Topic: How to keep joy cons turned off?

When I take the joy cons out of the unit and keep them in the storage case there’s a little green lights that keep going up and down on them. It’s like they’re searching for a connection or something. I’ve tried pushing the little button on the side to turn them off but occasionally they still keep searching.

I mostly use the pro controller so I don’t need to have the joy cons on all the time. I would just like to figure out how to actually turn them off so they don’t keep searching. If anyone knows anything about this I’d appreciate some help.

Thanks.

@desktop I don't think you can turn them off. But they don't search constantly, they search for a couple of seconds then stop until another button is pressed. Don't have anything pushing the buttons and they'll stop searching.

Eventually the battery runs down in them just from being on 'standby' permanently, waiting for a button press. Once the battery is flat they defo won't be searching.

I have two sets of JoyCons and alternate which ones I keep connected to the Switch so that they always stay charged.

Your Joy-Cons if any button is pressed will search to connect just like another poster said don't have it in a location where the button are pressed. Otherwise use the charging cord and place it off somewhere it won't be pressed.

I find it odd that Joycons drain themselves of power while idle..... DualShocks and X1 controllers don't have that issue. Neither does the Pro controller. Why do Joycons always bleed power? If Pro doesn't, obviously it's not necessary to function.

@NEStalgia that's not entirely true. My DS4's are drained after not using them a while. It's possible that it takes longer than the joycons, but if you make sure no buttons are pressed they shouldn't drain that fast.

@toiletduck Hmm, my DS4's seem good for months without doing anything with them. Joycons seem to drain in weeks while sitting idle.

@NEStalgia Well there's a fair chance the battery inside a joy con is smaller than the battery inside a traditional wireless controller, no?

@gcunit True, but that's some crazy discharge for Li-Ion either way. And I'm not sure DS4 has much bigger battery considering Joycons only operate half a controller each, so it's 2 batteries for a full controller. Something leeches that power.

@NEStalgia According to Wikipedia... DS4 has a 1000mAh battery, whereas a joy-con has a 525mAh battery.

So DS4 has almost twice the capacity that a joy-con has for maintaining standby. So for doing (what on the face of it is) the same thing, with half the battery capacity, it is quite reasonable to expect the joy-con battery to discharge much earlier than the DS4 battery.

Throw them at concrete. Then you’ll never have to worry about them turning on.

@PolarExperience that's surprisingly not very effective..... #askmehowiknow

@gcunit yeah but what is it using power to maintain? It's not awaiting a signal, it's activated by button presses, circuit closing. That shouldn't need power. I have a 360 controller with eneloops from 2011 that still has power. Liion shouldn't naturally discharge much faster. The gamepad drained itself because it was waiting for incoming signals from the console turning on. It's almost like joycons are powering something like nfc or something when idle.

Isn't it? https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/kotaku.com/new-nintendo-switch...

@NEStalgia Dropping Joy-Cons is only acceptable if they are the gray ones. I would like to know more.

@NEStalgia Pro controller definitely drains itself too.

I have a second XC2 pro for collectors purposes. I have to recharge it every 3-5 months. And its not even paired to the console (I hit the unpair all controllers in the settings every time I'm done charging it).

I really wish they had an actual off switch.

Don’t move them.

To turn them off, go into the controller settings and select the first option. That will turn off all controllers within range (except for any Joy-Con directly attached to the console.

My Pro Controllers do "die" after a while. All of mine were fully charged and I hardly use them, however, I would prefer to use these for games such as Smash rather than risk people being reckless with the more sensitive analog sticks of the Joy-Con.

They do - the little button on the side with the rails.

The sync button is not an off switch. If you push any of the buttons while sync is off, the Joy-Cons will search for the Switch.

@Silly_G That only puts them in standby. Press any button and it searches for the console.