Nintendo has added the ability to save notes about friends on your Friend List, with the note content not displayed to friends. The feature rolled out with system version 22.0.0 this week for both the original Switch and Switch 2. Small as it sounds, this is a win for anyone who's accumulated years of cryptic usernames, forgotten context, and random people they friended after a single online gaming session.
You can see and edit these notes from the Nintendo Switch smartphone app, which must be on version 3.3.0 or higher to use this feature. The constraint is tight though. Notes max out at 20 characters, which forces you to be concise. "Work Zelda guy" beats "Met at Super Smash Bros tournament in 2023," but just barely.
Here's what that actually means: anyone who's been collecting friends since the original Switch launched in 2017 now has a chance to audit their list. You can tag people with how you know them, mark accounts as inactive, flag problem players, or simply restore context to a username that's changed three times since you added them.
The Platform Comparison Problem
Discord has a personal note functionality for friends, and Steam lets you add your own custom nicknames to friends, especially helpful features since people can change their display name at any time. PlayStation and Xbox lag further behind in this specific area. PlayStation and Xbox have the option to display your friends' real names, but neither platform has a built-in notes function.
What's telling is what Nintendo hasn't added alongside friend notes. Compared to competing platforms, Switch profiles are pretty barebones, lacking the option to add a bio or description that might help friends identify you. You still can't write a bio. You can't set a profile picture that's anything more than a Mii. The whole profile experience feels frozen in time.
Nintendo also updated GameChat on Switch 2 this week, adding the ability to invite friends to GameChat rooms and improving screen-share quality. But here's the kicker: after March ends, you won't be able to use GameChat without a Nintendo Switch Online subscription. That's the real story beneath the notes feature—the slow march toward paywalling core social features.
Why This Matters, And Why It's Overdue
The friend notes feature shouldn't feel like a breakthrough. On competing platforms, it's standard. The fact that it took Nintendo this long reveals a broader truth: the Switch's online infrastructure has always lagged. It's functional enough for gaming, but stripped of the social flourishes that other platforms took for granted years ago.
For Australian players specifically, this matters more if you're part of smaller regional gaming communities where reconnecting with people matters. You might remember someone as "that guy from the Byron Bay Discord" or "the Melbourne esports tournament runner," but their display name tells you nothing. Now you can actually label them.
Is 20 characters enough? Barely. Will you use it? Probably. Is Nintendo still playing catch-up on social features? Absolutely. But it's a move in the right direction, even if the direction is one everyone else turned nine years ago.
For the latest on Switch 2 features and updates, check Nintendo's official patch notes for Version 22.0.0.