I was standing perfectly still and when my character spun into a wall.
And that’s the one that really made me pick my game up. Not some meandering dawning, but a pair of gunfire-filled seconds in Apex Legends that I distinctly remember my camera tracking to the right on its own, despite the fact that my thumb wasn’t on the stick, then spiking onto the corner of my room while I desperately wrestled it back into place… and then I die. Third partied by a squad I never saw.
I bounced the controller on the cushion of the couch a little harsh, not hard, just irritated, and sat there for a second going “yeah, alright, this has been happening for a bit now”.
It Didn’t Start All at Once
Looking back, the drift had started a good six or seven weeks before that game. Little things. My cross-hair would drift a little while I was aiming down the sight, almost imperceptible unless I was watching someone at long range. I figured it was just me shaking or maybe tired from playing a lot.
The Controller And How Much I’d Actually End Up Using It
This is the PS5 Dual Sense controller that I got when I purchased the console, so the around that time I’ve probably had it for about ten months of general use. No abuse. No dropping. Just constant usage, probably at least 3-4 hours every day and more on the weekends.
Which was the one that was drifting. It was always left, always left, not right. Because that has significance which I’ll explain in a bit.
My First Attempts (And Why They Were Ineffective)
Recalibrating Through the Settings Menu
Second things first, the in-system recalibration. Settings, Accessories, Controllers, recalibrate sticks, do everything that you have to do where both sticks are turned in circles that are slow. Did it twice.
It helped. For about two days.
At three days the drift was right back, possibly worse, in some directions. Because the fix was just a software adjust I reconfigured to the center again, only to find out that the real problem was mechanical. Then, sure enough, the drift returned the minute the stick default position moved.
Compressed Air
Then I attempted compressed air. I grabbed the tiny can, leaned in, and gave the stick a little squirt around the bottom in tiny bursts while spinning it in little circles, as a YouTube video instructed me to do to create a quick, easy fix.
Once again, it just sort of made this worse. I really honestly felt like it was fixed for 4 days. And then during a Warzone match I’m shooting and all of a sudden the stick starts drifting down on me, tiny little movements but enough to cause my crosshair to drift out of place during a fight I definitely should’ve been able to win. Compressed air simply blows loose dust around, it doesn’t do a thing for whatever’s going on within the actual stick module.
The “Tap It Upside Down” Trick
I attempted the traditional “flip it over and hit it” approach my buddy sworn by. That was nothing – not even enough to hold you over. I really have no idea why this, or why I even thought it might work.
Opening the Thing Up
This was the point at which I was so annoyed that I actually disassembled my controller – which I’d never done before and was a little scared to try.
What Was Actually Going On Inside
Did some research to buy a Y00 Tri-wing driver (regular Phillips won’t work with the PS5 controller’s screws) and used a step-by-step teardown guide. Removed the shell from the back, and when I finally got to the real joystick module it was pretty clear what the problem was. There was a small build-up of dust and dirt around the potentiometer at the core of the joystick-that’s the component in the stick that detects position and converts your thumb movement into an electrical signal.
The potentiometers simply slide a contact across a resistive material. In those few months of use that material gets uneven wear, dust and oxidation build up on the contact, and what I was seeing was exactly what I was experiencing: the controller would report stick movement even when not touching it, because the contact was no longer making a clean connection.
This is consistent with what I’d read on iFixit’s guide to replacing the Dual Sense’s joystick, which basically confirms that drift almost always gets caused by this very one specific part breaking, not some kind of errant software bug.
What Actually Fixed It
Picking Between Cleaning and Replacing
At that point, I had two choices: replace the entire joystick module (soldering), or attempt to clean the potentiometer directly with real contact cleaner, not compressed air.
I started with the cleaner, because desoldering a tiny surface-mount joystick module seemed like a good way to blow one problem into three. I bought a can of CAIG DeoxIT D5, the same stuff audio techs use to clean dirty knobs and faders on older amps and mixers, because it’s designed specifically to clean this kind of contact corrosion and not just move the dust around.
The Actual Cleaning Process
Put a small dab directly into the gap around the base of the stick module (don’t flood it, just a couple sprays), then spun the stick in slow wide circles for close to a minute so the cleaner would actually be worked into the contact point. Then left it for about 10 minutes before closing the controller back up.
First test after reassembling it: Same recali screen I had used weeks earlier, and I just watched the little dot on the screen. Completely still. No drift whatsoever, even when I let it sit untouched for a few minutes.
Where It Stands Now
It’s been a little over two months since I did this, and the left stick hasn’t drifted once. Not during long gaming sessions, not after leaving the controller to charge over night, nothing. You can also read:
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Will It Come Back?
I’m not going to say this is the end of the road. Potentiometers can fail again, it’s just the nature of the part. And if I have to go through this again in six months I’ll probably just buy a new module rather than clean the one I have here again. But in this case of an issue which nearly forced me to replace my controller, $5 and 20 minutes has kept me in the game.
If It’s Your Phone, Not Your Controller
If you happen to be experiencing the same on a phone, rather than a controller, There’s a similar principle at work with touch sensors behaving strangely too. I wrote about a phone touch delay a while back that turned out to be a software issue rather than a hardware one, so it’s worth eliminating that as a potential cause first if what you’re seeing is a screen, and not a stick.
Whatever. If your stick is oscillating and you’re about to dish out the cash on a new controller, open her up first. Chances are it’s not malfunctioning, it’s just filled with gunk.
