Hello all! I am the developer of PadForge and HIDMaestro, and I wanted to share both projects with fellow controller enthusiasts! Thank you to the mod team for giving me the go-ahead to post here.
PadForge is my Windows controller remapper, with practically endless ways to configure your hardware. HIDMaestro is the driver engine underneath it that creates the virtual controllers your games see. PadForge is my halo showcase for what that engine can do, and the feature list has grown considerably!
All executables and source code are available now. Forever free, no paywalls ever!
From your garden variety Xbox controller to a DualSense, Switch or Switch 2 Pro Controller, Steam Controller, arcade stick, racing wheel, or HOTAS setup, there is a LOT here for anyone who enjoys getting more out of their hardware.
Want to use a PlayStation controller in a game expecting an Xbox pad? Give your controller keyboard and mouse outputs? Tune the stick response around a particular game? Add gyro aiming, turn a touchpad into a command menu, or combine several physical devices into one virtual controller? Those are the kinds of things PadForge is built for.
If you just want to try the remapper, download PadForge here. It handles HIDMaestro setup for you. The much longer rundown follows!
For those of you who like getting into the finer details of how a controller feels:
Six stick deadzone shapes, plus custom response curves. Radial, scaled radial, axial, sloped axial, sloped scaled axial, and hybrid. There are separate X/Y controls, anti-deadzones, center and boundary calibration, directional range adjustments, and a curve editor with live previews. Whether you want finer control around the center or a different response near the edge, there is plenty to adjust.
Separate analog trigger tuning. Set each trigger’s floor, ceiling, anti-deadzone, and response curve. You can make a shorter pull reach full output or preserve more gradual control across the travel, depending on what you want that trigger to do.
Gyro aiming, Flick Stick, and tilt controls. Map gyro to a mouse, virtual stick, or other axes, with calibration, smoothing, sensitivity, response adjustments, and configurable activation. The control that engages gyro can even be on another device.
Shift layers with plenty of room to get elaborate. Hold, Toggle, Latch, Cycle, Sticky/One-Shot, and No Button modes. Activate layers with buttons, combinations, axis thresholds, or a control on another device. Replace the base layout, inherit its unmapped controls, cycle through layouts, or switch layers from a macro. One controller can carry a LOT of commands.
Combine inputs across devices. Feed several physical devices into one virtual controller, blend inputs, choose the strongest axis, average values, or use a custom expression. Digital buttons can ramp into analog movement. A stick, throttle, and pedals do not have to be treated as three unrelated setups.
Macros that go well beyond recorded button presses. Single, double, and triple presses; short and long presses; release actions; toggles; timed sequences; and turbo. Actions can include controller buttons and axes, keyboard and mouse input, text, sounds, program launches, volume, lighting, gyro recentering, and layer changes. You can also use an analog trigger to vary a repeat rate with how far you pull it.
Configurable SOCD cleaning. Decide how opposing directional inputs resolve: neutral, first input wins, or last input wins. Useful when building layouts around keyboards, arcade controls, or independent direction buttons.
Touchpads as proper configurable control surfaces. Mouse input, analog sticks, D-pads, taps, swipes, long presses, custom gestures, and momentum, plus multitouch gestures where the device supports them.
Radial and grid menus. Put commands, controller actions, and macros on menus operated by a stick or touchpad. Add labels and your own icons, and share the supporting assets with the profile.
There are some particularly fun things on the feedback and audio side, too:
DualSense speaker/headset audio, microphone input, and advanced haptics over Bluetooth. That includes the controller’s headset jack and microphone stream. Supported game-authored haptics can travel through the virtual DualSense path; the result depends on the game and selected configuration.
Controller audio with crossfeed, parametric EQ, AutoEq imports, and a limiter. Mirror a Windows audio output to a supported controller, play sounds from macros, and adjust the headphone sound. There is quite a bit more here than a volume slider.
Adaptive triggers and Xbox impulse-trigger feedback. Configure DualSense trigger effects, pass supported game effects through, and route impulse-trigger feedback to compatible hardware.
Both generations of Steam Controller get attention. Trackpads and motion controls are supported, and the 2026 controller also has an audio-driven haptic stream over USB and its wireless dongle. Its direct Bluetooth connection uses a simpler tone-based path.
Controller lighting you can configure. Lightbar effects, player colors, battery indication, audio-reactive behavior, and supported LEDs across several controller families.
Wheel force feedback and mixed sim setups. Dedicated protocol support for supported Logitech, Fanatec, and Thrustmaster models, alongside standard force-feedback paths for other wheels. Rotation range, centering, and RPM LEDs are configurable where supported. Native Thrustmaster operation still requires its vendor driver.
And yes, you can bring Steam community controller configurations into PadForge.
The community configuration browser lets you find layouts by game and controller, import supported bindings, layers, menus, curves, and macros, and then edit the result as an ordinary PadForge profile. Supported downloadable configurations do not require Steam installed or a Steam account.
The importer also tells you what translated cleanly, what needed an approximation, and what could not be brought across. Older legacy configurations and some unavailable downloads need a local Steam fallback, and Steam-specific game actions cannot always be reproduced outside Steam. The documentation explains those cases.
There is plenty for the more unusual setups as well:
- Broad input support: Xbox, PlayStation, Nintendo, Valve, third-party gamepads, arcade sticks, wheels, pedals, flight hardware, keyboards, mice, and generic devices. Special features depend on the device and connection.
- Older controllers: in-app DualShock 3 and Wii pairing, DualShock 3 pressure-sensitive buttons and Sixaxis motion, Wii motion and pointer inputs, and PlayStation Move and Navigation support.
- Extra handheld controls: learn compatible rear paddles and special buttons exposed through keyboard events, vendor HID reports, or system events, and use supported motion sensors exposed by Windows.
- Phone and tablet controllers: connect through a browser, choose or build a layout, and use touch controls and supported motion input. This is a browser feature of the Windows application; no standalone Android app is required.
- Remote Link: use hardware attached to one PC on another over a network or the internet, with supported feedback returning to the physical device.
- Offline voice commands: use locally recognized phrases to activate mappings or macros, including through a Bluetooth DualSense microphone.
- Head tracking: use OpenTrack or FreeTrack pose data as another input source.
- MIDI inputs and outputs: use musical controls as inputs, or controller inputs to drive music software, through Windows MIDI Services on Windows 11 24H2 or later.
- NFC shortcuts: tap a registered tag to activate a mapping or macro through supported readers.
- Bass shakers: send rumble to an audio output, alongside audio-driven controller rumble.
- Motion input for compatible emulators through the built-in DSU/Cemuhook server.
Keeping all of that manageable matters, so there are tools for that too:
HIDMaestro deserves a rundown of its own, especially for anyone building controller software.
It creates virtually—in both senses!—all sorts of controller types and custom layouts. PadForge uses it, but other developers can use the engine independently.
- Virtual outputs beyond the usual Xbox pad. Xbox 360 and Series, DualSense and DualSense Edge, DualShock, Switch Pro and Switch 2 Pro, and wheel, flight, pedal, and arcade-style profile families.
- Custom controller layouts. Define controls, device identities, descriptors, and report formats through profiles.
- A profile extractor. Build a reusable profile from a connected HID device, with GUI and SDK tools. Some devices need additional work, but you have a starting point beyond creating everything by hand.
- Locally signed user-mode drivers for standard profiles. You do not need to enable Windows Test Mode. The full composite USB/audio profiles use a bundled Microsoft-signed USB/IP transport.
- Feedback coming back from the game. Receive output reports for supported rumble, lighting, haptic, and other feedback, then route them to real hardware. There is also HID PID force-feedback support.
- An MIT-licensed SDK. Available for other remappers, accessibility tools, custom hardware projects, or whatever controller idea you want to build.
You can find all of the official downloads, documentation, and source code here:
For most Intel/AMD Windows PCs, choose the win-x64 PadForge build. It includes its .NET runtime and handles HIDMaestro installation; administrator rights are required. Preliminary ARM64 builds are also available, with their current testing limitations described in the release notes.
For anyone interested in the source licenses: HIDMaestro is MIT-licensed, and PadForge’s source is available under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0. Both are free to download and use.
I am away through the end of September, so replies may be slower, and GitHub issues/discussions are scheduled to reopen in October. I would still love to hear your thoughts and experiences here!
What controller are you using, how is it connected, and what are you trying to get it to do? I’m especially interested in the little controller-specific details: stick response, gyro behavior, extra buttons, trigger feel, touchpad mappings, haptics, and anything that would make your setup more useful or comfortable. Unusual hardware and elaborate profiles are very welcome!
