How to reset your island in Animal Crossing: New Horizons

Animal Crossing: New Horizons first came out in March 2020, but since then, many players have stepped away from their islands. Animal Crossing: New Horizons has a way of pulling you back in, though.

There’s an undeniable appeal about escaping reality to cultivate your own getaway island community of interesting, albeit sometimes irritating, characters. Even though Tom Nook is a capitalist overlord, that detail can be overlooked thanks to the charm of having full design control. 

But it’s understandable if you don’t want to dive right back in where you left off, especially if it’s been months or years since you last played and aren’t sure what you put where or why. Sadly, you can only have one island per Switch console. This means that multiple users on a switch can play on the same island, but how to reset the entire thing? Or remove a player? 

Thankfully, there are options for both. Here’s how to start over or get your island back to yourself.

How to reset your island in Animal Crossing: New Horizons

Resetting your Animal Crossing: New Horizons island isn’t possible through the game itself. Instead, you’ll need to dive into the Switch console settings, but it’s a relatively easy process. You’ll need to make sure that Animal Crossing: New Horizons isn’t running by pressing the home button and then X to close the software, then go through the following steps:

1. Open system settings on the Switch
2. Select “Data Management” on the left side of the screen
3. Select “Delete Save Data” on the right side of the screen
4. Select Animal Crossing: New Horizons
5. Select “Delete all save data for this software”
6. Confirm that you want to delete the save data
7. Return to the home screen and open up Animal Crossing: New Horizons again

Once you’ve followed these steps and opened up Animal Crossing: New Horizons again, rather than traveling to your old island, you’ll be greeted by the familiar faces of Timmy and Tommy. You’ll be able to select your name, birthday, and have the choice between four different island layouts. 

Of course, this does mean that you’ll need to go through the tedious process of starting everyone over from scratch, but it does give you free creative freedom to make your island your own again. 

How to remove a player in Animal Crossing: New Horizons

If you’ve had more than one player registered on your island at any point and want to delete just their save data, you can do that through the Settings in Animal Crossing: New Horizons. This is not a full reset, but it will get rid of everything associated with a single player. Any money or miles that they accrued while playing will be deleted, and their home will disappear too, as well as any memories that residents had of them ever existing. Any backups they made of the island will also be deleted. 

If you want your island to be solely yours, here’s how to delete another player’s save file:

1. On the title screen of Animal Crossing: New Horizons, press the Minus button to open up game game settings
2. Select “Save Data”
3. Select “Delete resident registration”
4. Select the resident that you’d like to remove and confirm to delete their save data

Remember, you can’t use this option to delete your own registration. The only way to remove yourself from the game is to delete an entire save file using the steps laid out in the section above.

How to visit your old island in Animal Crossing: New Horizon

You can technically visit your old island in Animal Crossing: New Horizons, but you won’t have any control over it or be able to change anything while you’re there. Plus, this will take some actual prep work and won’t be possible if you’ve deleted your island on a whim. 

To visit your old island after you’ve deleted it, you’ll need to make a note of that island’s Dream Address. To do this, follow these steps:

• Enter your home and lie down in bed
• Select “Yeah, I want to sleep”
• Select “I’d like to share a dream”

This will create a unique 12-digit code associated with the island as it was when the code was made, allowing you to revisit it at any time, even if you have since deleted the island itself. To use this code and pay a visit to your previous island home, follow these steps:

• Enter your home and lay down in bed
• Select “Yeah, I want to sleep”
• Select “I want to dream”
• Input the 12-digit Dream Address