My last Wii U modding guide helped a ton of people, but now it's time to update it to make the process even easier and straightforward. [music] So, this video is going to be an in-depth guide on how to homebrew your Wii U and your virtual Wii to unlock its true potential. This will work on any Wii U updated to the latest firmware, which is 5.5.6 in North America and 5.5 in all other regions. If there is ever a new update released, read the description or pin comment to make sure this guide still works before following.

To summarize quickly, I'll be showing you how to add Aroma custom firmware to your Wii U with optimal settings, how to back up your games, as well as how to install games updates and DLC, install homebrew apps using the homebrew app store, and more. And if you choose to homebrew your virtual Wii as well, which I definitely recommend, I'll show you how to get the homebrew channel, set up USB Loader GX and Nintendo to play Wii and Gamecube games, and of course, how to install WADS to get your custom iOS and forwarder channels on your VW menu.

Here is what you'll need for the guide. Of course, you'll need your Wii U console and your gamepad. You'll need an SD card and a way to connect it to your PC to download and transfer files. I have to use this adapter here, but all the products I use are linked in the description for your convenience. You can use a regular SD or micro SD with an adapter. It doesn't matter, but make sure this plastic tab here is pushed up to avoid right lock issues.

The last thing, which is technically not necessarily, but highly recommended if you plan to add a bunch of games, is to upgrade your storage using an external hard drive like this one. Maxone is usually my go-to since the price is reasonable, but any brand should do the trick so long as the reviews are good. Make sure the reviews are good before buying. For hard drives though, you'll also need a Ysplitter cable to properly power it.

And alternatively, you can use a USB drive. I have one in my other Wii U, but hard drives and SDDDs are definitely more reliable and recommended. But with that out of the way, I have a Google doc with everything you need linked in the description. All right, and once you're over here, the first thing you'll see is a disclaimer. This video is educational purposes only. If you do decide to follow the guide, you're following at your own risk.

If you're unfamiliar with this process, I recommend watching the video through once to get an idea of how it works before you start. There will be no mention or instructions on obtaining paid software illegally in this video. And because it's a video guide, read the description and pin comment to ensure this guide is up to date before starting. I'll either inform you myself there or pin comments from you guys that have the date you successfully followed this video.

But with that out of the way, scroll down and we'll start off with the downloads. It might seem like a lot, but just take it slow and you'll be all good. So, to start off, go to the link for Aroma for your cafe and that'll take you to this page. Aroma is the custom firmware we will be using and it was created by Michelle. So, big shout out to him. He has done so much for the Wii U modding community. And I will mention there is a blog post you can read about Aroma and you can follow a mashell on Twitter or join the discord.

There's links on this page. So as long as Nand dumper and environment loader are checked, click download payloads and then go ahead and download aroma. Download base aroma. Once you have those, you'll see that there's additional plugins and modules, but I'm actually going to be showing you how to get these on your console later in the video. So we're going to skip that. So once you have that, exit out of this page. We'll move on to SIG patches.

So go to that link here. This is a very important file if you plan on playing your game backups on your console. So, grab this RPX file. Click it to download. Got it. We can exit out. And now the Wii U app store. So, we'll head to the GitHub page for this one. Scroll down and you'll see a bunch of different ones, but what we want for the Wii U is theweb. It stands for Wii U homebrew, and that's the format of Wii U apps for Aroma Custom Firmware.

So, go ahead and click on App Store.wub to download that. We'll be using this app to get even more apps on your Wii U. But exit out. And that's everything for modding your Wii U. If you plan on also modding your VWI, let's go ahead with those downloads. So, first one there is Compat Installer. Click the GitHub link and just click on the Aroma one. That'll download. Shout out to Exploit. Exit out onto CIOS. Click on the Google Drive.

Go ahead and download these ones as well. Those are good. But once you have those, you can exit out. Move on to patched iOS 80. This will take us to the open shop channel website. Scroll down. Download file here. Once you have that, we can exit out. Next up is USB Loader GX. So, let's go to the GitHub page there. This one was created by WiDev, also known as Blackbox. On the right hand side under releases, click on the latest.

Scroll down and grab the zip file here. That's downloaded. Exit out. Next up, we'll get the USB Loader GX channels. So, click on this drive here. This is a folder with all the channels that I've created. There's multiple there, but we're just going to right click on USB loader GX and download. This is a pack that will give you the forwarder channel on your Wii U menu and your VW menu. Once you have that, you can exit out.

Lastly, we'll get Yam ModMe edition. So, head to the GitHub link here, but we'll be grabbing the zip file here, but we can exit out there. And that is all the files we need. The last download we're going to do is for game setup. So, we'll get the tiny Wii backup manager, and we're also going to use it to get Nintendo for our Gamecube games if you're setting those up. But, let's head over there. Shout out to MQ1 and Encounter for this one.

It's available on Windows, Mac, and Linux, which is really awesome. But, we'll go to the releases page here, the latest release. But if you scroll down, you'll see there's a ton of different options to download. So, if you know what you're looking for, you can grab one of these. But MQ1 made it really easy. For Windows, there's an actual app you install to your computer or there's a portable version. And I'm going to grab the standalone here, x64.

So, you can click that and it will download what you need. And of course, there's a Mac OS and Linux in the recommended list as well. But perfect, we have that. We can exit out. And that is everything you need for downloads. Now, we can move on to setting up your SD card. And over in my file explorer, my SD card is plugged in. It's the hit-like one, which is drive letter G. But first, we'll see what our SD card is formatted as.

So, right click, go to properties. Mine is XFAT, which is not what we want. We want FAT32. So, let's go ahead and format it. If yours is FAT32, you're good to go. You can skip this part. But if it's not, no worries. We'll do that now. So, Windows is capable of formatting storage devices that are 32 GB or less. So, if you have one that size, you can rightclick on your SD card, press format, and then you should be able to change your file system to FAT32.

I can't because mine is larger than 32 GB. But choose FAT32. Make sure allocation unit size is 32 kilobytes and then go through the prompts to format. But a quick warning, this will wipe everything on your SD card. So if you have anything important on there, make sure to back it up and then you can put it back on after you format. But if yours is also larger than 32 GB, there is a different program that we will be using.

So back on the dock in the green highlight, this is the FAT32 formatting program. Just click on the image here. It will download FAT32 format. You may have to keep the download, but don't worry, it's saved. I've used this tons of times. And minimize that. And you can run it straight from your downloads. Just double click the .exe file. And you should see this right here. Quick reminder, double check you know which drive letter it is.

If it's named something, that also helps. But make sure to close any file explorer windows. And now we can move on with formatting. So I have my proper drive letter in, but it also has the name here. Hit like. You do not want to accidentally format something else because again this wipes everything. So this is another warning. If you have anything important on there, make sure to back it up to your computer and then you can add it after we format.

Allocation unit size is 32K. Press start. Do you really want to format it? All data will be lost. Okay. And it successfully worked. Now, if you have any other file explorer windows open, make sure to close those and then try again. And if you're still having issues, try restarting your PC. Don't open any windows except for the FAT32 format. and then it should work no problem. But now we can close that back in our file explorer window.

Rightclick properties. And now it is FAT32. And now we're ready to put all the files on there. So let's do that. All right. So I have the root of my SD card on the right and my downloads on the left. Let's get it set up. And you can delete the GU format or place it and somewhere else on your computer if you want to save it. And if you're on Windows, you should be able to extract it natively, but I use sevenzip. You can also use WinRAR.

But all these zip files do need to get extracted. But we'll start off with the aroma file. So, open that one up. There should be a Wii U folder and just drag it onto the root of your SD card. Doing it like that extracts it onto your SD. So, you're good to go. You can back out and delete the zip file. Next up, the Aroma packages, the environment loader. Open that one up. It's also a Wii U folder. Drag it onto the root of your SD card.

Perfect. Go back and you can delete. Next up, we'll set up our apps. So, over on your SD card, go inside of the Wii U folder and then inside of apps, and this is where all of your Wii U homebrew apps go. So, if you get them on your PC, like we're doing now, this is where you place them. But if you get them on the Homebrew App Store like we will later, this is where they get installed to. So, grab the App Store.web and drag it inside.

Press yes if Windows prompts you. And that's good. You can delete it from your downloads. Next up is the SIG patches. RPX. So, this we got to do a little digging in our SD card. So from the root, go into Wii U folder, environments, aroma, modules, setup, and this is where we place the sig patches.RPX. As you can see, there's others already in there. So grab it and place it inside. Press yes if Windows prompts you, and then you can delete from your downloads.

So if you're only modding the Wii U side of your Wii U. Sounds weird to say it like that, but if you're not modding your VWI, you're good to go for your SD setup, and you can skip all of these. But for those of you doing the vi as well, let's continue. So next up, go into Wii U apps and then open up the compat installer zip file, you'll see this web file and drag it inside. This is the app we'll use to get the homebrew channel on the VW menu, but you can go back and delete it after.

Next up, go back to the root of your SD card where your Wii U folder is. We'll skip a few and go to USB loader GX FS47. Open that one up. Go inside of this folder where you see WAD and Wii U. Highlight both and drag it onto the root. Perfect. That's good. You can go back and delete that zip. And now the VW CIOS. Open that one up. Go inside of the first folder where you see these WAD files. And we're going to highlight all four and drag them into your WAD folder.

Back out. You can delete the zip file. Now, next up, the patched iOS 80. Open that zip file up. There should be an apps folder here. Drag it onto the root of your SD card. The apps folder on the root is going to be the homebrew apps for your VWI. Whereas your Wii U homebrew apps, they're inside of your Wii U folder and then apps. So just make sure not to get those two confused. Once you have that over, you can go back and delete the zip.

USB Loader GX. Open that one up. It is also an apps folder. Drag it onto the root of your SD. Go back. Delete the zip. Next up is Yamme. Open that one up. It's an apps folder. Drag it onto the root. go back and delete the zip. And now we're left with Tiny Wii Backup Manager. So that means our SD is fully set up and ready to go other than our games for our Vuei. If you're wondering about games for the Wii U, don't worry, I'm covering that later in the video.

So now, let's go ahead and set up our Wii games. And you can also set up GameCube games the same way. So I'll minimize my SD card for now. Right click on Tiny Wii Backup Manager, show more options, sevenzip, extract. And now we have this folder where our portable application is. If you're extracting through Windows, you can simply click extract all. But once you have it extracted, you can delete the zip. So let's go ahead and open up TinyWe Backup Manager.

Just run this .exe file. And here it is. First thing we need to do is click this icon here. And we're going to choose our SD card. So under this PC, if you're on Windows, that is, select your SD card. Press select folder. And just a quick note for anybody wanting to set up their VW games on a USB drive, you absolutely can, but it's a bit more complicated than SD because the Wii U will prompt you to format your USB every time you turn your console on.

And that's because it needs to be formatted as FAT32 for the VW to read it. But you can download a Wii U app called USB Hide to stop those pop-ups. I personally prefer SD because it's more straightforward, but it's up to you. Just make sure you have all of your VW apps on the same device to avoid issues. But you can have all your apps on your SD and then just your games on USB. that's fine. And you'll just have to make sure your USB is compatible with USB loader GX.

It can be a little finicky sometimes, but I have a couple in the description that I do know work with no issues. So, feel free to check those out. So, now we need to add our games. So, there's two ways to do that. You can add certain files using the plus icon, or you can just add a whole folder if you have them all inside. So, feel free to choose what's best for you. I'll just do the plus. Navigate to your games and I'll show you that for Wii games you can use WBFS, RVZ, or even ISO files.

So, this program has some pretty good compatibility. And for Gamecube games, you can use RVZ, ISO, or even CISO. So, here you can just select one and open them one at a time, or you can just highlight everything and press open. It'll tell you which games it detected. Are you sure you want to continue? Click yes. If it has to do any converting, it will go ahead and do that. It'll convert the Wii games to WBFS and the GameCube games to ISO.

And it sets the games up perfectly on your SD card, even the ones that might be more than 4 GB, it automatically splits them so that they're ready to play on USB load to GX. So, when I say the other file types are supported, that's because they get converted to what they need to be through this program. But, of course, the more games you have, the longer it'll take. But in the meantime, if you are planning to play GameCube games, we're missing something and we're going to grab it through this program.

Click this house or shop rather icon and you can download any app you want for Vi Homebrew. So, we're going to search up Nintendo. So, N I N T A N D. And there it is, Nintendo. And we're just going to download it from here. So, click this icon, install app. Are you sure? Yes. And it'll install it to your SD card. If you have all your homebrew apps on your SD, but you have your games on your USB drive. Make sure you mount your SD to get the Nintendo app.

You can get this the same way we got USB loader GX. But now, you know, you can also get it through this program. But we can go back to the game page. And so far, I have two games ready to go. So, I'll meet you when it's done. All right. All my games are on. And now over on your SD card, you should see new folders. You should see WBFS for your Wii games, games for your Gamecube games if you got those. And because we installed Nintendo, we got the controllers folder, and in your apps, you have Nintendo.

Last step, we're going to make USB Loader GX look a little nicer by getting all the covers. So, go to the icon above the gear, this one, and under USB Loader GX, click download all covers. Now, technically, you can also do this over on your Wii U in USB Loader GX, but this is just a really quick way to get them set up super easily. Now that that's done, over on your SD card in your apps folder, USB loader GX, images, that is where the covers are stored.

So, if you open one up, boom, the cover is ready to go. But that was the last step for SD setup. So, you can go ahead and eject your SD card. And before putting it in your Wii U, this is your last warning to push that plastic tab up. So, we're over on the Wii U. Now, you do need to make sure your Wii U is connected to the internet because we will be using the internet browser for this exploit. So, once you're here, go to enter URL and type what I do, we exploit.xyz.

Hit okay. You should see this screen here. And we'll be using this page multiple times. This time in particular, we're going to be doing the nan dump. So when we hit run exploit, we're going to hold B until we see the page that we want. So hit run exploit and hold B and just keep holding until we see our choose our payload page. And this can take up to 20 seconds. So just keep holding it and you should see this screen.

If your Wii U froze on a white screen during the exploit, you can go into your browser settings and delete your cookies and your browsing data and go ahead and try again. But you should be here. go down on the D-pad and press A on NAND dumper. So now we're going to be backing up our NAND, which is very important in the event of a brick, which is don't worry, it's extremely rare. It's just better to be safe rather than sorry.

So this is a very important step. Everything is automatically checked. That is important to restore your Wii U. However, dump MLC is not. Now, this can be depending on your model, 8 GB or 32, minus 32. And if you choose yes on this option, it can take up to 2 hours to back up your NAND. The MLC includes save files and game data, so it's not needed. But if you want to save that, feel free to back up that one as well. You can go down on the D-pad and hit left.

And now you'll be dumping your MLC. But you do need enough free space on your SD card for the backup to work. I'm not going to be doing that for this guide cuz it takes so long and this is not my main Wii U. So now when you have the settings ready, just press A to launch it. It will begin. And then it's hard to see, but it says, "Welcome to Nan Dumper." So, it is beginning. If you did choose MLC, it will take quite a long time, but I'll meet you back when it's all done.

Once you see that complete, your Wii U will reboot. Mine took about 5 minutes, but again, that's cuz I didn't choose the MLC. But now, you can go ahead and turn your Wii U off, take your SD card out, and plug it back into your computer. Over on your computer, go to your SD card, and you should see some new files here. If you backed up your MLC, you'll see a bunch of different MLC files. All of these are important for your nan backup.

So, we're going to highlight all of them. You can rightclick and cut. And then now we just place them anywhere on your computer or in a cloud storage, just anywhere safe. So, I just made a folder on my desktop. Go inside and I will paste it there. But now that we have our nan back up in a safe place, you can eject your SD card and plug it back into your Wii U. And now it's time to actually homebrew our Wii U. So, we're going to run that same exploit again.

And so head back into your internet browser, go to type a URL and do the same one. And now when we press run exploit, we're going to hold the X button and that's going to get us to the environment loader. So hit run exploit, hold the X button, keep holding it, and boom, we're in the environment loader. So here, just press A on Aroma. You should see this big yellow warning about updates. If you're unfamiliar with homebrew, Nintendo isn't a fan.

So, if they ever surprise us with a new firmware update, it usually breaks homebrew. So, we don't want our Wii U to automatically update. We want to choose when that happens. But don't worry, as this says, it can be reverted back so that you can update. So, press X to block the updates and then press A on Wii U menu. And then it should load into Aroma custom firmware. You should be seeing your homebrew apps that we added on your SD card.

I'll switch it quick. And that just confirms that we are in Aroma custom firmware. But we're not done yet. There's a couple more steps. So go to the rocket ship icon, otherwise known as the payload loader installer, and press A. You'll see this screen. Press A on check. And then press A on install/update. It'll give you the are you really sure? Go down and press A on install and then A again to shut down the console.

And upon turning it back on, you are not in Aroma custom firmware. you're in your stock Wii U. As you can see, there's no homebrew apps. So, we need to change that. So, we're going to set our Wii U to auto boot into Aroma custom firmware every time we turn it on. To do that, we're going to load into the health and safety information app. So, press A on that one. And here, this is very important. Press Y on your gamepad so that aroma letters turn yellow.

That sets it to the default. Press A. And then we're going to do the same. Press Y on Wii U menu. Press A. And now we have our defaults. So now we're back in Aroma custom firmware. We're going to go back in the payload loader installer. Hit A on check. Now this time we're going to go down to boot options, which wasn't there before. Press A and we're going to switch to payload loader. So press A on that one. Press A to shut down your console.

And upon rebooting, you should see all of your homebrew apps. So we're successfully set up auto boot. If you ever want to turn auto boot off, you can go back in the payload loader installer and then just turn it off the same way we turned it on. But now our Wii U is officially modded with custom firmware. Now it's time to get to the fun part. So before we move on to installing games, updates, and DLC, the first thing I'm going to show you is you should see Aroma updater, but this is how you update your Roma custom firmware.

So let's go inside. It's also how you get different plugins as well. If Michelle, the creator of Aroma, ever puts out an update for Aroma custom firmware, you can come here, press A to check for updates. I just installed it, so I'm up to date. FW image loader isn't necessary. But if you want, you can follow Mashelle on Twitter, and you can see when the update comes out, or it will automatically show you on your Wii U upon booting that there is an update out.

Or the other option, you can join my Discord server, and Sauy in the announcement channel is really good for letting you guys know. Shout out to Sauy. But on top of updating your custom firmware, if you press the right bumper on your Wii U Gamepad, it'll take you to this page. And there's a whole list of everything you can get here. That's the exact same as the Aroma website. But don't worry, you can get more in the homebrew app store.

But right here, if you plan on using controllers not meant for the Wii U, I definitely suggest Blue Pair. It allows you to connect different Bluetooth controllers to your console. Ink is a very cool one. It's a fan-made server which helps bring games back online that were shut down from Nintendo. FTP IIU. Certainly recommended, but not everybody will need to use it. SD Caffeine is a fantastic plugin that allows you to play different game mods.

I love this one for New Super Mario Bros. U. If you want to take screenshots, feel free to get that one. Swip Swap Me lets you swap your screens from your TV to your Gamepad and vice versa. But once you pick everything you want, all you do is press the plus button, press A to confirm, and then it'll download and install the plugins. They're pretty small, so it doesn't take long. Press A to restart. And upon rebooting, if you got the INK plugin, you should see using Pretendo Network.

I'm not going to go in depth in how to set it up in this video, but I'll have one linked in the description if you are interested in playing games online again. So, those were plugins. If you want to edit your plugins over on your Wii U Gamepad, press the left bumper down on the D-pad and minus, and then you should see the Wii U plug-in system menu. If you ever need to edit your plugins, toggle them on or off, this is where you do it.

And if you downloaded Blue Pair from the aroma updater, you'll see coupair, which is the companion app for Blue Bear. But again, I'm not going into too much detail with those apps. I'm going to show you how to install games, updates, and DLC. So, let's head into the homebrew app store and get what we need. So, here is where you can get all sorts of apps and plugins, and even some homebrew games. And I will say you can navigate this with your Wii remote, but it's definitely better on the gamepad.

There's some pretty wacky stuff here, but there's also some really important stuff. And if you go to the left hot bar, go down to aroma ready. This is where all the plugins that you can find that are meant for Aroma. Feel free to explore, but first we're going to get one of the most important applications for your Wii U. But let's go to the search bar here on the left side. Press Y to toggle your keyboard and type in W U.

Press Y and you should see weapon installer GX2 with aroma in brackets. So press A on that one and it's very easy. You just press A to download it and it'll quickly download to your SD card. So, now that we have Weap Installer GX2, press Y again to toggle your keyboard. Press B and we're going to search up Wu DD and you should see wood. Press Y to toggle your keyboard again. Press A on wood. This app allows you to dump your games to your SD card.

So, press A here. If you don't plan on dumping any of your games, you can skip this. I'm not going to go in depth on how to do it the other way, but there might be a video on the Google doc. Anyway, we now have wood and Weapon Installer GX2. So, once you have those, you can press the home button. Go back to your home screen. You should now see them on your home menu. So, now I'm going to show you how to dump your game.

So, I'm going to insert my copy of Mario Kart 8. So, you can see that's in there. And then go over to what Wii U disc dumper and load that app up. You'll see this page here. The dump target should have an asterisk or a star on SD card. So in order to dump it, there's three options here, but we want to dump it as a file. So the third option here, press A. It'll read the disc. It'll detect the game and the size. Just press A on game and it'll begin dumping the game to your SD card.

And there we go. It is done. You should see this screen. Press A to return. And now you can turn off your console and we'll take the SD card out and put it back in our computer. Now, over on your SD card, you should see Woo Dump, but inside of here is a bunch of letters. Inside of that is even more letters, but this is the actual game. Inside it looks like this. So, just to clear up any confusion, you can actually rename this.

And you can call it whatever you want. I'll just call it MK8. Now, in order to install this game to your Wii U, we're going to rightclick and cut. Go back to the root of your SD card and create a new folder called install. Make sure you spell it correctly. Go inside and paste. Now, this install folder is how you install any game update and DLC. So, if you get them via another way, this is where you put it, but it does have to be a certain format, and it has to look like this.

But, I'm just going to place the other games I have in here. But back on the root of your SD card, if you backed up your game and transferred it to your install folder, you can delete the Woo Dump folder. Now, we're ready to eject it, place it back in your Wii U. back on your Wii U. Before we install this, if you have a hard drive or a USB drive that you're going to be using to store your games, now is the time to set it up.

So, I have my hard drive here. And if you also have a hard drive, you'll need a Ysplitter cable just like this. Basically, it plugs into the hard drive and has two USB ports so that it properly powers it. Otherwise, you can run into issues for the Wii U. So, plug both ports in. And if you have a USB drive, you can just plug that into any port. And you should see this prompt here. And this is just asking us to format it to the Wii U.

There's a special format that only the Wii U can read. Whenever you format a device, it wipes everything, but you shouldn't have anything on there. If you do, back it up and then format. But go ahead and press format. It will format the storage. And now we're ready to go. It'll reset the Wii U menu. And once you're back on, now we can load into Weap Installer GX2. So you'll see this page here. And any game you have in your install folder will show up here.

Best way to do this if you have none of them installed yet, just press plus on your Wii remote or your gamepad and it will select everything. Or you can go and pick which ones to install. Once you have all the games that you want installed, go ahead and press A on install. Are you sure you want to install? Yes. And here it gives you an option to install to your NAND or a USB storage. Your NAND is your internal Wii U storage.

So it is limited. Mine is a 32 GB model. They also made 8 GB. So, just be wary of how much space you have on your console if you plan to install it to your NAND, but it's definitely recommended to install to your USB storage device. And I just set up my hard drive, so I'm good to go. I'm going to select USB, and it'll begin installing all the games. So, how this works is you basically put the game on your SD card as a transfer point.

So, Weap Installer takes the game file from your SD card and actually installs it to your hard drive. So, that means once we're done installing here, the file on your SD card is no longer needed. You can delete it or put it in a safe space. But I'll cut to when it's done. And that's the last one. Press okay. Hit the home button. Go back to your Wii U menu. And then you should have all of your games installed, ready to play.

And before we mod the Virtual Wii, I'm going to show you one quick trick on Aroma Custom Firmware. Since all the homebrew apps go on your Wii U menu, it can get pretty messy. So, what I like to do is create a new folder and call it homebrew launcher. It fits perfectly with a space. And then you can simply just drag all your apps inside. And just like that, you have a homebrew launcher right here, ready with all your homebrew apps.

So that's everything I'm going to be showing you on the Wii U side of things. Next up is the virtual Wii. I'm going to show you how to mod it and everything. While this isn't necessary, it is definitely recommended. So, if you decide not to, well, thank you for watching and make sure to check out my other videos to see what else you can do on your Wii U, like setting up Nintendo Network, custom themes, which is a really cool addition to your modded Wii U.

But for those of you who want to mod your Virtual Wii, let's go ahead go into your homebrew launcher and find VW Compact Installer. This is the app that is going to install the homebrew channel to your VW menu. So, there's no exploit over there. Everything is done right here. So, just press A. It is extremely simple. Shout out to Lord Scruffy and the Thinking Chair. Press home to exit. Head back to your Wii U menu. And then now let's load into your virtual Wii menu.

You do need a Wii remote and a sensor bar to do this. If you don't have a sensor bar, you can actually use the Gamepad. Quick trick, but you do need a Wii remote. So go through. You can just press later. If you don't have a Nintendo Network ID, TV or gamepad, doesn't matter. And once we're loaded in, you should see the homebrew channel. So let's head into there and we'll get everything set up. So, your app should automatically load up.

You should see all the ones we added earlier. We're going to start off with the patched iOS 80 installer. So, load that app up. It'll give you a quick 30 second warning, but once you see press any button to continue, just press A and it will patch your iOS 80. This is a pretty important thing for different homebrew to work. Once you see the complete, press A and it'll go back to the homebrew channel. Now, is time to install our custom iOSs.

So, we'll go into Yam ModMe edition. Press load. We don't actually have to use D2XCIOS installer. We can skip that step because the wads I had you download are the custom iOS from ModMe. If you're wondering why it says preloader is installed, I've modded this Wii U before and left it installed. But if you guys want a video on that, check the description. But press A on your Wii SD slot as your source. And you can install these one at a time by pressing A on each one.

Or you can press the plus button and we'll install all the CIOS at one time. So, there's a plus on each one. We'll leave the USB loader GX forwarder for now, but press A. A to continue, and it'll go ahead and install all four important custom iOS. The most important one, this one, 249. That is what most of your games will run off of using USB loaded GX. Perfect. I got four titles succeeded. If you had any fail, just go ahead and try again.

But once they're all good, press any button to continue. And we'll quickly install the USB loader GX forwarder channel. So, press A on that one. And here you can also uninstall it, but you can just do that through the data management settings as well. It doesn't matter. We want to install it. So, press a uninstall. And it should be pretty quick. These are all pretty small. Press A to continue. Press the home button. It'll bring us back to the homebrew channel.

And now that we have those, if you had GameCube games, you should have the Nintendo app. We're going to run that once. So, load that one up. And this is going to generate a file on your SD card that makes sure you can play the GameCube games. But after this, we're going to be playing them from USB loader GX because it looks quite a bit cooler. You'll see. But a quick rundown on Nintendo. Just select your source device and then all your games will show up.

So I got SSX Tricky and Super Mario Sunshine. But now that we ran it once, click the home button, home button again, and return to the homebrew channel. And you can load into USB Loader GX from this app. Or now that we installed the forwarder channel, I'm going to go back to the system menu and show you that you can load it through there as well. And there it is. And now that you have this forwarder channel, the one on your Wii U menu will work now.

So the way this works, the channel on your Wii U menu runs through this forwarder channel on your VWI and then into the app. And that's why you need both. But go ahead and press start and we'll load in. So my games are on my SD card. So I'm going to press A to enable SD mode. It'll go through. It'll load resources. The default is this page here, which looks kind of cool, but is not as cool as it can be. So this icon here instead of displaying as a list you can choose between here the no image that's the nan channels.

So this icon in the bottom right is select game sources. You can turn off NAND. Make sure Wii and Gamecube is checked off. So if yours didn't show up, double check that and press okay. Now because we set up our covers through Tiny Wii Backup Manager, they should automatically show up, which is really convenient. And if you are by chance using a USB drive for your VW games and USB loader GX got stuck on reinitializing devices or it froze or the games simply aren't showing up, it may be a compatibility issue.

That's unfortunately a reality with Wii modding when it comes to USB loader GX. Not every USB drive works. So, this one's also pretty cool, but we can go through. There's a couple other pages. This one, if you have a bunch, it'll roll through a big circle. Or this one, you don't even need the covers. It looks like an actual Wii menu, which is really awesome. Whatever your preference is, you can do that. And now we can also play our GameCube games through USB Loader GX.

They look way nicer than Nintendo. Now, if your Gamecube games aren't showing up for whatever reason, go into your settings, go over one page, and go to custom paths. Go down all the way until you see SD GameCube path. or if you are using a USB drive instead, you can change the main GameCube path. And if you're still having issues, you can change both of the paths to whichever storage device you're using. And hopefully that does it.

But you just want the path to be your storage device and then games folder. But if that is all set, you should be good to go and they should show up. If you want to change your settings for your GameCube games, go over to the first page and go to loader settings. Scroll down. First, you'll see GameCube settings. Keep going. Then Nintendo settings. And now you can change a few different settings you want. So you got Wii U widecreen is automatically on.

You shouldn't really need to change anything for your GameCube games to work. Memory card emulation, it should be on. But here is where you access all of the Nintendo settings. A really cool feature that Blackbox put into USB loader GX is if you don't know what something is, you can simply hover over it and it'll tell you. Toggle SD card here. There's your settings. You can go back to the homebrew launcher from here.

Or if you have a Wii game that you want to back up to your Wii U, you can install a game here. So you can either press this button when you have a disc already inserted or you can insert a copy. I'll put in New Super Mario Bros. Wii and it should automatically detect it, giving you an option to install it to your SD card. All you have to do press install. Install a game. Yes. Continue to install game. Okay. And now it'll turn your physical copy into a digital file on your SD card. and it'll be set up the exact same as all the other games we have on there as well.

And there we go. Successfully installed. It'll give a little refresh. And you'll see that we don't actually have the cover. So an option to get it is press one on your Wii remote and then you can download the covers just like this. Press okay. Yes, you do need the internet for this. Or alternatively, you can just take your SD card out, put it in your computer, run Tiny Wii Backup Manager, and since the the new game that you backed up to your SD is there, you'll get the cover that way as well.

So, there's two different options here. Download is finished. Six files not found, but it shouldn't be an issue. There is the new cover. So, the last thing to do is to just test the game. So, let's do Mario Kart Wii. And it should start up as normal. And voila, we're loaded in, ready to play our game. There's a lot of possibilities with this, but there you go. Your VW is modded and ready to go as well. But there you go, guys.

That is everything I'm going to show you in this video. And if you ran into any issues during this video, feel free to join my Homebrew Help Discord linked in the description. There's a lot of great staff members there who are willing to help, but they don't have to. So, just make sure you're respectful. But I want to thank you guys for supporting the channel. If you're watching this, I really appreciate you. If you want to move on to custom Wii U themes, click the video on the screen and I'll meet you over there.

But with that being said, stay funky and happy modding. Woohoo!