NX Uploader

A minimal HTTP file manager and uploader server for the Nintendo Switch. Runs in homebrew mode, serves a web page on your LAN, and lets any browser on the same network drop files straight onto the SD card. No client software, no FTP,no jank (it's VERY janky, LOL).

Why

My Switch is docked almost all the time. I also emulate a lot on the switch, so there's a constant trickle of ROMs, saves, texture packs, mods, and random .nros that need to end up on the SD card. The usual options all sucked in the same way:

• Pull the SD card, eject, find a reader, copy, put it back, wait for the console to boot. Five minutes of friction for a five-second file transfer.
• Plug in a USB cable, no.
• FTP, the server on the Switch is slow, drops connections on large files, and wants a dedicated client open on the other end. I don't want a client, I want a browser tab.
• Nintendo's official transfer, LOL.

The Switch is already on my LAN. It's already running homebrew. Both of those things are true any time I want to move a file onto it. So the whole job should be "drag file into browser tab" and nothing else.

So I built that. NX Uploader is ~1000 lines of C and ~700 of HTML/CSS/JS, speaks HTTP/1.1, and streams uploads straight to disk instead of buffering in RAM, so multi-gigabyte files work fine.

Also, honestly: why not.

Features

• File manager to browse the sdcard, create folders, rename or move entries, and delete files or whole folders
• Drag-and-drop uploads from any modern browser
• Queued multi file uploads
• Folder upload: drop or pick a directory tree, and subfolders are created on the fly
• Optional "upload to sdmc:/switch instead" toggle, a one-tap shortcut for dropping a .nro where hbmenu will find it
• File downloads from switch to client.
• Streaming multipart parser, no whole-file buffering, works with files larger than the Switch's RAM
• Live progress bar in the browser, live bytes-received counter and transfer speed on the Switch screen
• Free-space readout on the Switch screen and in the browser, with an early refusal when an upload will not fit
• Overwrite prompt in the browser before an existing name is replaced
• Cancel button that actually stops the upload and deletes the partial file
• Optional config file for port, sandbox root, read-only mode, and HTTP Basic auth
• No dependencies beyond libnx
• Single .nro, ~300 KB
• Web UI is a single web/index.html embedded into the binary at build time — edit the HTML, run make, no C required

Requirements

• A Nintendo Switch with homebrew access (Atmosphere, etc.)
• Wi-Fi or Ethernet connection on the same LAN as your browser machine

Usage

1. Copy NXUploader.nro to sdmc:/switch/ on your SD card.
2. Launch it from hbmenu.
3. The console shows a URL like http://192.168.1.10:8080. Open it in any browser on the same network.
4. Drag a file onto the page, click Upload.
5. Files land in the folder the file manager is showing (the SD card root by default).

Press + on the Switch to stop the server and exit.

The upload limit is 32 GiB per file. That's arbitrary and can be raised in src/server.c (MAX_UPLOAD_BYTES) if you have a reason to.

Configuration

Everything works with no config file. To change the defaults, drop a file at sdmc:/switch/nxuploader.cfg. Every key is optional, lines are key=value, and # starts a comment.

port=8080                         # base port, fallbacks try 8081..8083
root=sdmc:/                       # sandbox base for browse, delete, mkdir, rename
upload_dir=sdmc:/switch/uploads   # used only when a request has no
                                  # X-Upload-Dir header (scripts, not the browser)
read_only=0                       # 1 disables uploads, delete, mkdir, and rename
allow_delete=1                    # 0 disables delete and rename
auth_user=                        # set both auth_user and auth_pass to
auth_pass=                        # require HTTP Basic auth (the browser prompts)
log=0                             # 1 appends each request to
                                  # sdmc:/switch/nxuploader.log

With a narrower root, the file manager cannot see or touch anything outside it.

Building

Requires devkitPro with the switch-dev group installed. If you just want to run it, grab a release .nro and skip this section.

git clone https://github.com/samedog/NX-Uploader
cd NX-Uploader
make

The host-side unit tests cover the multipart parser, the file manager, and the config parser. They build with your normal system compiler, so no devkit setup is needed to run them:

make test

How it works

• src/main.c: applet loop, console rendering, entry point
• src/server.c: socket setup, HTTP parsing, GET and POST
• src/multipart.c: streaming multipart parser with a 256-byte lookback so boundaries straddling chunk edges aren't missed
• src/fileman.c: sandboxed browse, list, delete, mkdir, and rename
• src/storage.c: SD free and total space
• src/config.c: optional config file loader
• src/net_info.c: local IP detection
• web/index.html: the browser UI, embedded at build time
• Makefile: generates src/html_data.c from web/index.html
• tests/: host-side unit tests for the parser, file manager, and config
• .github/workflows/build.yml: CI that builds the .nro and, on a tag, attaches it to a release

Uploads are written to disk as bytes arrive off the socket. If the connection drops before the closing boundary, the partial file is deleted. The whole upload is never held in RAM.

TODO:

• HTTP keep-alive, so the file manager does not open a new TCP connection for every listing
• Per-file progress in the upload queue
• Sort and filter in the file manager

License

MIT — see LICENSE.