Extract text from Nintendo Switch save files (NSON)
To convert NSON save files to another format, you need No Man's Sky or other Game software.
To convert other file formats to the "Console Save File" file type, you need software like No Man's Sky or a similar tool.
The .NSON file is a proprietary game save format used primarily on the Nintendo Switch. It is most heavily associated with storing player progress, inventory, and universe data for the game No Man's Sky.
Modders and players generally use community-built save editors, such as the NMSSaveEditor, to interact with these files. You need to convert this file because the .NSON format is closed, highly serialized, and specifically tailored for the Switch console. You cannot natively share this file with the PC or PlayStation versions of the game. Furthermore, opening an .NSON file directly in a standard text editor typically yields unreadable binary data or structurally complex arrays that are impossible to edit manually.
To modify game values, the best conversion target is JSON. Modding tools decrypt and parse the .NSON file into a readable JSON format, allowing users to edit values before repacking them back to .NSON.
This file format is difficult to open or convert because it lacks a universal standard and relies on the original game engine's specific logic. Standard online converters fail because they do not have the necessary game-specific parsing algorithms. If our analysis detects standard embedded JSON data, viewing or conversion may still be possible.
Convert.Guru analyzes your NSON file, detects the exact format, and lets you read the text inside.
Users also converted JSON, TXT, CDW, MID, CHD, PNG, RAR, G3D, AUP3 and ZIP files.
If you want to convert NSON file to CSV, JSON, XML, YAML, YML, TOML, INI, CFG, CONF, DAT, DB or SQL, you can use No Man's Sky or similar software from the "Nintendo Switch Game Save" category. In the File menu, look for Save As… or Export….
To convert DBF, XML, SQLITE, XLSX, SQL, TSV, ACCDB, YAML, MDB, CSV, ODS or JSON files to NSON, try No Man's Sky or another comparable tool in the "Nintendo Switch Game Save" category.
The history of Convert.Guru began over 25 years ago in California with Tom Simondi’s file-format database. A former contributor to Space Shuttle development and a software pioneer of the 1980s, Simondi established a trusted resource for file type analysis that was even referenced by Microsoft Windows XP. Today, we use modern technology to process and convert thousands of file formats while continually improving our NSON converter.