Hardware Can no longer use Joycons wireless in Airplane mode

SkyDX

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Okay hear me out I know this sounds obvious as Airplane Mode states "Wireless Controllers can't be used" but I've had my Switch since launch day and I never had issues using either my Joycons or my SF30 Pro while Airplane mode is enabled.

Today however my nephew wanted to play Mario Kart 8 with his dad like always and I gave him the Joycons detached and the SF30 Pro when I noticed one of the LEDs of my right Joycons wasn't working, the Joycon itself however was working fine. In an attempt to troubleshoot that I tried to re-pair the Joycon and also went to "Update Controllers" in System settings and lastly rebooted my Switch. None of this helped and I eventually noticed that the first LED also doesn't light-up when I put the Joycon into pairing-mode, the other three do and the Joycon itself still works fine so it's just the first LED that's broken. I reattched the Joycons to the Switch so both are paired again and re-enabled Airplane Mode. (I always have my Switch in AP mode unless I actually play something online since the part of the house where I play my Switch the most has bad WiFi coverage and I don't want my Switch draining battery while trying to stay connected to a weak network)

I thought whatever, removed the Joycons to give them to my nephew and then saw a message I literally never saw before, something like "Reattach the Joycon to use it in Airplane mode yadayada", in my three years of owning the Switch I never saw this message and I swear all my controllers always worked in AP mode no problem. I guess I must have had a glitch that allowed it but I wonder what undid the glitch as I rebooted my Switch countless times before.

This is a completely stock Switch running on the latest FW with no modifications whatsoever. The only thing I did was running Android on it a few times but the last time was a year ago.

Does anybody have an idea what's going on here and is it common that a single LED in a Joycon can simply break while everything else works fine?

EDIT: I figured the magic out, dock the Switch while it's in Airplane mode, after that it will no longer care about wireless-controllers when undocking until you reboot :P
 
Last edited by SkyDX,

POONpirate

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You can also go into settings -> airplane mode tab -> turn on if it's not -> more options will now show up here including wifi, nfc, and Bluetooth (using controllers wirelessly)
 
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SkyDX

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You can also go into settings -> airplane mode tab -> turn on if it's not -> more options will now show up here including wifi, nfc, and Bluetooth (using controllers wirelessly)

Well I'll be dammed, thanks for pointing me to this! I never thought of looking there because I always enabled Airplane Mode via the Quick Settings menu :P
 

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