What to do if your Nintendo Switch Dock stops sending signal to your TV
This simple troubleshooting step should get you back to gaming on your big screen in no time.
I recently had an alarming thing happen to my Nintendo Switch Dock — it stopped sending signal to my TV. If I set my Switch in it, it would charge the console fine, but it wouldn’t output any signal to the TV via HDMI so I couldn’t play games on the TV. Had some internal component failed within the Dock? Was a cable bad? It turns out the fix was incredibly simple.
As it turns out it actually matters what order you connect the cables to your Switch Dock. The Dock itself is pretty simple. When you lay down the side door that reveals the cables, you only have to have two connected: The console’s AC adapter, which connects to either the Dock or the Switch itself via a USB-C cable, and an HDMI cable. But, and this is critical, you have to connect those two cables in this order: first the charging cable and then the HDMI cable. It’s completely maddening that this actually matters, but it turns out that it does. After disconnecting both cables in my Switch Dock and reconnecting them in that order, my Switch Dock was sending signal to the TV again.
How did it get messed up in the first place? I don’t know for sure but it’s very likely my kids were messing with the Dock and reconnected the cables improperly. Or maybe the Dock just needed a resetting of the cables. Either way I’m glad it only took this simple trick to resolve my issue!
