What Is the DSi Guide Website?

Updated

The DSi Guide (dsi.cfw.guide) is a free, community-written guide to modding the Nintendo DSi. It walks you through running homebrew and custom firmware on DSi consoles, with sections on SD card setup, troubleshooting, backups, and uninstalling. It is aimed at DSi owners who want a step-by-step path rather than scattered forum posts, and it is available in many languages, including English, Spanish, French, German, Japanese, Korean, and Simplified and Traditional Chinese. It is not a general hacking site: for other devices, the guide points readers to CFW.Guide.

What the guide covers

The site is organized as a complete walkthrough, not a reference wiki. Its main sections are:

  • Getting started and entry points — how to launch homebrew, primarily through an entry point called Memory Pit, with alternatives if Memory Pit won't work
  • SD card setup — preparing the card that stores homebrew
  • Troubleshooting and FAQ — fixing common problems
  • Backups — DSiWare backups, dumping game cards, and dumping NAND
  • Uninstalling Unlaunch — reversing the one modification that carries brick risk

The guide states that homebrew runs for free on all DSi consoles regardless of firmware version or region, and that all you need is an entry point and an SD card.

What modding a DSi lets you do

According to the guide, modding enables:

  • Running Nintendo DS(i) game backups or ROM hacks from the SD card without a flashcard
  • Launching any DSiWare from the SD card, including out-of-region and 3DS-exclusive titles
  • Booting into DSiWare or homebrew by holding specific buttons at power-on
  • Running emulators, including older classics
  • Using normally incompatible flashcards
  • Redirecting NAND to the SD card with hiyaCFW
  • Playing movies with FastVideoDSPlayer or tuna-viDS (the FastVideoDSEncoder tool requires a CPU with AVX2 support)
  • Showing a custom boot splash image
  • Playing homebrew games

Who it is for, and what to know first

The guide suits DSi owners who want to run homebrew or back up their own software and are willing to read the introductory pages in full before starting. It explicitly asks readers to read all introductory pages before proceeding.

Two practical notes from the guide:

  • Brick risk: the only brick risk comes from installing Unlaunch, and the guide describes that risk as minimal.
  • Windows users: if you use the default File Explorer, it recommends showing file extensions so you can identify files correctly.

If your goal is modding a different console, this site is the wrong starting point; use CFW.Guide instead. If your goal is finding software once set up, the guide recommends Universal-DB for most modern homebrew and GameBrew for older homebrew, noting that many GameBrew titles only work on flashcards.