The PlayStation 5’s Accolades function has allowed customers to supply awards to fellow gamers in multiplayer video games, the concept being it’d assist foment kindness and camaraderie within the gaming neighborhood. However Sony formally retired it from PS5 this week for one cause: Nobody used it. Most folks (hello) didn’t even appear to realize it existed.

This spurred a thought train: What different gaming consoles nonetheless have ineffective options? Take the Switch, as an example. Positive, Nintendo’s hybrid handheld has loads of quietly useful little tips, like its common zoom perform. Nevertheless it additionally has some that would most likely get purged with out anybody caring—and even noticing.

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The “Discover Controllers” Perform

Of the slew of choices within the Switch’s “Controllers” menu, the “discover controllers” perform far and away collects essentially the most mud. Open it, and also you’ll see a menu containing an inventory of Pleasure-Cons paired to your console. Maintain down the “A” button over the Pleasure-Con you’re searching for and it’ll rumble. Quietly. At, like, animal-hearing frequency. It’s supposed that will help you find any indifferent Pleasure-Cons that could be misplaced, however isn’t actually efficient sufficient to do its one job—By no means thoughts that you just really want no less than one Pleasure-Con available to make use of it within the first place.

Sadly, there’s no console perform that addresses the scourge of Pleasure-Con drift.

The “Information” App

Most of the seven permanent icons on the Switch’s home screen are genuinely useful shortcuts to submenus. One, however, is used only by the people who accidentally click on it: the “News” app. Open it up and you’ll see a reverse chronological feed of digitized press releases from the annals of Nintendo’s marketing machine. (You can also see the three most recent “stories” on the left bar of the screen when you boot up the console.) But if you’re looking for gaming news, you’re not going to read it on a gaming console—which you’ve presumably booted up to, y’know, play games. You’re especially not going to read it on that console if the text is so very tiny. You’re far more likely to get your news from a favourite gaming web site.

Voice Chat

Regardless of what you might have heard, yep, the Switch has voice chat! Kinda. It’s a convoluted mess. On PlayStation and Xbox, if you wish to get voice chat going, you…plug in a headset and get voice chat going. On Switch, nonetheless, you need to undergo a multi-step course of and boot up a companion smartphone app. Nintendo may scrap its voice chat with out anybody caring. Actually, in the event you’re utilizing a smartphone app to speak to your social gathering members, Discord is proper there.

Keyboard Help

Everybody hates punching in a password (twice!) to purchase one thing on Nintendo’s eShop, what with the console’s small touchscreen keyboard. This workaround doesn’t perform in handheld mode, however you’ll be able to plug a USB keyboard into the dock and use that to sort as a substitute. But in addition: the time it takes to drag out a keyboard and plug it into the Switch’s dock most likely takes longer than no matter job you have been initially attempting to avoid. (In the event you should get into the eShop quicker, simply deactivate the password requirement.) Nintendo may possible lose keyboard help with out a lot uproar.

Display Lock (or, nicely, that it’s an choice)

Sure, the Switch’s display screen lock function is certainly enormously useful, dare I say important. Flip it on, and also you’ll give your console a purgatory of types between its waking and sleeping states. You’ll then have to faucet the identical button 3 times to make use of your console, which might stop it from inadvertently turning on when, say, it’s rustling round in your bag. Truthfully, it shouldn’t even be an choice: It needs to be the usual. Do away with the selection, I say, and let display screen lock be the usual.

Darkish Mode

I’m kidding! I’m kidding. However hey, on this word, wouldn’t it’s good if the Switch had extra colour themes for its backdrop? Hi there? Hey, the place’d you go?