Animal Crossing New Horizons: How to Cheat Time

Animal Crossing New Horizons is a game about progression. Each day players will have a set number of larger tasks to complete in order to progress their island one step further. Completing large tasks in Animal Crossing can take days, and sometimes there are days where there is nothing to do but farm bells, resources, and Nook Miles.

Animal Crossing: New Horizon players should be wary as time traveling does have negative implications. Since this method is more of a cheat and not an actual mechanic in the game, players should be prepared to lose items and villagers from their island. However, players will be able to build new infrastructure, sell items more often, and make a lot of bells in the process. Other rewards, such as Nook Mile Rewards, can also be earned faster using this method.

This is fine for many players as Animal Crossing is used as a means to relax. But for some players, waiting isn’t gonna cut it. And while time travel is not a new concept in the world of Animal Crossing, in New Horizons is less an in-game mechanic and now a sneaky workaround. but be wary, time is a big ball of wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey stuff and can get the player all mixed up. Nevertheless, here is how players can cheat time in Animal Crossing New Horizons.

How to Time Travel in Animal Crossing New Horizons

In previous iterations of Animal Crossing players would be given the option to change the date and time inside the game via the main menu. This made it incredibly easy for players to quickly switch the time before hopping in to another AC session. However, in Animal Crossing New Horizons that option has been removed forcing players to play the game in real-world time. Players can still switch the date and time on their Nintendo Switch, which in turn affects the time in Animal Crossing. The clock in-game reads the Switch’s clock and then makes it that time within the game.

All players need to do is completely back out of Animal Crossing and close the software. Then open System Settings > System> Date and Time and then switch “Synchronize Clock via Internet” off. This will then allow players to set the date and time for the desired day they want to travel to. The next time ACNH players boot the game will find a new date and time.

Be wary; if players time travels a great length of time, their town will suffer the consequences. Weeds will sprout up, villagers will get unhappy and leave, even jumping back and forth a single day will cause the storyline to progress quickly. This mechanic is good to use if a player has missed a special event by a day or two, but traveling to Christmas and back would have more negative effects than good. Time travel in ACNH does not revere any actions taken by the player, and in fact, even traveling back in time will progress construction.

To set the time back to normal back out of the game completely, navigate back to the Date and Time settings and turn “Synchronize Clock via Internet” back on in Animal Crossing New Horizons.