Services API

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