At some point recently, Nintendo Switches all over the country (including several belonging to Kotaku staff) decided to stop connecting to the internet, offering up some nonsense about DNS errors instead of taking us to that sweet sweet eShop. If it’s happening to you, you’re not alone. All you have to do is reboot your system.
To fix this WiFi problem, you have to reboot your Switch — not just put it into sleep mode — which means holding down the button on the top left corner of the system until you get to Power Options, then selecting Restart or Turn Off. Once you’ve rebooted it, you should be good. A simple reboot worked for everyone on Team Kotaku and hopefully it works for you too.
We don’t know why this is happening, but hey, video game consoles are mysterious and unruly devices. Sometimes they just need to be tamed.
Comments
12 responses to “If Your Switch’s Internet Won’t Work, Reboot The Console”
I’m having an issue where my Switch won’t connect to my wifi when docked but is otherwise fine. I can even hover it over the dock in handheld and not have the issue so location isn’t the problem here. anyone else experiencing this?
Yeah I have that too, its really annoying. I cant find a fix for it at all.
Woah….hang on, did you just give all your readers the ‘turn it off and back on again’ IT spiel?
For shame Kotaku, for shame.
If it helps someone, it seems like it’s worth it imo. It may be rudimentary information to you, but it may also be the difference between someone playing successfully and not playing at all.
To be honest this should be second nature to anyone with a electronic device in this day and age, but yet i’m surprised again and again.
I don’t disagree with you, but the fact is that the information needs to come from somewhere. It’s not learned by magic or osmosis. In order for the knowledge to spread, people need to tell one another.
Hence, this article.
First step of troubleshooting an issue is to turn it off and on again.
The sad thing is there are many out there who religiously think they don’t have to do so and even fight such suggestions.
Reminds me of this comic: http://thedoghousediaries.com/4822
You mean people had physically taking it to the store they bought it from without doing a reboot? As someone that works in IT… fuck those people.
This happens with every console I own. Just thought it was common knowledge.
this was happening to me over the weekend. would connect in handheld mode, but when i woke it up in docked mode, it wouldn’t connect. can’t believe it didn’t even occur to me to reboot it, haha.
I thought it was my internet connection as the connection tests were stalling between network and internet.
I tried different dns servers, resetting the modem, and using my phone as a hotspot to eliminate my connection as the cause.
I was about to put things down to the eshop being down, but thought a reset wouldn’t hurt.
Bingo! There’s a reason that’s usually the first step. :p
I’ve tried everything but my switch still won’t connect to my internet, please I need help.
I can’t connect to my wifi at all the switch recognised my wifi name but something on my end is not letting me connect. I have tried turning off my router, restarting my computer and switch several times and flushing my DNS. Would appreciate some tips if anyone could help me out.