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GamesRadar
Technology
Sophie Ulanoff

Confirmed: Nintendo has freed the F bomb and you can swear in Switch 2 speech-to-text GameChat

Hands holding Nintendo Switch 2 and playing Mario Kart World.

It's been a whirlwind 24 hours (depending on where you are and who is counting) since the Nintendo Switch 2 launch, and there's plenty for players to do with one of the most highly anticipated consoles in years. So much to do, in fact, that our Nintendo Switch 2 review is still in progress. But there's one handy new addition you might not be aware of: the speech-to-text GameChat feature for talking with friends – wait, did someone just say fuck? And did Nintendo then actually print that?

It's the age-old tale; give people the option to speak to a device that will listen, and they're going to curse at it. Just ask the chat log history between me and our home's first Alexa. Of course, Nintendo is so family-friendly that you might think it'd have made a workaround for this, no? Some sort of censoring on its prized Switch 2? Well, no – looks like you can curse up a storm at your brand-new Switch 2 and it'll translate straight into GameChat.

In a Bluesky post, Switch 2 player David Howe shared a screenshot of a speech-to-text conversation between himself and a friend, with console documenting their entire verbal revelation that they could, in fact, curse.

"CONFIRMED: you can say fuck in game chat speech-to-text," Howe wrote, accompanied by photographic evidence.

This was further confirmed by our own Rollin Bishop, who took to his own brand-new Switch 2 and spent some time cursing at it only to find it displayed those words right back to him. And to our brand director Sam Loveridge, who signed up as the swearing test dummy.

For anyone else looking to do the same, GameChat's speech-to-text feature isn't the default. Pressing the C-button will bring up GameChat, while its speech-to-text feature can be enabled in accessibility settings. It is, swearing aside, a great accessibility feature. If it's at all confusing, don't worry; we've got you covered with our own Nintendo Switch 2 GameChat guide.

This novelty may wear off within a week, but for now, a good number of Switch 2 consoles are likely to be berated by a most creative and awful string of curse words. Of course, the Switch 2 is just the latest in a long line of consoles that have been verbally abused by players; most of those just didn't have ears.

A GameStop reportedly ruined new Nintendo Switch 2 consoles with receipts stapled to the screen, but hey, Walmart is giving out free chips and soda "to celebrate launch day"

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