Animal Crossing: New Horizons on Switch plays in real-time, meaning that a day in the game is as long as a day in real life. There is a way to get around the grind though. Players who want to skip the day-to-day in this Switch title do have an option. If you want to speed up your progress, you can time travel. The practice of time-travel in Animal Crossing: New Horizons is definitely cheating, so you don’t have to use it if you want to.
This process will allow you to bypass the time waits for building upgrades or new villagers moving in. It’s a very serious exploit too, in that it can also allow you to exploit the passage of time to take advantage of the Turnip market for Bells. This is not very helpful though as it can cause other issues. If you’re just interested in making Bells, use the ACNH duplication exploits instead.
To time travel in Animal Crossing: New Horizons on your Switch:
- Close Animal Crossing: New Horizons by pressing the Switch’s Home button, highlighting the game’s icon, pressing the X button, and clicking “Close” in the dialogue box that appears.
- Go to your Nintendo Switch System Settings (the gear icon on the home screen), scroll all the way down, and select “System.”
- Select “Date and Time,” and turn off the setting that says “Synchronize Clock via Internet.”
- Change the date or the time to whatever you want.
- Reopen the game, and the date and time in New Horizons will match whatever you set it to in the Switch’s system preferences.
Skipping too many days will have a negative impact though, especially if you like your neighbors. The game is still tracking days that go by despite not being online. This means that if you don’t interact with your villagers, they will move out at some point. So if you time-travel too much, you could find all of your neighbors disappear during the time skip. You will also have to deal with the massive weed growth too.
It’s important to know that all the in-game events that run in Animal Crossing: New Horizons will require you to connect to the online services. If you don’t hit up the online servers, you won’t be able to download patches or run through any of the new content. Those who time-travel in Animal Crossing: New Horizons will have to reset their date to get back online.
