While the PlayStation 5’s DualSense controller features improved battery life over the PlayStation 4’s DualShock 4, it’s still possible for your controller to die in the middle of an important moment.
Let’s look at a few ways to save battery life on the DualSense controller and make it last as long as possible.
1. Set Your PS5 Controller to Turn Off Automatically
If you leave your PS5 running for whatever reason and thus leave your controller on for hours, that will obviously eat up your battery life. To combat this, it’s a good idea to set a timer so your DualSense turns off when you’re not using it.
On your PS5’s main menu, head to Settings > System > Power Saving. Here you’ll see the Set Time Until Controllers Turn Off option, which you can set to After 10 Minutes, 30 Minutes, 60 Minutes, or Off.
There’s no good reason to leave your controller on for long periods of time while idle. Enabling this option limits wasted battery life when you’re not at your TV.
2. Manually Turn Off the DualSense Controller
For times when you know you won’t use your PS5 controller for a while, it makes sense to turn it off right away instead of waiting for the auto-off timer. This is handy if you’re using your PS5 to watch entertainment apps like Netflix, or even just sitting through a long cutscene in a game.
To turn off your PS5 controller, hit the PS Button on the controller to bring up the quick menu. Scroll to the right and select the Accessories button, which shows as a controller icon with your current battery life. On the resulting menu, choose your Wireless Controller, followed by Turn Off.
Doing this will turn off your controller until you hit the PS Button to turn it on again. If you don’t want to fiddle with the menu, you can also turn off your PS5 controller by holding the PS Button for 10 seconds.
3. Reduce Controller Functions That Use Battery
The DualSense has a handful of functions that consume battery life. Disabling these options won’t drastically extend your controller’s battery, but can help a bit if you prioritize battery life over fancy features.
Visit Settings > Accessories > Controllers to toggle these functions off:
- Set Brightness of Controller Indicators to Dim. This will reduce the lights on your controller; they will automatically brighten if needed for the camera accessory.
- Lower the Vibration Intensity to Weak or Off. While the new haptic feedback feature of the DualSense makes rumble more realistic, it does use a fair bit of battery. If you don’t care about the feature, perhaps for a certain game, disabling it will improve battery life.
- Also lower or disable the Trigger Effect Intensity. This is another headline feature of the DualSense that changes the resistance of the L2 and R2 buttons depending on what you’re doing in-game. If you don’t care much for it, lowering it will conserve some juice.
- Lower the Volume (Speaker for Controller) slider. This reduces the controller’s built-in speaker output, saving a bit of battery if you don’t like that anyway.
4. Buy a Longer Charging Cable
If using all the above tips still doesn’t keep your controller working for as long as you’d like, you should consider buying a longer USB-C cable. With this, you can easily plug in your controller to charge and keep playing when it gets low. You won’t have to pull up a chair closer to the TV like you would with a short cable.
You can find 10-foot (or longer) USB-C to USB-A charging cables on Amazon for cheap. Try the CableCreation USB-C cable for a solid option.
If you play with a cable connected often, on the above Controllers settings page, you should set Communication Method to Use USB Cable. With this, your controller will communicate over the cable instead of still using Bluetooth when plugged in.
Keep Your DualSense Charged Up
Now you know how to keep your DualSense battery alive for long gaming sessions. Short of buying a second controller and swapping them out regularly, these are your best options for extending battery life.
Don’t forget that you can use PS4 controllers when playing PlayStation 4 games on your PS5. That’s another way to conserve DualSense battery life.
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