When playing the PlayStation 5, or PlayStation 5 Digital Edition, the system may crash and freeze. If you can’t turn your system off in this situation, then you can follow this troubleshooting guide from Seeking Tech.
How to turn off a frozen PS5 with your controller
In order to turn off a PlayStation 5 with your controller, you need to do the following:
1. Press the PS button on your DualSense controller. This will bring up the Control Center quick menu.
2. In the Control Center, navigate downwards until you get to the list of options at the bottom.
3. In the list of options, navigate all the way to the right until you see the Power option.
4. Select the Power option.
5. In the pop-up menu, select the Turn Off PS5 option. You will get a “Preparing to turn off PS5” message on screen.
How to turn off a frozen PS5 using the power button
If your crashed or frozen PlayStation 5 is not responding to your DualSense controller, you can try using the power button on the system to shut it down.
To do so, you need to take the following steps:
1. Locate the power button on your PS5, which is found on the middle black-colored part of the system. On the PlayStation 5 Digital Edition, it is right next to the disc eject button. On the standard PlayStation 5, the power button is the only button that can be pressed.
2. Press and hold the power button on your PS5 system. You should hear a beeping noise almost immediately. After around three more seconds, you should hear a second beeping noise and then get a “Preparing to turn off PS5” message on screen.
3. If your system is not responding, then we recommend pressing and holding the power button again. This time, you should hold the power button for as long as possible (at least 20 seconds if not longer) to forcibly shut down your PlayStation 5.
Can you unplug a frozen PS5?
Unplugging a PlayStation 5 system may cause hardware damage that may require you to send your PS5 to Sony for repair.
Therefore, we don’t recommend unplugging the system until you exhausted all of the aforementioned methods to turning off a frozen and unresponsive system.
What to do after shutting down a frozen PS5?
After successfully shutting down a PlayStation 5 that has crashed, we recommend turning it back on again to see if it is functioning normally.
The system may attempt to self-diagnose and fix itself.
You may also get an error message where you can send a crash report to Sony.
As an extra precaution, you might want to consider clearing the cache of your PlayStation 5. If you are interested in doing so, then you can check out this tutorial.
You may also want to rebuild the database and/or reinstall the firmware of your PS5. In order to do so, you can check out this guide.
If you are constantly experiencing crashing and freezing with your PlayStation 5, then you should consider contacting PlayStation Support to possibly send your system in for repair.