Switch 2's screen tearing problem is finally sorted

Nintendo has pushed out system update 23.0.0 for the Switch 2, and buried in the small print is the kind of fix that sounds dull until you notice how much better everything suddenly looks. The headline feature is variable refresh rate, or VRR, for docked play, which is a fancy way of saying that fast-moving scenes on your telly should stop doing that horrible tearing thing where the top half of the screen and the bottom half briefly disagree about what game you're playing.

If you've never noticed screen tearing, congratulations, you've been blessed with either a very calm temperament or a television that was already quietly working around it. For everyone else, docked mode on Switch 2 has occasionally looked like it was buffering even when nothing was buffering. This update should put a stop to that, provided your TV supports VRR too, which most decent sets from the last few years do.

What's actually changed

Update 23.0.0 turns on VRR for docked play, smoothing out frame pacing in supported games without you having to dig through a settings menu to switch anything on. It's the sort of improvement that doesn't come with fireworks or a trailer, it just makes things feel a bit more solid the next time you sit down for a session.

Nintendo also ran a couple of eShop sales around this time: a US-only Customer Appreciation Sale (30% off, ran until 26 September) and, for UK and EU accounts, a separate Blockbuster eShop Sale that wrapped up on 13 September, the one that actually applied to most of this site's readers.

A patch that just makes the picture look better, no settings menu required. That's a good kind of update.

The bigger picture

All this lands the week after Nintendo's 40th anniversary Direct, which was mostly about a properly rebuilt version of Ocarina of Time arriving on 5 November, alongside some Zelda-themed hardware turning up on 29 October if that's your sort of thing. A second, more general Direct followed a day later, confirming Persona 6 is heading to Switch 2 and setting up one of the busiest release months the console has had yet, including a native remaster of The Witcher 3, which we've covered separately because eleven years on, it's still worth talking about. We'll have a proper look at the rest of the Direct's announcements separately too.