Topic: Joy-Con's analog stick moving without input

Mine, has ben happening on and off. Used compressed air to clean it went away for months now it's back. Tried blowing under the rubber caps and it didn't work. Now tried to use contact cleaner hopefully it would fix the problem.

Update. Contact cleaner worked like a charm. Make sure to let it dry before using. And follow instructions online and on the can.

A week later, my Joy-Con is back in my hands, so not the three-weeks I was initially quoted. No idea what they did to it, exactly. The repair order says something to the effect of "Problem was identified and resolved," so it could have been anything from a simple cleaning to a parts swap. At any rate, it seems to be working fine now.

Jeeze, I'll jump into this conversation too! We have owned our original Switch for about 13-14 months. Both Joy Cons have developed the "drift". Our second Switch which is about to turn 1 year old, has also started to show signs of "drift" on the left side. I tried the canned air and recalibrate option, has not worked for us. I have not tried removing and reinstalling the rubber cap or rubbing alcohol options. I'm going to set up a repair for the set still under warranty. I'm out of luck with the other pair, but I'm preparing a "switcheroo" since we're in the market for another Switch anyways.

I'm greatly saddened and also extremely frightened by this. We seemed to be not effected by this so I thought we were lucky or that other's were not taking care of their Joy Cons. We take great care of our Switch and controllers. They are stored safely when not being used and we rarely take them out of the house. We never had a problem with disconnection either. But now that both our current sets are effected, and after reading countless reports by others on various websites, I think this problem is wide-spread. This isn't good for anyone. Consumers who are burnt by Nintendo will go a different direction, Nintendo will lose money in replacements or repairs and the bad publicity can't be good. It's kind of screwy that our problems have popped up right about a year into ownership....just in time for the warranty to end.

If we continue to have a problem, I'll buy one set of Joy-Cons at Target/Best Buy/Gamestop and purchase their 3 year added warranty. If anything goes wrong, they'll go back.

I've been having the same problem with a neon blue left Joy-Con that I got just a couple months ago. I purchased them from Walmart's website when they were on sale and had it delivered to the store. I noticed that my character in certain games would just start walking to the left without any input on my end a couple of weeks ago. I've tried re-calibrating and cleaning under the rubber cap. I read that putting the cap back on once you remove it can be difficult so I think I'll send it in for a repair.

I think this problem will blow up on Nintendo. Look how many people on this site alone who have had issues! It's crazy.

Good luck @Arcamenel

Just to update our situation.

I successfully did the "switch-a-roo" on our original Switch Joy Cons when I purchased our third Switch. Problem solved! Like others have posted, the newer joy cons seem to physically connect better.

On our second Switch, I tried everything. The canned air had no effect. Wiping around joy stick had no effect. Removing/reinstalling the rubber cap had no effect and created a bigger problem. In fact, I would not recommend anyone else try this fix. Honestly, I don't understand how this would effect the controller and create the drift problem. Anyways, it was still under warranty so I set up a repair and sent the pair (both left and right were not working!) into Nintendo. The customer service was good and the repair was free....but slow. Still don't have them back yet but I did receive a message that they were sent back. Hopefully they're fixed and we don't have anymore issues. I'll report back once I get them and test them.

@seph_patrick so what exactly did you do with contact cleaner? Just a little spray under the rubber cover of each stick I imagine? And how is the fix holding up a month later?

It's weird. Of my most used Joycon sets, my launch day R/B seem to have fared well so far, knock on wood. I haven't used my gray ones much in the past 10 months. But my yellows developed the left stick issue months ago. Usable but not great....occasional drift, especially mario tennis and Cat Quest. Xenoblade 2 has the opposite problem, right & left don't move much sometimes unless I really jam down on the stick....so I can't smoothly walk a radius. It's very minor. A little different from normal stick drift in that the calibration screen usually shows it in perfect calibration or ever so slightly off (and is corrected with recalibration.) Yet games must detect something other than the calibration screen. I've been just living with it because I love my yellows, but after my Switch took a tumble and the right Joycon took the brunt (almost unscathed, no scratches, but a chip off the top of the locking mechanism means it doesn't positively lock in place, very little force gets it to slide off, though it's still been working ok even handheld) made me decide to finally just order another set....fortunately I was still able to get another set of yellow!

Pink and green tempted me as well, but I figure a new color has to come out in the next year, and that may be a newer set with improved internals, or at least a d-pad model

Still stick drift issues aren't unique to Joycon. My Pro controller developed bad drift and was hardly ever used. That's bin-worthy now. My XBox Elite developed unpredictable severe drift in the right stick (replaced it....but it's an exceedingly common problem with Elite, and to a lesser degree, standard.) My WiiU Gamepad right stick developed drift after Bayo and Splatoon and needed replacement. And I must have gone through 5 X360 controllers last gen. I've never had a DualShock model develop stick drift due to the obscenely high spring tension and humungous deadzones they use (mechanical drift won't show up until it's extreme) but a quick search around the internet shows it's pretty rampant there too. And the $200 Scuf controllers are infamous for such issues. I actually contacted them about it and they told me "drift depends on the player" whatever that means. I guess certain angles and forces applied by different people while playing are more likely to cause drift.

Mostly the modern day all-plastic analog POT modules are just garbage, and Joycon modules are even tinier parts than most.

@Mondos yup that's exactly what I did. Just make sure to let it dry first before using it. 15 mins i would say. Also the contact cleaner feels cold to the touch and the rubber flap will shrink but will return to normal size after a few minutes. Resist the urge to press down on the control sticks while still wet.

@Mondos so far so good. I would say that it definitely helped but it has returned once but I just had to respray. Don't over spray.

@seph_patrick Thanks, I'm going to order some up and give that a go. I'm getting varying drift on all four of my joy-cons, which is strange considering how little the sticks on the right ones are used.

My only other thought was interference on the actual switch as it seems worse in handheld mode.

Will try that and report back though!

I just made an account to tell you guys that I could fix both my right and left joystick with the same problem, all I did was to spray some wd-40 and they haven't failed since, that stuff really is magic.

Welp got another drifter. Not going to call nintendo this time since my system is out of warranty and I don't feel like looking up how they warranty the joycons themselves (since these aren't launch joycons) I'll try contact cleaner before I order knock off parts.

Eighteen months of owning a Switch and joy-con drifter #2 has appeared. I'm not going to bother with fixes, I'll just do the old switcheroo with some unfortunate retailer. I'll pickup a couple games in the process to add to the collection. At least...that'll be my justification for the dirty deed.

Thirty months of owning a Switch and joy-con drifter #3 appears. I swear, if a Switch Pro does eventually arrive I hope it's with a new analog mechanism. It sucks that such an amazing platform has such a glaring design flaw. Anywho, this time I'm opting to repair them myself rather than hot-swapping with a retailer.

Repairing it yourself is probably the quickest and easiest solution. You can get replacement analog sticks on ebay for a really cheap price. As far as I can tell they're identical to the original too. Probably straight out of the same factory.

I deliberately bought a 3-pack because I anticipate the same thing happening again in the future.

I had my analog joystick replaced. Paid someone to do it for me. I'm scared I might mess it up. I thinks it's almost a year now and it's still working fine. @Dezzy is right. Changing the analog sticks are the cheapest way to go about it. I'm really hoping Nintendo comes out with better Joycons one with a good Dpad. I'm more interested in that rather than a new console.

@seph_patrick

It's not too hard to do yourself as long as you follow one of the many tutorials. It's just a bit fidly, but you don't need to solder or anything like that. They very handily made the components have clip-in connections so they can easily be replaced.

The hardest part of it for me was genuinely unscrewing the screws without wearing down the screw heads, which basically makes them stuck in place. They're really soft screws. Anyone who does it repeatedly should probably buy some replacements for those too, given that they're like a dollar for a set.

Nintendo now does free Joy Con repairs even if your Switch is out of warranty. Go to Nintendo's support website, and the link is on the front page. I just sent in one pair of Joy Cons that had developed a bad drift, and when those get back, I'll send in my other pair. No need to attempt a repair yourself unless you have no other option.

@Mountain_Man I'm not an technical gifted person, but even I manage to replace the joy stick bought from eBay at home. Just by viewing step by steps from YouTube. Tok me under 30 min. Faster then sending it to repair shop. It's an alternative when you get tired of sending them away.