Atmosphere 0.17.0 CFW Nintendo Switch! Lots of bug fixes and support for patched Mariko devices

SciresM, the developer of the open-source Atmosphere CFW for the Nintendo Switch has released a new version of the popular custom firmware. Though most of the updates included in this new release are not ground breaking, the new custom firmware also adds support for patched Nintendo Switch units (code name Mariko), though not in the way you may have expected.

To start with the most important addition, Atmosphere 0.17.0 allows users of patched Switches to boot to Atmosphere. However, for this to be successful, patched Switch owners need to have the SX Core or SX Lite mod installed first, meaning that only hard-modded Mariko devices are being supported and that softmodding a patched Switch is still not possible.

Though this may seem like a relatively minor new feature for Atmosphere, users that have the SX Core or SX Lite installed in their Switch are now able to choose between multiple custom firmwares, with Atmosphere receiving the most support from the custom firmware and homebrew community.

A second new addition to the update is related to the way that Atmosphere handles the power-off process of a modded Nintendo Switch. Starting from 0.17.0, SciresM promises substantially reduced power drain when you power off a Nintendo Switch. Especially in the early days of Atmosphere, users that used the “reboot to RCM” option reported a high idle power drain of their units. This update should finally address most of these battery drain problems, and also includes a few other minor bug fixes to improve the overall stability and performance of the CFW.

To find out all the details and to download Atmosphere 0.17.0, you can head over to the GitHub page over here.