If you're a Switch owner, there's a good chance that you have a faulty Joy Con.
The problem is called Joy Con "drift," and it's the reason that Link won't stop running off the screen.
So what's the deal?
Essentially, it's a factory defect affecting all Switch controllers
and it makes your joystick think that it's receiving an input that isn't actually there.
The problem has become so big, four out of five Switch owners on my team
caught the drift. Luckily, we all work at iFixit
so we have the replacement part and the repair guide on our site to fix the problem.
And since we're all doing a repair anyways, we thought we'd film each of us
to show you just how difficult the repair is. We've got everything from a first-time fixer
to a teardown engineer working to get their Switches up and running. So let's get started.
Hi, I'm Jeff and this will be my first attempt to fix a drifting Joy Con.
This is my personal Switch. I'm senior repair guide writer and teardowner
at iFixit, so if I mess this up it'll be really embarrassing.
Hi! I'm Kevin Purdy, and I'm here today to repair the drift issue on my friend's left Joy Con.
I am like a yellow belt in repair.
I've repaired many iPhones and my 2012 MacBook Pro
but don't have much experience repairing game consoles, so this is new for me.
Hi! I'm Olivia, and my Joy Con has been drifting pretty bad lately.
It makes it really difficult to terraform or hit rocks in Animal Crossing, so I'm gonna get inside
and see if I can fix the Joy Con. I've got my Joy Con fix kit right here
with all of the tools, and I'm gonna pull up the guide on ifixit.com.
Step 1 is, remove the four tri-point, Y00 screws.
So, I'm using my Pro-Tech Toolkit.
One of the hardest parts I think about repair is actually just seeing what the bits are.
You want the largest driver bit that will fit and fill the screw head.
If you go too small, you can strip the screw. This actually feels
a little loose... I may size up and see how the Y0 feels.
Yeah, I like that better.
This one is stripped! Let me see if I can get it out...
It's possible to use a screwdriver the wrong way. There's a technique to it. It's not rocket science
but if you're not familiar, we do have a guide for "how to use a screwdriver" on iFixit.
Three screws down! Of course the fourth one is giving me trouble because, you know, last.
Aaaaaaagh!
The next step is to get an opening pick and push it into the seam at the bottom edge of the controller.
Whenever you do this, you want to make sure you don't insert the pick any farther
than necessary to get it apart. That didn't take much!
If you jam the pick all the way inside, you can potentially damage internal components.
So, don't do that.
And the guide tells me it should open like a book...
Ta-da...
And it does! Now that we have it open the next thing we need to do is disconnect the battery.
You can actually pull up on the wires, that's not gonna hurt them
as long as you don't overdo it. And if it's really stubborn, you can do both.
You can pull up a little bit on the wires and lift and pry underneath
with your spudger. You just have to be careful not to damage anything.
Alright so, this battery connector is really difficult!
I am prying with my spudger, I've used both ends, and last resort is to
pull very gently on the cables. So I'm gonna try that because nothing else is working. Here we go.
I guess good advice for any kind of repair is,
whenever you feel like something's really resisting you, don't fight it!
We're gonna get the opening pick back out, and put it between the battery and its housing.
One pro tip if you do this: it's a good idea to drain your battery a little before you start.
Don't leave it charged at 100%.
If you drain it to about 25%, the risk of anything bad happening
even if you make a mistake and you poke at it, is basically zero.
You know, if you fight a screw or a cable and it doesn't want to come out,
oh well, you've messed up your Joy Con. But if you fight a battery too hard, you know... it can explode?!
Oh, it just pops right out, great. That was not scary at all.
Pay attention to this part! You are only removing three screws, and they are very specific. Three screws.
Oh, I missed a screw! Make sure you get ALL your screws.
There we go—oh! I have an extra screw! Did we miss a screw in this guide?!
Or is that one just—oh okay. I'm gonna remove the three that they said to remove
and see where that gets us. (Who wrote this guide?)
Again, you're not removing this mid frame, this plastic thing, yet.
Because there's a fragile cable connecting the ZL button to the motherboard underneath.
...and then theoretically this mid frame cover just flips out—let's see if that's actually the case...
It is! Okay cool, so those are the only three screws that you actually need to remove.
So the next step: there's a tiny connector right here on the board that connects this cable to the midframe.
As you can see here, these are so teeny-tiny, but this ribbon cable
these ribbon cables, they're all pretty fragile. So be really careful.
But the "book" is open, so I will get started removing those.
Just gently convince those to come out. They don't take much force.
There we go! Okay, so I've released the "mid-frame."
So now we need to disconnect the "minus" button from the Joy Con. And that is done
through another little ribbon that's right next to the joystick.
I'm gonna push up a little ZIF connector, and then just pull the ribbon out.
...And then the third one is the actual Joy Con cable.
Okay, now we're removing the last two gold screws.
It looks like that joystick's gonna pop right out, nice and easy. That's great.
If you don't talk to yourself during a repair, you're probably doing it wrong—
that just came right out when I wasn't even looking.
You just have to thread the joystick through that hole in the cover there. There we go!
Alright, we have a joystick! That was pretty easy.
Ooh, there's a plasticky, papery rim on the inside of the Joy Con that that wants to grab on
to the actual Joy Con and take a ride out with it.
So now that i've got the old joystick removed, it's time to replace it with the new joystick.
You really don't want to be touching any of the connectors and getting them dirty!
If you do, clean them with a q-tip and a little bit of alcohol.
You know, sometimes it's easier to actually install the ribbon cable first.
They can be a little tricky to manipulate into place. So I'm gonna do that...
I'm gonna slide this guy into the connector, just like that.
Oh, it's getting caught—so there's a little gasket around the joystick
that it's getting caught on a little bit, that's why it's being a little bit stubborn.
So you just have to kind of... yeah... just finesse it through.
And I think that did it, I think it's happy now. Yeah, it's seated nice and flat.
Okay cool! So with that done, we can put the screws back in.
Well, here's my first dummy move. It's gonna probably happen to a few people, but...
The bumper, which is this L key thing, just came off.
So while I was inserting the new joystick, the bumper button fell off. So I'm gonna figure out where that goes.
All I had to do was reinsert it so that a little spring aligned with a little square.
Sometimes instead of tightening the screws, I'll just kind of loosely insert them
until everything is lined up correctly, and then tighten them down.
Okay! Since these ZIF connectors are already flipped up,
getting the cables back in is actually even easier than it was before.
So I've got those two ZIF connectors reattached, and now I'm just gonna replace the mid frame.
So we just got to flip this guy back over, and screw it down...
...now with that connector in, we will re-screw this component to the midframe...
Again, I usually just install screws loosely, and tighten them after everything is correctly seated.
But that's my technique, you do it however you want. (You should do it my way, it's the best.)
I'm gonna put the battery back in now—No glue this time.
I mean, there's a little bit of adhesive left on there.
Okay so this time with the battery cables, we're just gonna
press them straight down into the connector.
We're going to fold this half back over, onto the body of the controller. Again, check your ribbon cables
and make sure they're not getting pinched or stuck in the wrong place where they could get damaged.
But, seemingly, that was it guys! I've just gotta put this rear case back on
and then put the screws back in, and we should be good to go.
I dropped a screw! One second.
That's it! It's all set, reassembled—let's hook it up and see if it works.
The joystick's responding... and there is NO drift.
I'm spinning in circles and I'm running away... and I don't move when I'm not pressing the joystick!
So, I think it was a success!
Alright, so I've replaced the joystick inside my friend's busted Joy Con.
In general, there was nothing tricky about that repair,
there was nothing that was a real "gotcha."
So let's see if this actually connects...
And it does! Yeah, not that bad! Connectors are definitely the hardest part.
But other than that, it was definitely do-able.
Alright, byeeee!
whoops