How to Unfreeze a Nintendo Switch

How to Unfreeze a Nintendo Switch

The Nintendo Switch is a nifty little piece of hardware that you can take on the go or play right at home. Like with any kind of gaming system or piece of tech that runs apps, it’s possible that your Switch can freeze up at times. Alternatively, a Joy-Con may stop working or the touch screen gets unresponsive. Whatever the case may be don’t worry, as these things are pretty normal and there’s a simple fix to get your system running again. Of course, just keep in mind if you haven’t saved in whatever game you were playing, you might lose a bit of progress when trying to unfreeze your Nintendo Switch.

Before you go and do a full system reboot there’s one way to see if your Switch will unfreeze – docking and undocking it. Of course, you’ll need to be at home to do this, so if you’re out and about it won’t be an option. The act of putting the Switch in the dock basically halts everything happening on the system to turn it to TV mode. Because of this, it’s possible that the Switch might unfreeze simply through the act of docking, however, if it doesn’t that’s when you’ll need to reboot the whole system.

Hitting the power button once won’t do anything for a frozen Switch, what you need to do is hold the power button down for a full fifteen seconds. Eventually, the screen will go completely dark and then instantly light up again with the Nintendo logo. Now the system will go through a normal boot sequence and be ready to play once again. If you’re ever having trouble with a frozen Switch, or even have a problem with one of your Joy-Cons connecting, try doing the system reboot.

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