Did a surprise update to the Nintendo Switch Bluetooth improve your handheld instead of being better yesterday? That’s what happened to me: instead of inviting me into the magical world of wireless sound, he repeatedly failed to detect my headsets and connect to them reliably.
What’s worse, waking up my Switch suddenly took over 30 seconds! This is a huge pain in the ass, given that one of the biggest advantages of the Switch is how you can throw yourself back into the game.
But after a lot of tests, I think I know what’s going on ̵1; and when I see the same thing, the partial solution seems to be to turn off the switch completely.
It’s not quite that simple, so read the details.
Nintendo Switch Bluetooth pairing problem
To pair a Bluetooth headset, go to: System Settings , scroll down to Bluetooth audio , switch the Bluetooth device to pairing mode, tap Pair Device: on the switch, and then select your device when it appears on the switch screen.
If they connect, you’re done! If that doesn’t work because your device wasn’t ready to pair, you can still get the power right. Return it to pairing mode and click the Search button again on your switch.Two problems: ghost matching and waking delays
Problem 1. But if you fail to pair properly – as your switch thinks it is paired, if your headset flashes as paired but does not transmit sound and does not appear on the switch screen as a paired headset, you may be in a world of pain. The switch process: does not gracefully fail and then you may encounter all kinds of error messages.
Then my switch sometimes doesn’t even bother to continue searching for Bluetooth devices. When you press the scan button, the message “Bluetooth audio devices cannot be found” appears.
Issue 2. And if you encounter a ghosting issue, you may also have trouble waking the switch from sleep – because the switch appears to be trying to activate Bluetooth audio before waking up the screen and controls.
This is what a Nintendo switch looks like without paired or stored in Bluetooth audio devices. It wakes up pretty fast, doesn’t it?
But once I pair the headset with the switch, it’s not instantaneous: it takes longer to turn on the screen and doesn’t recognize the system unlock button immediately.
Here’s what it is if the switch can’t pair properly with the waiting headset:
So, uh, not only does my Nintendo Switch hate Bluetooth headphones from the new update… now it takes at least 10 seconds to wake up from sleep. pic.twitter.com/13dUvv41ga
(Why so, my eyes do look scary when they’re outside, thanks for the alert.)
How to partially fix Nintendo Bluetooth Switch
You have to turn off the switch completely, and by that I mean turn it off completely. I restarted it many times and it didn’t seem to help.
- Tap the power button and wait how long it takes for the screen to turn on
- Disconnect and forget about all Bluetooth devices
- Press and hold the power button for four seconds until: Power Management appears
- Click Power Management then hit Off
- Wait a while and turn on the switch again
Sometimes it was enough to simply turn off the power switch to solve the ghost pairing problem (where I saw a 10-30 second wake-up) and let me pair the Bluetooth headsets again. On the very first attempt, I was able to pair my Wyze Buds Pro, a headset that repeatedly failed to connect last night.
But other times, the first couple wouldn’t do it anyway – and once I saw the message “Can’t find Bluetooth audio devices,” it took me an eternity for my switch to wake up from sleep mode. Mileage may vary: in case this is important, I use v2 from the original switch, which extended battery life.Some Bluetooth devices may not work
And if you’re trying to restore the full wake-up speed that the switch is commonly known to, you’ll also need to unpair and forget about all Bluetooth devices. before you perform a complete close. When I unpaired the Bluetooth headset but left it in the Bluetooth menu, I still saw a slight delay. Same if I first turned it off and then unplugged and forgot the headset.
I guess the switch will leave its Bluetooth audio feature enabled when it thinks you’re going to use it, but you can force it by removing these devices and turning them off completely.
We asked Nintendo if these were known issues and if we could expect fixes in a future firmware update. We’ll let you know what we hear.