Nintendo Switch owners know that eventually the analog sticks will suffer from drift, but one aspiring game developer claims to have permanently solved the problem with a piece of paper.
Nintendo’s design of the Switch Joy-Cons has led to a class-action lawsuit and company president Shuntaro Furukawa apologizing. It’s because of the so-called Joy-Con Drift problem, which sees the analog sticks register input even when they aren’t being touched.
Victorstk, who runs the YouTube channel VK’s Channel, posted a video yesterday where he explains why drift happens before demonstrating how to solve it. Start watching from the six-minute mark to see how the fix works:
As the video above shows, the hardest part of this fix is taking apart the Joy-Con in order to place a piece of paper inside. And all the paper does is to increase pressure on the internal components. As Victorstk explains, drift occurs because the metal flaps at the base of each stick become loose, and in turn the metal prongs used to register input lose contact with their pads leading to a lack of precision and drift.
A piece of paper or section of a business card around 1mm thick prevents the metal flaps becoming loose, which solves the problem. In Victorstk’s experience from adding paper to both his Joy-Cons, the fix is permanent. He also suggests that Nintendo could easily fix the problem at the point of manufacture by adding one more screw or by tweaking the plastic housing of the Joy-Con to add the same extra pressure the piece of paper does.
Switch Lite owners will be happy to hear the paper fix works for their analog sticks, too, although opening up a Switch Lite is a bit more tricky. And if you do decide to attempt this fix yourself, remember it will void your warranty with Nintendo (assuming your Switch is still under warranty). We can only hope Nintendo tweaked the design for the forthcoming OLED Switch otherwise we’ll be opening up those Joy-Cons eventually, too.
