Moving a Breath of the Wild or Tears of the Kingdom save between Switch consoles is one of the most common reasons players install JKSV: a new console, a borrowed machine, or keeping progress on two Switch 1 systems. The transfer is a straightforward export-and-restore, provided you respect user matching and verify at each end. Install JKSV from our download page on both consoles, each running Atmosphère. More game guides are on the game saves hub.
How the transfer works, in outline
JKSV backs up the Zelda title’s Account save data for your user on the source console, writing it into /JKSV/ on the SD card. You move that backup to the destination console’s SD card, then restore it with JKSV under the corresponding user there. The game then reads the transferred progress as its own. No network service, subscription or cloud account is involved at any point — it is your file, moved by you, which is exactly the control local save management exists to provide.
The requirement that catches people is sameness: the same game, and attention to which user the save belongs to. A save backed up from one profile restores under a profile; plan for the destination user before you start, not after the restore looks like it ‘did nothing’.
Step by step
On the source console, launch JKSV with Title Override, select Breath of the Wild or Tears of the Kingdom, and create a fresh backup for the user whose progress you are moving. Copy the backup folder from /JKSV/ to your PC as an intermediate and as a safety copy. On the destination console, place the backup into /JKSV/, open JKSV, select the game and the matching user, and restore. JKSV can make a safety backup of the destination’s existing save before overwriting; let it, because the destination might hold progress someone wants back.
Launch the game on the destination and load the save before declaring success. Check the play time, location and inventory look like the source. Only when the destination is verified should you consider the source backup retired — and even then, keeping the PC copy costs nothing.
BOTW to TOTK, and other expectations to set
Be precise about what this process does: it moves a save within the same game, from one Switch 1 to another. Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom are separate titles with separate save data; a JKSV transfer does not convert one game’s save into the other’s, and anything in-game that carries over between those games is handled by the games themselves reading local data, not by a save manager. Keep the two titles’ backups in clearly named folders so a tired evening never restores the wrong Hyrule.
For transfers involving a PC emulator instead of a second console, the companion guide is JKSV and Ryujinx save transfer. For saves still sitting in emuMMC on the source machine, read export emuMMC saves to PC first.
Keeping Zelda saves safe afterwards
A transferred save deserves the same protection as an original: fresh backups before long sessions on the new console, a PC copy of milestones, and a cloud copy through the options in our cloud backup hub if you use them. Tears of the Kingdom and Breath of the Wild saves routinely represent hundreds of hours; the transfer is the moment players are most aware of that value, so let the awareness stick.
See also Pokémon save workflows for another flagship series where this export discipline pays off. Move carefully, verify in-game, and your Hyrule travels safely.
A small organisational tip makes repeated transfers painless: keep one folder per game on the PC, with dated subfolders for each snapshot and a plain-text note of the user and console each came from. Zelda saves are exactly the kind that get moved more than once over a console generation — a launch console, a revised model, a borrowed machine for a trip — and the note you write in thirty seconds today is what prevents a restore mix-up two years from now, when both folders are just named after the same adventure.