Tethersnap

Export Nintendo Switch 2 screenshots and videos to a Mac over USB. Free, open-source Mac app and CLI.

macOS has no MTP support, and the Switch-1-era bridges (OpenMTP, MacDroid, Android File Transfer) fail against the Switch 2. Tethersnap is a from-scratch minimal PTP/MTP initiator over IOUSBHost: the console is a plain PTP 1.00 responder with no MTP vendor extension (it implements exactly the ten baseline operations 0x1001-0x100A), so Tethersnap speaks only baseline PIMA 15740, the same subset libmtp uses successfully on Linux. Validated end to end against real hardware (firmware 22.5.0): connect, enumeration, thumbnails, and byte-exact exports.

Download

• DMG: get Tethersnap-<version>.dmg from the latest release, open it, and drag Tethersnap into Applications. The app is Developer ID signed and notarized, so it opens without a Gatekeeper warning.
• Homebrew: brew install --cask luminoid/tap/tethersnap (from Luminoid/homebrew-tap).

Requirements: macOS 15 (Sequoia) or later, a Nintendo Switch 2 (tested on firmware 22.5.0; the original Switch is recognized too), and a full-data USB-C cable. No drivers, no kernel extensions, no MTP stack to install.

How it works, in depth: Tethersnap: Switch 2 captures on a Mac over plain PTP.

Scaffolded with Monolith.

Usage

On the console: System Settings → Data Management → Manage Screenshots and Videos → Copy to PC via USB, connected from the console's bottom USB-C port (not the dock) with a full-data cable.

CLI:

swift run tethersnap probe   # device / interface / storage diagnostics
swift run tethersnap list    # list captures
swift run tethersnap pull --all --out ~/Pictures/Switch2

App:

make run-app             # builds .build/Tethersnap.app and opens it

The app reacts to console plug/unplug via IOKit notifications, shows a thumbnail grid (GetThumb when the console offers it, otherwise a bounded GetPartialObject prefix for screenshots), and supports multi-select (click / ⌘-click / shift-click ranges, ⌘A), keyboard navigation (arrows, Space/Return to preview, Escape), sorting, double-click preview with a retryable failure state, drag-out to Finder (a multi-selection drags as one folder), and per-item / selection / Export All flows with cancel. The last export folder is remembered (⌘⇧E re-exports there, or asks on first run; see Settings to inspect or clear it); summaries distinguish saved from already-existing files, capture dates are preserved as file modification dates, and the Mac won't idle-sleep mid-export. A transfer failure or cancel abandons the PTP data phase, so the app throws the session away and reconnects automatically.

The UI and error messages are localized in English and Simplified Chinese (following the system language). Strings live in classic .lproj/Localizable.strings files because swift build copies .xcstrings catalogs without compiling them.

Debugging

The app writes a complete debug trace of every run to ~/Library/Logs/Tethersnap/Tethersnap.log (the run before it is kept as Tethersnap.previous.log), with no setup: just reproduce the problem and grab the file, or use Help → Reveal Log File in Finder.

Everything also lands in the unified log under subsystem dev.luminoid.Tethersnap (categories usb, mtp, library, app):

/usr/bin/log stream --level debug --predicate 'subsystem == "dev.luminoid.Tethersnap"'

The CLI's --verbose flag mirrors the same messages to stderr (USB transfer hex previews, PTP transactions with response codes), which is the fastest way to see where a conversation with the console stops:

swift run tethersnap probe --verbose

Targets

Target	Kind	Notes
TethersnapKit	library	PTP containers/datasets, transaction engine, IOUSBHost transport, capture library
tethersnap	executable	CLI: probe / list / pull
TethersnapApp	executable	SwiftUI Mac app; bundled via make app

Also recognizes the original Switch (057e:201d) alongside the Switch 2 (057e:2061).

Development

brew bundle             # install swiftlint + swiftformat
make setup-hooks        # wire pre-commit lint + format
make build
make test               # protocol-layer tests against a scripted mock transport
make check              # strict lint + format gate
make app                # assemble .build/Tethersnap.app (release, ad-hoc signed)
make dist               # Developer ID signed + notarized DMG into dist/

The protocol layer is hardware-independent: MTPSession runs against any MTPTransport, and the tests script exchanges (split headers, coalesced containers, zero-length packets) through a mock.

Releasing

make dist runs the whole distribution pipeline: hardened-runtime Developer ID signature, notarize the app, staple, wrap in a DMG, notarize and staple the DMG, verify with Gatekeeper. Two one-time setups, and the target prints these instructions itself when either is missing:

1. A Developer ID Application certificate in the keychain (create at developer.apple.com or via Xcode → Settings → Accounts → Manage Certificates; requires the Account Holder role).
2. Stored notarization credentials: xcrun notarytool store-credentials tethersnap-notary --apple-id <email> --team-id <team> --password <app-specific password>.

The result, dist/Tethersnap-<version>.dmg, is what a GitHub release attaches.

License

MIT. © Luminoid. See LICENSE and CHANGELOG.

Tethersnap is an independent open-source project. It is not affiliated with, endorsed, or sponsored by Nintendo. Nintendo Switch and Nintendo Switch 2 are trademarks of Nintendo, used here only to describe compatibility.

Related projects

• Monolith: the CLI that scaffolded this project (iOS apps, Swift Packages, Swift CLIs)
• Everything else at luminoid.dev