Select Page
How to Find a Home or Apartment in a City You Don’t Live In

How to Find a Home or Apartment in a City You Don’t Live In

I began searching for an apartment in June, in much the same way I enter stores on Black Friday: steeling myself to join hordes of people all hyper-focused on their limited opportunity to snatch the same merchandise. But hunting for a home in a housing market with a critical lack of supply is worse than any mall sale. CNN reports that the US has a shortage of 2.3 million units, which makes apartment-searching an exhausting odyssey of scouring online listings, compromising with your spouse or roommate, and jumping to book tours for reasonably priced places. Granted, certain rental markets are more competitive than others, but if someone applies for a home hours before you in a major city like San Francisco, you may lose the unit.

My own search in New York City was further complicated by the fact that neither I nor my roommates lived near the city. I experienced it all: shady brokers trying to convince me to sign paperwork before seeing a unit, struggling to contact a roommate who was backpacking through Europe, and driving seven hours through thunderstorms with my mom to pack our weekends with tours. Parking was so scarce on these trips that my mom asked a shocked meter attendant, “How much is the fine to park illegally here?” However, once I started using technology to facilitate my out-of-state search, I secured a spacious apartment with a rent I can afford as a public school teacher. Here’s how I found a home from afar and (mostly) kept my sanity using free online tools.

List Your Priorities

Documenting priorities for a living space is necessary to ensure that you and your housemates understand each other. For me, a $1,800 monthly rent maximum was essential so I could pay my bills. Since my two roommates work from home, they requested windows with good sunlight, and we all preferred in-unit laundry. We recorded our requirements in a Google Sheet with four columns labeled Name, Needs, Deal-Breakers, and Wants. Then we listed bullet points in the rows to ensure that we only considered places that provided our essentials without deal-breakers. Feel free to make a copy of this template on Google Sheets or Microsoft Excel and share it with your partner or housemates to minimize misunderstandings. If you’ll be living alone, simply note your own preferences.

You can use the same spreadsheet to organize notes on prospective apartments. In another tab, my roommates and I created a table with a row for each home we visited. We cataloged each place’s listing link, address, monthly rent, lease start date, distance to public transportation, amenities, broker’s fee, broker contact info, and tour notes. This approach helped us centralize our information, weigh units against our wants and needs, and update Becca—my roommate in Europe who couldn’t attend the tours.

Ask your housemates to provide their work addresses on this sheet too. With that information, you can evaluate an apartment’s distance to the public transportation required for work commutes by setting the building as a starting location and workplaces as destinations on Google Maps. If you’re going to live in an area that requires a car for traveling, you can replace the “Distance to Public Transportation” column with “Distance to Work.”

Get Automated and Organized

When apartment-hunting out of state, you may have less time to consider available units than locals, so let tech do the heavy lifting. Setting real estate website alerts so that you receive immediate, hourly, daily, or weekly emails with homes that fit your requirements is a great way to discover places without toiling for hours. StreetEasy was my go-to in NYC; I specified my desired rent, neighborhoods, number of bedrooms, amenities, and lease start date when setting alerts to tailor them to my needs. Zillow and Compass are nationwide alternatives with similar email alert or save search functions. Trulia Rentals may be especially useful when assessing an area from a distance, as its What Locals Say feature lists residents’ assessments of a location’s safety, walkability, and even holiday spirit.

Although we were out of state, one of my roommates and I traveled to visit units when possible. Sharing a Google Calendar for apartment tours kept us informed. Creating events for scheduled tours, hyperlinking our spreadsheet in event descriptions, and adding notifications to the events reminded us to review notes in our sheet and follow up with each other about which places hardly resembled their pictures and which units were possibilities. You can use Microsoft Outlook Calendar’s shared calendar feature if you don’t love GCal, and Todoist is a great Android option, as free users can share projects with up to five people. Even if your roommate or partner lives outside the country, a shared calendar lets them view scheduled tours in their local time zone and easily identify those to attend virtually. When Becca was free, I FaceTimed her so she could see prospective homes from 5,000 miles away.

If time zones don’t permit you or your housemates to join tours on FaceTime, establish a system where the person viewing a place takes video of it. Clearly titling video files with addresses and depositing them into a shared Google Drive folder, Apple Note, or Photos album will keep everyone organized and included.

Leverage Your Network

When I started apartment-hunting, I told everybody. Dave Speer, president of the real estate firm SpeerCo, agrees that consulting your circle during an out-of-state search is smart. “Talking to your network about brokers they’ve used is really great,” he says. If you can’t travel for tours, an independent broker can help you avoid scams. Consider asking your contacts for referrals on social media to reach many people with a single post. You can also send an email with multiple recipients bcc’d or solicit help within group chats. I messaged people in my office’s miscellaneous Slack channel, and many social and professional groups use Discord, Group Me, or similar apps—and they’re probably willing to help.

Even if you’re not seeking an independent broker, still reach out to any friends or colleagues in the city you’re moving to. Within hours of posting an Instagram story asking how and where people in my network found affordable homes, 20 people responded with advice and leads on units in their buildings. Folks even shared the cost of their rent, broker’s fees, and amenities so that I could better understand my city’s real estate expenses. If no one you know is familiar with the area you’re moving to, use tech to expand your network. When I received a grant to move to Taipei, I searched for the organization administering the grant on LinkedIn, found results for affiliated people, and sent personalized requests to connect. Then I messaged my new LinkedIn connections about the Taiwanese rental market.

Search From Afar

Can’t utilize an independent broker’s services or hop a Greyhound to visit places? “Learn about the landlord or company you may rent from through online searches and reviews,” Speer suggests. “Experienced landlords have systems to make things run smoothly for tenants.” Consulting online public records is one way to investigate building owners, and this research can also reveal building code violations and whether the issues were addressed. Check your city’s or region’s housing department or building department website to see what information they make available to the public. Speer, who manages rental units in Pennsylvania, Maryland, and West Virginia, adds that “in Pennsylvania, you can check the payment status on buildings via county websites to see if the landlord is current with tax bills. You’d be surprised how many are not, and that’s a red flag.” Find out if the state you’re moving to posts similar information online, or if your city’s or region’s housing department offers apartment-searching tips—like these from the New York City government. Through this type of research, I discovered that my city legally requires bedrooms to have windows. I then disregarded a listing displaying pictures of an apparent third bedroom without windows, which implied the unit accommodated three tenants under the table.

If you can’t visit places in person, ask brokers to show you homes on FaceTime, Zoom, or Google Meet. I did this to appraise the apartment I will move into this summer, and I also asked my sister who lives near the building to walk around the outside to assess the area. On the phone with me, she described her surroundings, texted me pictures, and even asked customers at the local laundromat about pricing. If you know anyone in your new city, asking them to similarly call you while they explore a neighborhood can help you feel better about living somewhere you haven’t seen. My boss, who has moved across the country 10 times, additionally advised me to knock on tenants’ doors to ask how long residents have been there and what their building management is like. If your friend or family member can access a building, they can ask these questions or call you so that you can speak to tenants yourself.

When you’re hundreds of miles from the state you’re moving to, it’s easy to feel disempowered by distance and uncertainty. But harnessing technology can put the power back in your hands to help you find your new home.

Best Student Discounts (2023): Laptops, Streaming Services, Tech, and Software

Best Student Discounts (2023): Laptops, Streaming Services, Tech, and Software

Going to college is expensive. Between tuition, textbooks, and beer, there isn’t always a lot of wiggle room in the budget. Tack on skyrocketing inflation, and you might be wondering just how you’re supposed to manage your money. One way to stretch those dollars further is by taking advantage of student discounts. A valid .edu email address can help you save on plenty of academic necessities, with a little left over for binge-watching on Netflix or cheap food delivery. We’ve rounded up our favorite student discounts below.

Updated August 2023: We refreshed this guide with updated links and added deals on Peacock Premium, 1Password, Babbel, and more.

Table of Contents

Special offer for Gear readers: Get a 1-year subscription to WIRED for $5 ($25 off). This includes unlimited access to WIRED.com and our print magazine (if you’d like). Subscriptions help fund the work we do every day.

If you buy something using links in our stories, we may earn a commission. This helps support our journalism. Learn more.

How to Qualify for .Edu Discounts

In the good old days, it was easy to cheat your way into student discounts. You could photoshop a student ID or snag a fake email address for $5 after a Google search. But thanks to third-party verification services, it’s now almost impossible (and in some cases, illegal) to obtain and use a fake qualifying email.

We don’t advise attempting to get a student email address if you aren’t actually a student. (Consider signing up for our Deals newsletter instead!) But some educational discounts can also be used by teachers, parents of students, or alumni. Sometimes getting a student discount is as simple as confirming a code sent from the retailer to the email in question. You might also need to sign up for a free third-party service some retailers use to verify your enrollment.

Unidays is one common discount platform. After signing up for an account, you can verify your student status by uploading a photo of your school ID or by entering your student email address. Your school may also have its own portal to verify your account.

Once verified, you can take advantage of student discounts either on the Unidays website or by logging in to your Unidays account when prompted at stores that use it as an authentication method. ID Me, Sheer ID, and Student Beans are other services that act as a verification method and shopping portal. Sign up for an account, then add your card to establish your eligibility. 

Tech Deals

Whether you need headphones, a laptop, or yet another USB-C dongle, there are probably a few gadgets on your school shopping list. The stores below offer student discounts on all of the gadgets and gizmos you could need. Check out our buying guides, like the Best Dorm Gear, Best Laptops, Best Cheap Headphones, and Best Keyboards, for WIRED-tested recommendations. 

Lecture at Apple Store

Apple Store

Photograph: Apple

The Apple education discount generally offers about 10 percent off to students, their parents, and teachers. Usually, deals are sweetened around autumn, with offers like free AirPods with the purchase of a MacBook, or free Apple gift cards with the purchase of an iPad. You can usually save on services like AppleCare+ too.

Student deals are available to students and parents of students. Best Buy changes its exclusive offerings pretty frequently, and extra deals are usually available, like discounted video games, microwaves, and PC peripherals. 

The Dell University store offers various discounts to those with .edu email addresses. Some Dell University coupon codes can be stacked with other deals at Dell to save even more. Most stores don’t allow for coupon stacking, which makes these deals a bit more enticing.

Sign up for HP education discounts by verifying your .edu email address. HP says eligible shoppers may be able to save up to 40 percent off on select products.

Lenovo switches up its discounts on a regular basis, but students and teachers can typically get around 10 percent off. In the past, Lenovo has also offered bonuses, like free Uber vouchers for spending a certain amount. Accounts are free and verified via ID Me.

Snag 25 percent off at Logitech by validating your email via Unidays.

Microsoft offers up to 10 percent off a variety of products, including Surface devices and accessories. Parents, students, and faculty are eligible.

Samsung’s program is for students, parents, and educators, who get up to 30 percent off laptops, tablets, phones (even folding phones!), and other gadgets. Additional deals include discounted accessories with the purchase of select devices and a variety of sales on bundles.

Razer’s education deals vary, but there’s a selection of discounted laptops. Eligible shoppers can also save 15 percent on peripherals and 5 percent on Razer gaming chairs. 

Unlimited plans are discounted by as much as $25 per month for college students, and you can also save on home internet through Verizon. As is typical with cell phone service providers, terms and conditions apply, but this is worth looking into if you’re a Verizon customer (or considering making a switch).

College students can get 20 percent off an entire qualifying shopping trip at Target. There are some exclusions, and you’ll need to join the free Target Circle program to redeem the offer. 

Online Service Deals

The services you use every day might be even cheaper, thanks to that sweet, sweet institution inbox. Signing up for the first time? Our Best Live TV Streaming Services and Best Music Streaming Services guides can help you decide. Your college or university may also offer their own private discounts. Insurance providers sometimes offer student benefits too.

Phones displaying Spotify

Spotify Premium

Photograph: Spotify

Spotify Premium Student costs $6 per month, which is a 50 percent discount. It also includes the version of Hulu with commercials. If you love your TV, this is one of the best student discounts around, especially if you’re already paying $6 per month for Hulu. 

Usually, Apple Music costs $11 per month. Students pay $6. The Apple Music Student subscription also includes Apple TV+. Your eligibility will be verified via Unidays.

Students can get 50 percent off various Tidal premium music streaming memberships. The offer is available to high schoolers as well, not just folks enrolled in higher education.

Students can get a free six-month trial of Amazon Prime Student (usually that’s limited to one month). After the trial ends, students will be charged $7.49 per month, rather than the typical $15 price. Prime Student includes a few special perks, like free Grubhub Student+ access and discounted meditation app memberships.

Students can get the ad-supported Hulu plan for $2 per month instead of the usual $8. This is the best option if you want access to Hulu but not Spotify.

Typically, YouTube Premium costs $14 per month, but the cost drops to $8 for students. The membership includes access to both ad-free YouTube videos and ad-free YouTube Music. There’s a one-month free trial if you’re interested in trying it out.

Peacock Premium usually costs $6 per month, but students can get it for $2 per month for a year. Learn more about Peacock in our Best Streaming Services guide. 

Software and Class Deals

Whether you need to subscribe to an online service for class or just want a tool like Adobe Photoshop, these discounts can help you save.

You Need A Budget screenshot

You Need a Budget

Photograph: You Need A Budget

Several of our Gear team members have used this service, which is enthusiastically recommended on nearly every finance forum on the internet. Most of us find it pretty difficult to use, but you might want to give it a shot. (I found this video tutorial helpful.) Note that this deal is limited to college students. 

Eligible students, parents, and educators get 40 percent off Ableton Live or can apply the same percentage off to Live bundled with Push. This software is especially enticing for music creators, though if you’ve been considering uploading some fun projects to SoundCloud, it might be worth your while too. You don’t need to be a music major to take advantage of the offer. Check out our guide to learning music online for more tips.

Adobe Creative Cloud includes more than 20 apps, including Photoshop, Illustrator, Acrobat Pro, Lightroom, and more. You also get 100 gigabytes of cloud storage. It’s usually $55 a month. Students and educators can get it for $20 monthly. After a year, the $20 price is raised to $30, but it’s still a good discount if you can’t access needed Adobe apps another way.

Scroll toward the bottom of the page to see this deal. This bundle includes licenses for Final Cut Pro, Logic Pro, Motion, and more. It’s tailored to video and music creators and costs $200. Considering that Final Cut Pro sells for $300 on its own, this bundle is a worthwhile purchase if you plan on buying any of these software licenses individually.

1Password app displayed on Mac

1Password

Courtesy of 1Password

1Password is our favorite password manager. You can claim this offer through the GitHub Student Developer Pack, which we talk about in more detail below. 

This is a great deal on one of the best password managers.

This freebie from GitHub contains free and discounted apps, services, software downloads, and more developer tools. From a free year-long domain on Namecheap to free courses on Educative and waived Stripe transaction fees, plus access to GitHub Pro, there are over 100 options to choose from. You don’t need to use them all, but you do need to be an enrolled student.

Verified through Student Beans, this deal gets you half off the normal cost of an annual individual website plan or a website platform plan. 

I haven’t used Ulysses yet, but several industry colleagues swear by the Apple-device-exclusive writing software. It’s known for limiting distractions and helping with edits—two tools that should come in handy for students. It typically costs $40 per year. The subscription ends automatically, so you don’t need to remind yourself to cancel it. 

Evernote has been having some financial difficulties of late, but it’s one of the long-standing note-taking apps. A valid .edu email address gets you 40 percent off a one-year Evernote Professional membership. Professional is the most robust Evernote plan, and it includes special perks like Boolean search, calendar connections, and more. 

Notion is similar to Evernote and Google Keep. It’s handy for everything from making to-do lists to building outlines and other documents. This plan is free for students and educators. It’ll stay free as long as you have access to a university-associated email address. 

Students and educators can use a valid .edu email address to get free access to Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, and Teams. There are free alternatives to Microsoft Office products, but if you insist on writing essays in Word, this is worth checking out.

Prezi offers a slate of tools used to perfect digital presentations. It can be integrated with the likes of Zoom or Google Meet. The service has two educational premium plans for students and educators that cost $3 or $5 per month (usually $5 or $15 per month, respectively).

You need a valid .edu email address for this one. If funds are especially tight, you can also apply to get a free one-year membership. SkillShare offers classes on graphic design, journalism, photography, business marketing, and much more.

This is $22 off the usual cost of a three-month Babbel subscription. Babbel is our favorite language-learning app. 

Deals on Clothing, Magazines, Food, and More

If you need some retail therapy (or you just want to upgrade your dorm room on the cheap), plenty of non-tech stores offer student discounts. Some standouts are highlighted below.

WIRED 31.06 Big Geothermal

  

Photograph: Dan Winters

Discounts on Magazine and Newspaper Subscriptions

We’re biased, but a year of unlimited digital access to WIRED costs $5 per year for students and educators. Students can also save on subscriptions to The Economist, The Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and more. If there’s a magazine or newspaper that you frequently read, it’s likely that you can get a discount when you subscribe.

Bring your student ID to the box office to get cheaper prices. Discounts vary by location, so check with your local theater for more details.

Amtrak offers a national discount to students between 17 and 24 years old.

Greyhound offers 15 percent off to students via a third-party service called Student Advantage, which also offers discounts on other food and travel services.

Unidays is the best way to find fashion retailers that have student discounts. A few athletic and outdoor stores are also listed, so even if you don’t need interview clothes for a fancy grown-up job, this could be a good way to save on sporting goods and other gear for your extracurricular activities.

This company makes some of our favorite paper planners. Your student status will be verified through ID Me at checkout. 

DashPass usually costs $10 per month. Students can get it for half the normal cost. DashPass gets you free delivery on most orders over $12, plus special discounts and promotions. 

Museums, Aquariums, Zoos, and Other Venues

Most museums have a student discount on admission. The same goes for places like your local zoo or aquarium. Nothing beats cheap weekend entertainment!

Should You Buy an Active Chair? I Tested Some—and Talked to the Experts

Should You Buy an Active Chair? I Tested Some—and Talked to the Experts

You’ve probably come across the term “active chair” or “active seating” over the past few years. These seats are billed as a countermeasure to the sitting epidemic—numerous studies have shown that sitting for hours at a time worsens health, increasing the risk of obesity, type 2 diabetes, and cardiovascular diseases. 

Pandemic lockdowns increased the prevalence of remote work, which often translated to more time in front of screens and less daily activity. Since remote and hybrid work are here to stay, a slew of companies are introducing “active” chairs that promise to inject some movement into your day. So how exactly do they work? 

Active chairs come in various forms, but the most common is an adjustable stool with a seat base that can rock to varying degrees. You keep yourself balanced—with your feet on the ground—and as the seat tilts, you engage your core muscles to stay upright, all while writing that email or Slack message. Companies liken these adjustments to the kind of low-level physical activity that can alleviate the effects of prolonged sitting. 

I have tested several active chairs now, with mixed results. After I spoke to a few kinesiology experts—people who study the body’s movement—the consensus seems to be that active chairs may work for in short bursts, but there are better (and free) ways to counteract the effects of sitting for too long.

If you buy something using links in our stories, we may earn a commission. This helps support our journalism. Learn more.

Rocking Around

With all the active chairs I’ve tested, I’ve never been able to use one for a full workday. These stools are comfortable enough to sit on for an hour or two, but eventually I want to slump back and relax my muscles. You should think about them not as a replacement for your office chair, but as a way to switch things up. However, the balancing act these stools offer might not be meaningful enough to be considered “active.”

“Movement is important,” says Anne-Kristina Arnold, who has been in the kinesiology field for more than 30 years. She’s currently chair of the Ergonomics Stream and a senior lecturer at the Department of Biomedical Physiology and Kinesiology at Simon Fraser University. “Any kind of static movements in our bodies, we can only withstand and maintain for short periods of time,” she says, adding that it “can cause discomfort and ultimately potential injury as well.”

The latter is no joke. Look at the product page for this active chair from QOR360 and you’ll notice it asks you to read a safety notice that says people who are older or anyone who finds it difficult to balance may have an increased risk of falling while sitting on the stool.  

Arnold doesn’t think using these chairs is inherently harmful (as long as you can balance yourself), but she suggests a simple alternative: Get up and walk around every so often. “You’re going to get more circulation throughout the whole body rather than just those static contractions in maintaining your balance on the chair. If you’re into burning calories, an active chair is not going to work for you any more than getting up and going to the water cooler a few times during the day.”

If you suffer from back pain, you may experience some benefit from an active chair. Arnold notes that the forward tilt helps bring the lumbar back into a neutral position, but this is still something you’ll only want to rely on for short periods of time. Otherwise, your upper body will be too static as it tries to maintain balance, and your stomach muscles are going to have more tension and fatigue, especially over the course of a full eight-hour workday. 

“What we really want to do is design jobs that don’t require static work for long periods of time,” Arnold says. “We want to be able to encourage people to get up regularly and change their posture.” This doesn’t mean using a standing desk for eight hours a day, which Arnold says is just as bad, or putting a cycling machine or walking treadmill under your desk. 

How Threads’ Privacy Policy Compares to Twitter’s (and Its Rivals’)

How Threads’ Privacy Policy Compares to Twitter’s (and Its Rivals’)

Meta’s long-awaited Twitter alternative is here, and it’s called Threads. The new social media app launches at a time when alternatives, like Bluesky, Mastodon, and Spill, are vying for users who are dissatisfied with Elon Musk’s handling of Twitter’s user experience, with its newly introduced rate limits and an uptick in hate speech.

Meta owns Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, so the company’s attempt to recreate an online experience similar to Twitter is likely to attract plenty of normies, lurkers, and nomadic shitposters. Meta is working to incorporate Threads as part of the online Fediverse, a group of shared servers where users can interact across multiple platforms.

If you’re hesitant to share your personal data with a company on the receiving end of a billion dollar fine, that’s understandable. For those who are curious, however, here’s what we know about the service’s privacy policy, what data you hand over when you sign up, and how it compares to the data collected by other options.

Threads

Threads (Android, Apple) potentially collects a wide assortment of personal data that remains connected to you, based on the information available in Apple’s App Store, from your purchase history and physical address to your browsing history and health information. “Sensitive information” is also listed as a type of data collected by the Threads app. Some information this could include is your race, sexual orientation, pregnancy status, and religion as well as your biometric data.

Threads falls under the larger privacy policy covering Meta’s other social media platforms. Want to see the whole thing? You can read it for yourself here. There’s one caveat, though. The app has a supplemental privacy policy that’s also worth reading. A noteworthy detail from this document is that while you’re able to deactivate your Threads account whenever, you must delete your Instagram if you fully want to delete your Threads account.

Below is all the data collected by Threads that’s mentioned in the App Store. Do you have the Facebook or Instagram app on your phone? Keep in mind that this data collection by Meta is comparable to the data those apps collect about you.

For Android users, the Google Play Store doesn’t require you to hand over the same amount of extensive data to try out Threads. You have more control than Apple users, since you can granularly toggle what personal data is shared with apps.

Data Linked to You

Third-Party Advertising:

  • Purchases (Purchase History)
  • Financial Info (Other Financial Info)
  • Location (Precise Location, Coarse Location)
  • Contact Info (Physical Address, Email Address, Name, Phone Number, Other User Contact Info)
  • Contacts
  • User Content (Photos or Videos, Gameplay Content, Other User Content)
  • Search History
  • Browsing History
  • Identifiers (User ID, Device ID)
  • Usage Data (Product Interaction, Advertising Data, Other Usage Data)
  • Diagnostics (Crash Data, Performance Data, Other Diagnostic Data)
  • Other Data
Nintendo Switch Tips (2023): 21 Surprising Things It Can Do (OLED, Lite, Standard)

Nintendo Switch Tips (2023): 21 Surprising Things It Can Do (OLED, Lite, Standard)

We’re still waiting to see if there will be a follow-up to the Nintendo Switch OLED, or even the original Switch or Switch Lite. Until then, you’ll have to use what you have to play The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. While you’re playing, it’s time to brush up on how to use it. There are plenty of hidden features and little tricks that can help you get the most out of the console, and we’ve rounded up the best ones here.

We also have 11 Nintendo Switch Lite tips if you have the handheld-only version of the console.

Updated May 2023: We’ve added a couple of new tips and a section about Nintendo Switch Online.

Special offer for Gear readers: Get a 1-Year Subscription to WIRED for $5 ($25 off). This includes unlimited access to WIRED.com and our print magazine (if you’d like). Subscriptions help fund the work we do every day.

If you buy something using links in our stories, we may earn a commission. This helps support our journalism. Learn more.

Turn on Your TV

True to its name, the Switch will turn on your TV for you, or switch its input when you boot it up. Booting it up is also wireless. Just press the Home button on your Joy-Con or Pro controller. If you don’t like the feature (not all TVs are compatible with it), you can turn it off in Settings > TV Settings > Match TV Power State.

Find a Lost Joy-Con

If you lose a Joy-Con controller, the Switch has a panic-free way to find it. Click on the gray Controllers button on the home screen, then click Find Controllers. Once there, you can make any paired Joy-Con or controller vibrate at will. Grab the Switch and tip toe around, pressing vibrate on and off until you find that sucker.

Make Friends and Play With Them

The Switch technically has an online service, but it’s still a pain to play with friends. Every game is a little different, but generally, you will need to first talk to them over text or in real life and get their friend code. To find a friend code, click on your Mii picture in the upper left of the home screen then tap Add Friend. Tap Search with Friend Code and type in their digits. If needed, you can also see your friend code in the lower right. Once you’ve established friendship, make sure you both own the game you want to play, then enter it and start an online room or battle with friends and invite them. You will need a Nintendo Online subscription to play online multiplayer and save games to the cloud.

Voice Chat With Friends

Once you’ve become Friends with someone (see above), you can voice chat with them using the Switch Online mobile phone app. A few games like Fortnite support their own on-console chat, but for some Nintendo games you’ll need to download the Switch Online app or your Android or iPhone. All players will need to have it open when you begin a play session and then you can chat together using your phones. No, it’s not the most intuitive system. 

Our Best Gaming Headsets and Best Wireless Gaming Headsets guides have recommendations for Switch-compatible headphones and mic combos.

Pair Bluetooth Headphones

It took a long time, but the Switch finally supports Bluetooth audio. If you want to listen to your games without having a wire dangling from your ears, you can finally do so by heading to System settings > Bluetooth Audio > Pair Device and connect your headphones. You can check out our guides to the best wireless headphones and the best wireless gaming headsets to find the ones that work best for you.

Nintendo Joy Cons

Joy-Cons

Photograph: Nintendo

Pair Joy-Cons With an Android Phone, Mac, or PC

Joy-Cons live up to their name. I couldn’t help but smile when I discovered I could pair my Joy-Con or Pro Controller with an Android phone. Better yet, it works with Mac and PCs, too (though you’ll need an app like JoyToKey to map the buttons correctly on Windows). They work because Nintendo uses Bluetooth to connect them. Just hold down the small sync button on the top of the controllers for a few seconds and the lights on them will flash, letting you know they’re in pairing mode. Find them in the Bluetooth menu of your phone or computer and you’re good to go.

Remap the Buttons on Your Joy-Cons

If the way certain buttons are configured is difficult for you to use, or you just want to optimize your layout to get a better Hades time, you can now remap any button on the Switch. Head to System Settings > Controllers and Sensors > Change Button Mapping. Here, you can change any button to any other. So if you’d rather swap ZL and ZR, or use one of the triggers as a jump button, you can do it. You’ll also find options to swap the left and right control sticks, or change their default orientation.

Check Your Battery Life Anytime

The Switch OLED gets slightly better battery life than the original Switch thanks to its comparatively more efficient OLED screen, but neither will last so long you won’t need to check the battery from time to time. To see the battery life, and adjust a few other settings like volume and brightness, hold down the Home button while playing a game. After a second, the menu will pop right up! You can also have the Switch show the exact percent of battery remaining in the upper right of the home screen by holding ZL and ZR together, or toggle it on permanently in Settings > System > Console Battery (%).

Save Battery by Changing Sleep Settings

The biggest battery drain on the Switch (like most devices) is going to be the screen. If you dock your Switch that’s not a problem, but in handheld mode the screen will stay on for 10 minutes before going to sleep. You can cut down on a lot of wasted charge if you lower this setting. Head to System Settings > Sleep Mode > Auto-Sleep (Console) and you can set your Switch to sleep after as little as one minute of inactivity.

Make Weird, Fun Sounds on the Unlock Screen

The Switch lets you unlock by pressing any button three times. Have you tried it? If you have, you’ll notice this software Easter egg. Most buttons sound the same, but the left control stick, right control stick, ZL trigger, and ZR trigger make odd, fun noises, like a clown horn. One other thing to try: the clicky noise that the Switch makes when you tap in a random location is pressure sensitive. It gets deeper or higher pitched depending on how hard or soft you touch.

When the novelty wears off and you’d rather just unlock your Switch directly, disable the screen lock entirely by heading to System Settings > Screen Lock and disable the “Lock Console in Sleep Mode” option.

See How Long You’ve Played a Game

Ever wonder just how many hours you sunk into Zelda? It’s easy to check. Click on your Mii picture in the upper left corner of the Switch home screen. Click Profile once you’re in there to see a rough estimate of how much time you’ve wasted collecting Korok seeds. If you’ve added friends (you need their Friend Code), you can see what they’ve played lately, too! You can make a profile or stop sharing your playtimes in Settings > Users > [Your Name] > Friend settings.

Change Your Region to Access Region-Restricted Games

The days of needing a Japan-specific console to play some Japanese games are over. You can easily toggle your region in Settings > System > Region. Most games are usually available globally, but some titles may arrive in one region first. This list might help, if there’s a specific game you’re looking to play. One other benefit of switching from US to a region like Europe: the box art changes for some games, like Breath of the Wild. You could also create a new user for each region.

Nintendo Switch OLED

Nintendo Switch OLED in Dark Mode

Photograph: Julian Chokkattu

View the Menu in Dark Mode

Try out the Dark Mode by selecting “Basic Black” in Settings > Themes. It may be easier on your eyes than the default white background, especially if you’re using the Switch in handheld mode.

Attach a USB Keyboard or Headset

There are three USB ports on the Switch dock. You can plug in most any USB keyboard and it should work, letting you type in menus to enter stuff like passwords. Just keep in mind that you can’t actually play games with the keyboard. USB Bluetooth headsets also work. We were surprised to find that some of our old PS4 headsets plugged right into the Switch. 

Make Another Profile for an Extra Save Slot

There are a number of games that only give you one save slot. If you want more, there’s an easy fix. Just make a second User (Mii). Navigate to Settings > Users > Add User to make an extra user. Once made, it will appear as a choice when you open a lot of games. Choosing the new user will create a new, separate save file. 

If you want the exact opposite, you can get rid of the User Selection screens and get the system to always default to your core account in games by turning “Skip Selection Screen” to On.

Transfer Data to a New Switch

If you upgraded to the new Switch OLED (or just need to transfer to a new unit), you can bring your old profiles, game save data, and even your screenshots and recordings from your old console to your new one. We have a full guide to the process here and it’s worth reading the whole thing since there are steps you won’t want to do out of order, but make sure you have both consoles handy when you get started.

Send a Screenshot to Your Phone With a QR Code

Sharing screenshots used to be a pain on the Switch, but now there’s an easier way. From the Home menu, open up your screenshot Album. Then you can select Sharing and Editing, then Send to Smartphone. This will give you a QR code that you can scan with your phone’s camera app that will direct you to a page where you can download your screenshots and videos. Much easier than posting them to Twitter!

Move Game Save Data to Your MicroSD Card

By default, your game save data will be stored on the internal storage of your Switch. However, if you want to clear up some space on the system, you can move your game saves to a MicroSD card. Head to System Settings > Data Management and choose “Move Data Between System / MicroSD Card.” Select “Move to MicroSD card” and then you can choose which games you want to move over.

Note: While this will store your game saves on the MicroSD card, you won’t be able to just swap that card to another Switch and access game saves on that console. If you just got a new console, see our guide on How to Transfer Save Data From One Nintendo Switch to Another.

Perform a Hard Reset if It Freezes

The Switch is pretty stable, but it’s not immune to the occasional freeze. Turning the Switch off usually works by holding Power for a few seconds, until the restart menu opens. If that doesn’t happen, the best solution is to do a hard reset by holding down the power button for about 12 seconds or so (just keep holding). Once it powers down, wait at least 30 seconds and power it back up.

If your problems continue, you can try booting it into Maintenance Mode by holding the power button as you turn it on and then when the Nintendo logo appears, also pressing down on both volume buttons right next to it. This will let you factory reset it, or clean it out while attempting to save your data. Good luck!

Use Your Joy-Con Like a Wii Remote

If you’re feeling nostalgic, the Joy-Cons can be used with motion controls in some games. For instance, grab World of Goo on the Nintendo eShop, install it, and open it with a Joy-Con. The game will ask you to set the Joy-Con on a flat surface, then point it at the screen. Do this and then you can use it just like a Wii Remote, with an onscreen cursor and everything!

Consider a Second Dock

It’s not strictly necessary as an accessory, but if you frequently travel or play in multiple rooms of the house, buying a second dock can be one of the best decisions you make. I have a spare dock I keep in my suitcase for when I travel so I can play games on the TV in a hotel room. But anywhere you want another dock, an extra can be extremely handy!

Accessories You’ll Need

Be sure to check out our list of Must-Have Nintendo Switch Accessories. You will most definitely need a 128-gigabyte MicroSD card (many games are 10+ gigabytes and the Switch has 32 – 64) and may also want to buy this screen protector (I’ve used it and it doesn’t bubble) and a USB 3.0 Ethernet Adapter if you want to speed up your internet connection on the older dock, though the new Switch OLED dock comes with its own Ethernet port built in, which is convenient!

Should You Get Switch Online?

Nintendo’s Switch Online service is one of the cheapest subscriptions in gaming and seems almost like a no-brainer. For $20 a year (or $35 a year for a family plan), you can play online, save your games in the cloud, and use voice chat in certain games. Also include is a library of NES and SNES games.

There’s also the Expansion Pack which costs $50 per year for an individual and $80 per year for a family. This version adds a selection of N64 and Sega Genesis games, plus some Animal Crossing: New Horizons DLC. This isn’t quite as obvious of a deal, but if you’re looking to play Banjo Kazooie, Majora’s Mask or Goldeneye 007 on your Switch, this is the way to do it.

Overall, Switch Online isn’t strictly necessary unless you play games online or want a retro gaming library, but the basic version is an absurdly cheap value, and the Expansion Pack is a solid buy for fans of the N64 generation.

Games to Own

Finally, if you’re hunting for games, check our Best Nintendo Switch Games guide. Here are a few random fun ones to try other than Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, Zelda: Breath of the Wild and Super Mario Odyssey, which should be your first three purchases: