Note
Built with AI assistance. Much of this code was written with Claude. The 3DS file formats were reverse engineered against real dumps, and every write path was validated on real consoles before release.
Organizing icons on the console itself is slow: one stylus drag at a time, page by page. 3DSort edits the layout directly on the SD card instead. Put the card in your computer, sort your games automatically by alphabetical order or release year, or manually drag things around and manage folders in a desktop app, check the live preview, then write the result back and boot the console.
Download the latest release:
a .zip with a single portable .exe for Windows, and a .zip with the
3DSort.app bundle for Apple Silicon Macs. No installer and no Python needed.
Important
Every write takes an automatic backup first, and nothing touches the card until you confirm. When you move system apps or folders, do not boot the HOME menu between writing on the PC and running the inject script on the console.
- Swap any two tiles by dropping one onto the other: games, system apps, folder tiles, even the Game Card slot
- Move games and system apps in and out of folders
- Create, rename, empty and delete folders
- Sort presets (A to Z, Z to A, release date oldest or newest first)
- Live preview that reproduces the console screen exactly, for every view setting from 1x60 to 6x10
- Every change is staged in memory first, with undo, redo and reset. Nothing touches the card until you hit WRITE and confirm
- A backup of the current layout is taken automatically before every write, and any backup can be restored later
- Every write also unwraps gift-boxed icons in bulk (same mechanism as Cthulhu's "Unwrap all") and preserves the HOME menu theme you picked on the console, even when restoring an old backup
Moving system apps and folders needs one extra step, because their layout
lives in a NAND system save rather than on the card: dump it once with the
generated 3DSort_dump GodMode9 script, edit freely on the PC, then run
3DSort_inject in GodMode9 after writing. The inject script verifies every
copy with SHA-256 gates and fixes the save CMAC, and it aborts rather than
write anything inconsistent. Without that dump, system apps simply stay
pinned and everything else keeps working.
One rule keeps that cycle smooth: do not boot the HOME menu between writing
and injecting. Every HOME boot touches the NAND save, so the inject script
will refuse a stale target. If it happens, run 3DSort_dump again and retry;
nothing is lost.
- A 3DS with custom firmware (Luma3DS) and GodMode9
- A PC with an SD card reader. On Windows also the WebView2 runtime, which ships with Windows 10 and 11 by default
- The console's
boot9.binandmovable.sed. You do not copy these by hand: the app writes a3DSort_dumpscript to the card and that script dumps them for you, along with the HOME menu save
Regions: USA is supported and tested on real hardware. CHN, EUR, KOR, JPN, TWN are supported from documented ids but have never been run on a console, so treat them as "it should work just fine" but remains untested. A region the app does not know refuses to dump rather than guessing, and every write to the console NAND is gated by checksums that abort on a mismatch.
The first run walks you through it: pick the SD card, run 3DSort_dump on the
console, press verify. Settings has a "Setup guide" entry that reopens the same
walkthrough at any time, and the INSTRUCTIONS tab keeps the whole procedure for
reference.
One warning about keys: always let 3DSort_dump take movable.sed fresh from
the console. Do not reuse one from an old NAND backup. If the console was
formatted or system-transferred since that backup, the old key will not decrypt
the current card. The app checks for this and says so, rather than failing with
a cryptic error.
pip install -r requirements-dev.txt
python app.py # native window, real SD card
python app.py --serve # same app in the browser at http://127.0.0.1:8347
python app.py --serve --mock # synthetic data, no SD or keys needed
python -m pytest tests -q # 153 tests
The suite runs on any machine. Tests that need real console keys skip themselves automatically, and a guard test fails if anything ever writes to a real SD card.
pip install -r requirements-dev.txt
pyinstaller 3DSort.spec
dist\3DSort.exe --selftest # verifies the bundled resources, exit code 0
The result is a single portable dist\3DSort.exe with no installer. The UI,
the fonts, the icon and the save3ds binary are bundled, so the app needs no
network access at runtime. The icon itself is generated: run
python tools/make_icon.py to redraw ui/3dsort.ico after changing it.
The release page has a 3DSort.app zip built by GitHub Actions. The bundle is
not notarized yet, so on first launch right-click the app and pick Open, or
run xattr -cr 3DSort.app after unzipping (same idea as the SmartScreen
notice on Windows).
To build from source instead, install Python 3.10+ and Rust, then:
python3 -m venv .venv
.venv/bin/pip install -r requirements-dev.txt
tools/build_save3ds_macos.sh # native save3ds helper
.venv/bin/python -m PyInstaller 3DSort.macos.spec # dist/3DSort.app
dist/3DSort.app/Contents/MacOS/3DSort --selftest # exit code 0
SD cards mount under /Volumes and are auto-detected; --sd /Volumes/<card>
overrides. The v1.1.0 release .app was validated on macOS Tahoe 26.6.2
against a real New 2DS XL by
@appleforever11: reading and importing a
real card works end to end. The write and inject cycle has not been
hardware-tested from a Mac yet; the checklist in
docs/MACOS_TESTING.md covers how to test safely.
The release page has a 3DSort-<tag>-linux-x86_64.tar.gz built by GitHub
Actions on Ubuntu 24.04. It needs glibc 2.39 or newer (Ubuntu 24.04+,
Mint 22, Fedora 40+, Debian 13) and the WebKitGTK runtime:
sudo apt install gir1.2-webkit2-4.1 libwebkit2gtk-4.1-0
tar xzf 3DSort-*-linux-x86_64.tar.gz
3DSort/3DSort
To run from source instead:
pip install -r requirements.txt
pip install pywebview[gtk] # or pywebview[qt]
pywebview needs an explicit GUI backend on Linux. For GTK on Debian or Ubuntu:
sudo apt install python3-gi python3-gi-cairo gir1.2-gtk-3.0 gir1.2-webkit2-4.1.
The folder picker falls back to tkinter in --serve mode only, which needs the
distro's python3-tk package.
The save3ds binary is Windows-only in the upstream releases, so build it once with Rust installed (the script is cross-platform despite the name):
bash tools/build_save3ds_macos.sh
SD card auto-detection looks under /media/<user>, /run/media/<user>, /mnt
and /Volumes. Any other mount point can be picked in Settings.
The HOME menu layout lives in an encrypted extdata archive on the SD card.
3DSort uses save3ds to extract and
reimport that archive with your console's keys, then parses SaveData.dat
itself. Anything in the file it does not understand is preserved byte for
byte. Icons and names come from the console's own icon cache, so the grid
shows exactly what the console shows.
Folder definitions and system app positions live in Launcher.dat, inside a
system save on the NAND. 3DSort edits that file too, through the same save3ds
engine, but it can only reach the NAND with your help: a GodMode9 script dumps
the save container to the card, the app edits it, and another script injects
it back, hash-checked end to end. If the check fails the script aborts and the
original container stays on the card for recovery.
Beta. The core is covered by 153 tests, including round trips against a copy of a real card, and the full cycle (write, NAND inject, restore) has been validated end to end on two different consoles from one region (N3DS, N3DSXL both USA). The app never writes without an automatic backup and an explicit confirmation. On macOS, the v1.1.0 release app was validated by a community contributor on macOS Tahoe 26.6.2 against a real New 2DS XL (read and import; writes from a Mac are still untested).
GPL-3.0. The bulk unwrap mechanism was reimplemented from Cthulhu, which is GPL-3.0, so 3DSort carries the same license.
- save3ds by wwylele handles the 3DS crypto and filesystem, which is the genuinely hard part
- 3dbrew for the file format documentation
- Cthulhu by Ryuzaki-MrL, whose "Unwrap all" feature revealed how the gift-wrap flags work
- @appleforever11 contributed the macOS (Apple Silicon) support and validated the v1.1.0 release app on a real New 2DS XL from a Mac (read and import)