Troubleshooting Nintendo Switch: The Ultimate Guide

Problems with your Nintendo Switch? Our Ultimate Guide will help them disappear!

Nintendo's latest console, the Switch is unique and a ton of fun to play, but it's also a complicated piece of tech that doesn't quite follow the rules of consoles or tablets. It's not always obvious what to do when something doesn't quite behave the way you think it should, and that's where this connection of troubleshooting steps comes in.

If you don't see your issue on the list, please let us know and we'll do everything we can to update with exactly what you need to know!

My controller got jammed on the wrist strap!
This Switch keeps changing the channel on my TV
The dock is scratching my Switch, how do I stop it?!
I want my Switch to stop changing the screen brightness. Help?
My Switch has completely frozen and nothing works, what can I do?

My controller got jammed on the wrist strap!

It turns out there's a right way and a wrong way to attach the wrist strap adapters to your Joy-Cons when they aren't attached to the Switch. If you go with the wrong way, nothing lines up and it feels like you can't actually separate the halves anymore.

Don't panic! You didn't break your controller and it's not permanently stuck like that, though it may certainly feel like it when you try to pull the two pieces apart. The fix is simple, as long as you know how to do it!

How I fixed my jammed Switch controller

This Switch keeps changing the channel on my TV

If you are watching TV and accidentally roll over on your Switch controller, or someone else picks up a Joy-Con and presses buttons, all of a sudden the TV will flip back to the Nintendo Switch input ready to play a game. It's a cool feature if you do it on purpose, but accidentally waking a controller can quickly pull you away from whatever you were actually doing on your television.

Fortunately, this feature is entirely optional. You can disable it without messing with any other features, and go back to life as it was before game consoles could adjust your TV at will.

I do this to stop my Nintendo Switch from taking over the television

The dock is scratching my Switch, how do I stop it?!

It's true, and it's so sad! If you're not extra careful about how you put the Switch in or take it out of its dock, you can get little scratches on the far sides of the display. The plastic on plastic rubbing together is just enough for little scratches, and they're particularly difficult to avoid depending on how many other people are using your Switch!

You need to be able to protect your Switch from more scratches, and that means making sure there's a solid way to use the dock without worrying about this being a problem.

This is how I avoid scratches on my Nintendo Switch screen

I want my Switch to stop changing the screen brightness. Help?

Nintendo Switch adjusts screen brightness based on how bright or dark the room you are in is. This works well enough in most situations, but If you're on a train or in a room with indirect light these sensors can easily get it wrong and you need to be able to mess with the brightness on your own.

Nintendo makes it easy to adjust the brightness as you see fit, but you can also entirely disable auto-brightness controls and be able to do things your way from now on.

Stop your Switch from adjusting brightness for you with this!

My Switch has completely frozen and nothing works, what can I do?

In rare cases, my Switch has just stopped altogether and does nothing. For example, I was moving from one app to another, and suddenly none of the buttons worked. Not even the power button! That's a bad place to be, especially if you're trying to game on the go.

There are a couple of ways I found to deal with this problem. So, even though it doesn't happen often there are quick ways to address it.

What I do when the Switch freezes on me