Just like the 3DS/N3DS, the Switch exposes an API which communicates with certain services. Services are system processes running in the background which wait for incoming requests. When a process wants to communicate with a service, it first needs to get a handle to the named service, and then it can communicate with the service via inter-process communication (each service has a name up to 8 characters).
Handles for services are retrieved from the service manager port, "sm:". Services are an abstraction of ports, they operate the same way except regular ports can have their handles retrieved directly from a SVC.
List of services (non-exhaustive):
| Service names | Description | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| acc:u1 | Account System services | u1: for user 1? |
| appletAE | Applet Accessor services | |
| aoc:u | AddOn Content services | |
| audren:u | Audio Renderer services | |
| audout:u | Audio Out services | |
| bsd:u, bsd:s | Sockets services | |
| caps:a, caps:c, caps:ss | Capture services | a: Album, ss: Screenshot |
| fatal:u | Fatal Error services | |
| fsp-srv | File System Proxy services | |
| hid, hid:dbg, hid:sys | HID services | |
| ldn:m | Local Network Monitor services | |
| ldr:ro | RO services | |
| ldr:shel | Loader services | |
| lm | Log services | |
| lr | ? | |
| erpt:c | ERPT(?) services | |
| mii:u, mii:e | Mii services | |
| mm:u | NvMM services | |
| nifm:u, nifm:a, nifm:s | Network Interface services | u: User, a: Applet, s: System |
| nim:shp | NIM services | shp: eShop |
| ns:am, ns:su, ns:dev | NS service | am: Applet Manager? |
| nsd:u, nsd:a | NSD services | |
| nvmemp | NVIDIA Memory Profiling services | |
| nvdrv:a | NVIDIA Graphics Driver services | |
| ovln:rcv, ovln:snd | Overlay Notification services | |
| pdm:ntfy, pdm:qry | Play Log services | |
| pl:u | Shared Font services | |
| pm:bm, pm:shell | Process Manager services | |
| prepo:u, prepo:s, prepo:m, prepo:a | Prepo(?) services | |
| set, set:sys | Settings services | sys: System settings |
| sfdnsres | DNS resolver services | |
| ssl | SSL services | |
| time:u, time:a, time:s | Time services | |
| vi:m, vi:s, vi:u | VI (Camera?) services |