There’s Finally a Better Way to View Your Nintendo Switch Game History.
Yesterday, Nintendo launched the new Nintendo Store app for iOS and Android , finally catching up with Sony and Xbox. At first glance, it works as expected: it allows you to easily browse Nintendo games and news, as well as purchase games directly (albeit through an in-app browser window, presumably to avoid paying Apple hefty commissions ).
But hidden within the app’s smallest, most inconspicuous button is a detailed tracker of your gaming activity—finally fixing a feature that Nintendo consoles have been missing since the original Switch launched way back in 2017.
The Switch has its own activity tracker, but it won’t tell you much.
Neither the Nintendo Switch nor the Nintendo Switch 2 itself provides detailed information about your game history. At least it’s easy to view—just select your profile picture in the upper left corner of the home screen to see a list of recently played games. But scroll down to see “Play Activity,” and you quickly become frustrated. Most of my games don’t display the exact time spent playing, instead simply displaying “Played for a while” or “Played for X hours or more.” It’s not very helpful—and if you try to select a game to get more detailed information, the system simply launches it.
This is much less convenient than, say, the daily playtime reports the Wii used to display directly on the console, telling you what day you played and for how long. Fortunately, the new Nintendo Store app brings back this detailed information and more.
How to view playtime in the Nintendo Store app
Technically, there was already a way to get detailed information about Nintendo Switch gameplay via a smartphone, but it required setting up parental controls —a lengthy process that doesn’t make much sense for adults. However, the Nintendo Store app now makes this simple and convenient, and that’s great.
Simply download the Nintendo Store app, sign in with your existing Nintendo Account (the same one you used to set up the system), and tap your profile picture in the bottom right corner. Scroll down to “Play Activity,” and you’re all set: you’ll see a customizable list of your games. Tapping any of them will show not only your total playtime but also the days you played and for how long.
My only complaint is that you won’t have any idea of how much time you’ve spent playing a game until you launch it, although you can sort the list of games by total time played if you want; this will allow you to categorize games by: over 100 hours played, over 50 hours, over 10 hours, and so on.
The app even tracks playtime on 3DS and Wii U.
The coolest feature of the new app? It’s not limited to the Switch and Switch 2. The data goes back a long way, and if I scroll far enough (or sort by system), I can also see time spent playing Nintendo 3DS and Wii U games. There’s one catch: I can’t seem to see playtime by day for systems older than the original Switch, but I can see total playtime and the number of days I’ve played a game. Again, to see stats from these older consoles, you need to sign in with the same Nintendo Account you used when you played them—I’ve been using mine since the Wii U days.
I love metrics like these, even if they don’t fully reflect my play (I frequently switch between my profile and my husband’s, as well as between systems). As awkward as it is to see that I’ve spent over 100 hours on Breath of the Wild , playtime data allows me to easily remember what I’ve played without having to keep a Letterboxd -style game diary. It also encourages me to spend more time on games I might have just reviewed, or, if I’m feeling guilty after a particularly long playtime, to put the system down and spend some time away from the game.