How to Extend the Battery Life of Your New Nintendo Switch or Switch Lite
The Nintendo Switch may not be as powerful as its competitors, but the system still has a lot to love, including its huge library of games spanning multiple generations of consoles and its ability to seamlessly switch between playing on TV and playing handheld.
However, the battery life of the Switch in handheld mode isn’t all that great. The original Switch model averaged 2.5 to 6.5 hours of portable playtime, while the updated version can last 4.5 to 9 hours , and the Switch Lite promises three to seven hours. Sure, you could only play on TV and not worry about battery life at all, but you would be missing out on what makes the Switch such a great system, and Switch Lite owners don’t have the option to play on it. TV anyway.
While the total game play time on a single charge will vary depending on the model you are using and the games you are currently playing, there are small tweaks that can make the console more energy efficient so you can squeeze every possible aspect of your gameplay out of the box. your switch in portable mode.
Brightness and airplane mode settings
Changing the screen brightness and turning on airplane mode will significantly increase battery life. You can quickly access these settings by pressing and holding the Home button on the right Joycon controller while playing or from the main system user interface.
- Brightness: Reduce the screen brightness to the minimum so you can see the gameplay on the screen.
- Airplane mode: If you are not playing an online multiplayer game or downloading software, enable airplane mode to disable battery-draining wireless and Internet functions. This is especially useful if you are not connected to a Wi-Fi network anyway (note: this will also disable the use of Bluetooth accessories or individual Joycon controllers if you are using a larger switch model).
More efficient sleep mode
The Switch’s sleep mode makes it easy to pause your game, put your console aside, then come back later and immediately start backing up from the same location. But while this is a convenient way to pause the game and even save battery power, the default hibernation settings can be made even more economical.
You’ll find it all by pressing the Home button to bring up the console’s main menu screen, then scroll down and select the gear-shaped settings icon. From here go to System Preferences> Hibernate and change the following options:
- Auto Sleep : You can set the amount of time that the console will automatically go to sleep when in handheld mode. The setting can be set from 1 to 30 minutes or completely disabled. The shorter the auto-sleep time, the more potential battery life you will save.
- Wake up when AC adapter is disconnected: Disable this option. This means you will need to press the power button to wake the Switch from sleep when you remove it from the charger, but this will prevent unwanted wakes if the device is knocked out of the dock or accidentally disconnected from the charging cable.
Other system settings
There are a few other small changes you can make to your switch’s system settings that can save extra power, or at least make it easier to monitor your system’s battery.
As with the hibernation settings above, you will find them by selecting the gear icon on the Switch’s main menu screen.
- Make it easier to determine battery life: Go to Settings> Systems and enable Console Battery (%) to add the percentage of battery remaining to the battery icon.
- Use the Switch dark theme interface: select the black UI theme under System Settings> Themes. While it might not make a big difference in battery life, it’s at least easier on the eyes.
- Turn off controller vibration: Go to System Settings> Controllers & Sensors and set Controller Vibration to Off. This will turn off all Joycon vibrations in all games, which may slightly increase battery life. It is also useful for games that do not have vibration settings and for users who may not want to turn them on or find vibration inconvenient.