If you have a Nintendo Switch with a frozen screen, here are a few things you can do to try and fix it.
There’s nothing worse than playing your favorite game and having the console freeze up—seemingly unable to recover. If you’ve experienced a frozen screen on your Nintendo Switch, take a quick peek at these steps to find out how to fix the issue. If none of them work, you may need to get in contact with Nintendo to arrange repairs.
Is the game just frozen?
If you were playing a game when the frozen screen happened, the game itself may just be frozen. Try pressing the ‘HOME‘ button on your Switch to see if you can bring up the home screen. If you can, you just need to close the game and restart it. Sure you may lose some progress, but at least the problem isn’t serious. If you press the ‘HOME‘ button and nothing happens, then there’s a more serious issue at play.
Undock & Redock the Switch
If you were playing on a TV when you got a frozen screen on the Nintendo Switch, trying undocking and redocking the console. Sometimes the connection between the dock and the Switch can experience hiccups. Redocking it should correct the problem if it was an issue with the connection.
Fully Charge Your Nintendo Switch
Sometimes a frozen console can happen because the Nintendo Switch has a very low battery and shut off. If that’s the case, charge your Switch to 100% and then try and turn it on. If you can’t, you may need to perform a power rest to get the console responding again. Here’s how to do that.
How to Power Reset a Nintendo Switch Console
If your Nintendo Switch has a completely frozen screen and you can’t get it to respond to any button presses at all, you’ll need to turn the console completely off.
- Press and hold the Power Button for 15 seconds.
- Ignore the power options screen when it pops up.
- The Nintendo Switch will shut off (black screen).
- Wait 30 seconds to a minute before trying to power on the device.
- Gently tap the power button to turn the device back on.
Have you tried all of these steps and you still can’t get your Nintendo Switch to turn on? You may need to send it in to Nintendo for repairs. Here’s a link to the Nintendo of America support page for arranging a service repair for your console. The customer service representative will likely have you repeat some of these steps before you can get a repair initiated.
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