Back in 2017, Nintendo released the Nintendo Switch Online (Free) companion app on iOS and Android. The app wasn’t really worth using at the time since voice chat is best done in something like Discord and it only really was good for Splatoon 2 stats. Since launch, it has had a few minor updates, but today’s 2.0.0 release sees the app finally get useful features for your Nintendo account. In addition to a new look, you can now see which friends are online, what they are playing, change your own online status settings, view (and copy) your friend code, and more. If your friend is playing a specific game, you can click the icon to launch the web store for the game, but it doesn’t use the in-app browser for some reason. You also can’t view play history for your friends. It only lists the game they are currently playing and how much time has been spent in-game.
As shown above, the app lists your best friends first just like the console’s friends tab. Barring the new functionality and look, the app can still work for game-specific features in Animal Crossing: New Horizons and more. Hopefully this is start of more coming to the service with the recent missions and rewards added to Nintendo Switch Online and the Nintendo Switch Online Expansion Pack content. If you’ve not gotten the latter yet, read Shaun’s launch review of it here. If you’d like to try out the Nintendo Switch Online app, you can download it here on the App Store for iOS and here on Google Play for Android. Do you subscribe to Nintendo Switch Online and what did you think of the Expansion Pack games if you tried those out?