Do your Joy-Cons do as they please, flinging your in-game character around like a rag-doll? Then your Joy-Cons are drifting.
However, a pioneering Switch owner believes they’ve found a fix for Joy-Con drift, and you can do it at home, yourself, without Nintendo’s input.
Check Out This Potential Fix for Joy-Con Drift
YouTuber and Switch owner, VK, believes he has come up with a fix for the awful drifting issue many other Switch users face.
In the video above, first spotted by Nintendo Life, we see that VK restores functionality to his Switch Joy-Cons by using some incredibly hi-tech gadgetry… a piece of paper. VK realized this after noticing that applying pressure to the casing around the thumbstick meant that the drifting phenomenon stopped altogether.
Yes, that’s right. Despite Nintendo and its many engineers being unable to come up with a solution to the drifting problem for four years, a random chap on the internet comes along. It fixes it with a piece of paper more minor than the nail on your pinkie. Embarrassing, Nintendo? We’d say so…
How Do You Fix Joy-Con Drift?
The process looks pretty simple in the video above. However, you should probably only employ this method if your Joy-Cons are out of warranty, as it involves opening up the casing and messing with the internals.
Don’t forget, if you’re on warranty, Nintendo will replace faulty Joy-Cons, and you should hold them to account, even if it means not playing Switch for a week or two while you wait for your replacements to arrive.
So, to the fix. Grab a piece of paper about the size of a postage stamp, open your Joy-Con, place the piece of paper over the back of the thumb stick’s metal casing, and close your Joy-Con again. Hey-presto, fix applied! You can check out the steps involved in the video above.
Why Does Joy-Con Drift Happen?
There are a couple of reasons Joy-Con drift occurs.
First, it is likely to be down to component fatigue. This means that the parts that make the joystick element of the Joy-Con can become worn or warped over time and through use. This can cause drift.
Second, think about how much your grubby thumbs are rubbing all over the joystick while you play Switch. The grime from your fingers can quickly get underneath the Joy-Con’s casing, causing it to lose calibration if a build-up takes place.
The real reason could be neither of these. However, until Nintendo tells us what the problem is (or fixes it, so it isn’t a problem anymore), we won’t know what causes drift.
Will You Try This Joy-Con Drift Fix?
If you do, remember that you are doing so at your own risk. Always consider sending your controllers back to Nintendo for a replacement if you can wait that long and you’re still under warranty.
This fix could be a solution you can apply to other controllers drifting, too. DualShock 4 and DualSense controllers also suffer the dreaded drift, so perhaps this could work across the board.
