Joycon won't orient sideways

Here is another pretty common problem that I ran across recently. I bought a set of Nintendo OEM joycons off of a local guy on Facebook Marketplace, where he noted that, "they won't go sideways. They only work up and down wirelessly, or connected to the console." I brought them home and tested them out, and I could see right away that the SL/SR buttons on the side of the joycons didn't register when I pressed them. So let's open it up!

You can see from the picture above that there are two ribbon cables that connect the slider rail with the main joycon board. The bottom cable is responsible for establishing communication from the joycon to the Switch when it's attached to the console. This also controls charging the controller battery, etc. Considering that all these functions seemed to be fine during initial testing, we can conclude that this cable is likely fine. The top cable is responsible for the SL/SR buttons and the joycon SYNC button in the middle, so this is where we needed to focus. There are two small screws which attach the top ribbon cable to the joycon slider rail, so I removed the screws and allowed the ribbon cable to have some breathing space. Strangely, as soon as I did this, the buttons on the ribbon cable started working!

After playing around with the cable a bit more, I noticed that the buttons would stop registering when the ribbon was bent along the natural fold (pictured below). This is a good indication that the cable has been bent a little too firmly and the wires in the ribbon cable have likely severed. Now, there are ways that the wires can be reconnected, but it's not a simple process ... And considering that a new ribbon cable only costs a few dollars, it's much easier to just replace it.

Ribbon cables replaced in both joycons, and everything is back to working like normal!

Are you having similar issues where your joycons won't work sideways? Send me a message, and let's get it fixed!