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My Gyro Aim Slowly Pulls To The Right Even When I Hold Still

Asked by Sachin R.19,380 views

Gyro aiming is drifting. Hold the controller completely still on a table and the camera creeps right. On your gyroscope test the yaw axis sits at a small constant value instead of zero, maybe 0.4 degrees per second, while pitch and roll read zero. I use gyro aim constantly in shooters so this is a big deal for me. Is a drifting gyro repairable, or is this a calibration thing I can fix myself? I have tried the in-game recentre option and it only helps for a few seconds.

Brand
Nintendo
Model
Switch Pro Controller HAC-013
Connection
USB-C Cable
System
Windows 11
Browser
Chrome 141
Detected Controller
Pro Controller
Buttons And Axes
16 buttons, 4 axes
Short Answer

A constant non-zero reading on one axis is gyro bias, and it is normal for every gyro to have some. It is fixable by recalibration rather than repair, and the in-game recentre is not the same thing.

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Arjun Mehta
Arjun MehtaVerified Gamepad Tester team memberGamepad Tester Team
Calibration And Signal Processing Programmer · Answered Jan 29, 2026

Good news: this is almost certainly calibration rather than a hardware fault, and your reading tells us which kind.

Every MEMS gyroscope has a bias, a small constant offset it reports while completely stationary. It comes from the physical sensor and it changes slightly with temperature and with age. Your 0.4 degrees per second on yaw alone is well inside the range of normal bias for this hardware. The job of calibration is to measure that offset while the controller is still and subtract it from every subsequent reading. When calibration is good, a still controller reads zero. When the stored calibration is stale, you get exactly what you are seeing: a steady creep in one direction on one axis.

This also explains why the in-game recentre only helps briefly. Recentre resets your current aim position, it does not change the bias correction, so the drift immediately starts accumulating again from the new position. It is treating the symptom. What you need is a proper gyro calibration, done on the console, with the controller completely still on a flat surface and left alone for the full duration. People frequently hold the controller during this, or do it on a slightly sloped desk, and get a calibration that bakes in an error.

A couple of specifics that matter. Do the calibration at the temperature you play at, not straight from a cold room, because bias shifts with temperature and you want the correction to match your normal conditions. And if it drifts again within days rather than months, that points at either a failing sensor or a calibration that is not being stored, and at that point the Nintendo stick and motion support route is the right one since they handle motion faults as a service matter.

Step By Step Fix
  1. Place the controller on a flat, level, stationary surface. Not your lap, not a sofa arm, and let it settle for a minute.
  2. Run the gyroscope test and record the resting value on all three axes. A single axis with a constant offset is bias, all three moving randomly is something else.
  3. Let the controller reach your normal playing temperature before calibrating. Bias shifts with temperature and you want the correction to match how you play.
  4. Calibrate the motion controls through the console's own controller calibration, with the controller flat and untouched for the full duration.
  5. Re-run the gyroscope test. All three axes should now sit at or very near zero at rest.
  6. Stop relying on the in-game recentre. It resets your aim position without changing the bias correction, which is why it only lasts seconds.
  7. If the drift returns within days rather than months, the calibration is not being stored or the sensor is failing. That is a service matter rather than a home repair.

Tested on: Switch Pro Controller HAC-013 and Joy-Con pairs, plus DualSense CFI-ZCT1W for comparison, wired and wireless on Windows 11 24H2 in Chrome 141, with resting gyro values logged cold and after 30 minutes of use, before and after console calibration.

Checked by Xavier Cruz on . How we verify answers

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Community Replies 6

  • Accepted Solution
    Sachin RathoreCommunity Member

    Calibrated properly on a level table instead of in my hands and yaw now reads 0.00. I had been doing it wrong every time. The explanation of why recentre does not help was the part I needed.

  • Beth OllerenshawCommunity Member

    The temperature tip is not something I have seen anywhere else. Calibrated warm instead of cold and it has held much better.

  • Idris BelloCommunity Member

    Mine drifted again after two days so by this answer it is a sensor problem. Sent it in. At least I knew which conversation to have.

  • Marta JablonskaCommunity Member

    Had this on a DualSense and the same logic applied, calibrate flat and still. Worth knowing it is not Nintendo specific.

  • Toby FranklandCommunity Member

    Explaining what bias actually is made this make sense instead of feeling like magic. Cheers.

  • Oleksandr ShevchenkoCommunity Member

    Doing it on a sloped desk was my mistake. Flat surface, left alone, fixed first try.

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Arjun Mehta
Written and tested by

Arjun MehtaVerified Gamepad Tester team member

Calibration And Signal Processing Programmer at Gamepad Tester

Arjun writes the maths between a controller and the screen. A raw axis value is noisy, unscaled and centred imperfectly, so his filters handle the parts that decide whether a test is useful: removing sensor noise without hiding a genuine fault, normalising ranges across controllers that report differently, and plotting the result as a clean graph where real drift is visible and jitter is not mistaken for it. On Gamepad Tester he maintains the calibration maths in the deadzone and drift tests, and explains in answers what a given reading does and does not prove.

Signal filteringaxis normalisationcalibration mathsdrift versus noisedata visualisation
  • 4 answers on Gamepad Tester
  • Maintains the calibration and filtering maths behind the deadzone, drift and trigger readings shown on this site.
  • Reviewed by Xavier Cruz

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