a wizard, and the user then edits it visually in 2D or 3D. A 3D modeler and a terminal are included too.

The author also promises a stable SDK. Apps declare minSdk and targetSdk, APIs are deprecated rather than removed, and each release is checked against every app in the store. The repository README mentions SDK 1.9 and release 1.2.2, which adds a physically based 3D renderer called NexGFX. It also adds network functions for social and media apps. Apps must opt in to the new renderer, so existing ones render as before.

App Market

The store launched with 168 apps, games, themes and font packs, according to the thread. Its catalog is kept in a public GitHub repository. Developers fork it, add their app under Store/ and open a pull request. The author says every submission is reviewed before it goes live, and that an App Guard feature scans each package before installation. Permissions are asked once at install. Store apps cannot read system settings, other apps' data or browser passwords, the post says. These security claims come from the author, and the sources contain no independent audit.

Limits and open questions

• The author recommends launching the Homebrew Menu through a game, by holding R while starting a title, or through a forwarder, to get full memory. The Album applet also works but gives less memory.

• The project sends anonymous usage statistics, covering device model, firmware, language and which apps are opened. The author says this is announced at first start and can be turned off in Settings under About and Privacy.

• The thread says it was tested in the Ryujinx emulator, that real hardware is the main target, and that feedback from consoles is welcome. Wide testing on real consoles is not yet reported in the sources.

• The forum profile shows a very recent account with few posts, and the announcement is a single-author project. Independent reviews were not found.

For the scene, the project is notable for bundling a desktop, a store, a toolkit and several scripting languages in one homebrew file. It is also an unusually broad project for one developer. How well it performs on real hardware, given the Switch's limited memory in homebrew mode, is something the sources do not yet answer.