What is Joy-Con drift?

Joy-Con drift is stick drift on the Nintendo Switch Joy-Con: the stick moves your character with nobody touching it. It's common enough to have its own name. The stick's sensors wear down or collect dust, so they stop reporting the center when the stick is at rest. Before you send a Joy-Con off for repair, it helps to see how far off it actually is.

Tool description

Joy-Cons have no USB port, so they connect to a computer over Bluetooth only. Hold the small sync button on the rail side of a Joy-Con until its lights run back and forth, pair it in your computer's Bluetooth settings, then press any button, since browsers only show a controller once one of its buttons is pressed. Chrome joins a left and a right Joy-Con into one controller, Joy-Con L+R, and the tester shows them as one gamepad.

The picture lights up A, B, X, Y, the arrow buttons, L, R, ZL, ZR, −, +, Home and Capture as you press them and moves the sticks. LS and RS are the stick presses. The tiles under the picture include Left SL, Left SR, Right SL and Right SR, the small buttons on the rail. Both sticks show their exact X and Y position from -1 to 1. If your browser can make the Joy-Cons vibrate, Test vibration rumbles them for one second.

Checking for drift

Let go of both sticks and watch the four stick values. A healthy stick rests close to zero, like 0.0039. A value that stays around 0.1 or more, or creeps on its own, is drift. Push each stick all the way around too: a worn stick may not get close to -1 or 1 in some directions.

Features

  • A picture of both Joy-Cons as one controller, with SL and SR included
  • Each stick's exact position, to tell drift from a game's settings
  • A one second vibration test