You Can Play Nintendo Switch Games on the IPad Screen

Your iPad may not be a computer , but it can do a lot , including games. There are plenty of games to be found on the App Store, and you can even connect your PS5 or Switch controllers to play these games. But to actually play Switch games, you need to leave your iPad and go back to the console itself, whether portable or via TV, right?

It turns out your iPad can actually serve as a portable, high-quality gaming monitor for your Switch, as well as any other HDMI-connected console – if you buy a $20 capture card like this one . Dan Barbera from MacRumors has a great video showing how to set this up. It’s surprisingly easy and affordable if you already own a compatible iPad and Nintendo Switch:

What you need to play Nintendo Switch games on iPad

• USB-C capture card . The capture card allows you to capture game material from the console and record it to a separate source. In this case, we are using a capture card and displaying game console output on the iPad.
• iPad with USB-C . Unfortunately, only iPads with USB-C will work with this setup, as you’ll need a USB-C capture card for it to work.
• iPadOS 17 : Part of that gimmick is Apple’s upcoming update to iPadOS that now allows developers to build capture card apps to display and record game footage. While the update will most likely be out sometime next month, you can install the beta right now and test it out for yourself. While the beta software may contain bugs, we are nearing the end of the beta testing cycle so this version is more stable.
• Capture Card Application . Since iPadOS 17 is still in development, there aren’t many apps released yet. But you can download a test version of the Capture Pro app from TestFlight right now .
• Game console : Obviously.

With all of these ducks in a row, start by connecting your capture card to your chosen console. Let’s say you want to display the Switch on an iPad: you need to connect an HDMI cable from the Switch dock to the HDMI port on the capture card. Then plug the USB-C connector of the capture card into your iPad’s USB-C port, not the port on the keyboard case if you have one.

Next, open the capture card application (in this case, Capture Pro), then turn on the switcher. Once the console boots up and the capture card app recognizes it, you’ll see the main Switch screen. Barbera notes that there is some input lag, but that doesn’t detract from his overall Switch experience:

This is especially handy for Switch owners as console players may have found other solutions to display their games on their iPads. There are solutions to stream games from PlayStation , Xbox or PC to iPad using a dedicated app. Of course, these methods have their downsides, notably terrible video quality and latency if your internet connection can’t handle the stream. Despite some input lag when using this capture card method, the wired connection means the overall quality is pretty good.