Gently pry the battery out, and try to keep its adhesive dust-free so that it retains some stickiness when you reinsert the battery later on. How to replace the joysticks in a Joy-ConĪfter removing the four Y00-type screws holding the case together, slide the opening pick around the edges of the Joy-Con to open it up. Some of that info isn’t important for this job, so I’ve distilled the most important steps relating to the stick installation here. If you need a hand with the process, I wrote a guide for The Verge (with great photos from Verge photographer Amelia Holowaty Krales) on how to take out all of the Joy-Cons’ components to do a case swap for cosmetic purposes.

If you aren’t experienced with opening up your tech, or eager to learn, I’d recommend that you stop reading and just reach out to Nintendo to see if the company will fix your Joy-Cons, especially if you own a Nintendo Switch Lite (that process is a lot more involved). However, note that opening up your Joy-Con will likely void its warranty, so follow along at your own risk. Better yet, the kit linked above that Amazon and Aliexpress sell includes all of the tools required to open your Joy-Cons (as well as replaceable joystick tops if you want a different look). Not only was it fairly easy, it fixed my problems immediately. I’m recommending them here because I recently bought a set and replaced my Joy-Con sticks. These are compatible with all Nintendo Switch models. It’s not new technology Sega used them in the Dreamcast controller, and both GuliKit and 8BitDo make some fantastic Switch controllers featured here that have them, too. They claim to be drift-resistant due to relying on magnets to send input signals, rather than needing the stick to physically rub on the sensor to register movement.

Hall effect joysticks are the answer to this problem, and a company called GuliKit sells replacement Joy-Con sticks for about $27 a pair at Amazon. Given how close we are to the release date of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, that’s not ideal. The drifting occurs when each of the sticks’ sensors are worn down from use to the point that not even recalibration within the Nintendo Switch’s system settings can save them. If you’re lucky enough to have avoided that (so far, at least - it comes for us all, I believe), it’s when your sticks lose accuracy and sometimes register movement even you’re not moving them. I have two sets of Joy-Con controllers, both of which suffer from analog stick drifting.

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