Native support for Nintendo Switch Joy Cons is here with iOS 16

Yesterday, Apple held its annual WWDC where it announces updates to iOS and MacOS along with beta programs for developers to begin testing new features. We already covered some of the changes that will be coming with iOS 16 in a separate post, but one that Apple didn’t explicitly mention was that the new OS version brings native support for Nintendo Switch Joy Cons and Nintendo’s Pro Controller.

Joy Cons are controllers that dock onto a Nintendo Switch handheld console and they can be used either as a single controller (one in each hand) or a single Joy Con can be used as a singular controller with more basic controls. As pointed out by app developer @Rileytestut, iOS 16 supports either one or two Joy Cons via Bluetooth.

!!! iOS 16 natively supports Nintendo Switch Pro Controllers!!

Can confirm they work perfectly with Delta 😍 pic.twitter.com/p8u1sdjvTt

— Riles 🤷‍♂️ (@rileytestut) June 6, 2022

Apple Engineer Nat Brown confirms that you can pair two Joy Con controllers and toggle between using both or using one by pressing and holding the Capture and Home buttons on either Joy Con.

Test away. Lmk if you hit any issues. With both paired, hold the bottom face buttons (left “capture”, right “home”) for a few seconds to join the Joy Cons into one controller and do it again to split them.

— Nat Brown (@natbro) June 6, 2022

Given that iOS 16 is currently in the developer beta stage, there are bound to bugs throughout the OS. Likewise, some users have already reported bugs when switching between single and combined Joy Cons.

Via Twitter