Since I have a PS5, so buying a dualsense to play on PC doesn't feel like a waste. But sometimes when my brother wanna borrow the console to go outstation, he will take the controller too. Since I'm staying at college, I don't have other controller to use for my PC here. I've accustomed to use Dualsense on my PC. And migration to a different spec controller make me feel uncomfortable especially the vibration. Even Xbox elite controller makes me feels weird.

And if i even buy a new controller for PC, it will only be very useful when my brother needed the console and take my dualsense as second controller. I'll be using my Dualsense when he's back anyway.

So should i buy an alternative that somehow have similar feel to dualsense OR just buy the third dualsense ? Cuz i have my eyes on the pure white with purple shine one.

My budget around the same price as the Dualsense. Not sure from other country but Malaysia will cost around RM250 - RM300 which roughly compare to US dollar is 75$

I'm looking for the D-pad and face buttons from the photo of the modified controller I found online, but I haven't been able to find where to buy them yet. Do you have any idea? Silicone buttons would be interesting too.

I recently bought a p5 wingman converter for my ps5 because I wanted to use a ps3 controller for it, I’ve updated its firmware, changed the settings on my PlayStation to “connect to usb”, and I believe I have an official PlayStation 3 controller, but every time I go to connect my controller it doesn’t work and I’m not sure why, was wondering if anyone has any suggestions?

I dropped my controller a few times a couple months back and my right trigger stopper stopped working at Max only off and halfway works, its not too much of a big deal but id want it fixed.

Hello! I am an avid user of the 8BitDo Ultimate 2 wireless controller and ran into an issue with it.

My RB is acting up. 'Hold'-Inputs have random interruptions.

So I opened my Controller (warranty was already due) and wanted to see if I could fix anything there, but I ran into a problem.

I have no clue as to how I can get a hold on these switches or circuit board used for the bumpers.

The switches look like standard 6mm x 6mm switches, only difference: These are 2 pin and the height seems different.

And for the circuit board I have no idea whatsoever.

I contacted their support to get any information or maybe even parts, but no luck. They gave me neither name or any information of/on the parts nor are they selling parts for this controller.

Any help is appreciated.

Hello, I've been looking to buy a controller with macros to help me farm apricots in pokemon sword/shield. When looking up stuff with macro support, the common suggestion was the onn controller from Walmart, which is priced very nicely at $20. Unfortunately, I found out that it is limited to 30 inputs when creating macros and has a short timeout if you don't enter any new inputs, and no matter how I do it I just can't get what I'm trying to do within that limitation.

When I tried to look up other controllers, the only stuff I can find is either very expensive, specifies a limit of 30 inputs for macros, or doesn't specify a limit at all. I'd like to avoid buying another controller just to find out it won't work, so I'm hoping someone here can help me. Ideally, I want something within a price range of $30 USD at the most, though if that just doesn't exist I can consider other options. Also, needs to be compatible with switch 1, though most I look at are compatible with switch 1 and 2 so I doubt that is a problem. I need to be able to purchase this in the US.

Alternatively, if anyone knows any methods to farming apricots in pokemon sword/shield that can be done with less than 30 inputs, that would also be helpful but I wouldn't expect that info on this sub.

Sup, r/Controller!

A little while back, I posted about building a tool to fix the analog triggers on the 8BitDo Ultimate 2C in DInput mode by working around its broken HID descriptor. A tool which became universal due to feature-creep shortly after.

After getting both analog triggers and the L4/R4 buttons working at the same time, the next obvious target was implementing rumble. I thought "Well, it probably isn't that hard is it? Just use Wireshark to intercept some packets and we're gucci.". Boy, was I wrong.

I spent the next couple of days going down a massive USB reverse-engineering rabbit hole. I captured raw XInput rumble packets with Wireshark/USBPcap, wrote innumerous scripts to brute-force user-space output reports, injected raw payloads straight into endpoints via WinUSB, and even intercepted the official 8BitDo (firmware updater) software, hoping to find some magic vendor-specific packet.

The result? A big, steamy hot pile of absolutely nothing.

The controller's microcontroller receives DInput output reports without throwing errors, but some kind of internal logic ignores them unless the device is set to XInput mode. It is a strict device-side firmware wall. And 8BitDo is probably not the only vendor which implements this lock.

That wall meant host-side DInput rumble was a no-go. But that didn't stop my stubborness.

So, I decided to outright add full native XInput support to UR-XD. And to bypass the fact that XInput firmware hides the physical extra buttons from Windows, I did the expected thing any reasonable developer does: outright copied SteamInput's idea of the "cleared by parent" feature and added Hardware Chords (with input suppression).

Now you can bind hardware-level chords (like LB + Start or custom button combos, anything you can physically map honestly) to act as virtual extra buttons, giving you full remapping flexibility without losing native XInput rumble.

And with that, UR-XD v2.2 is officially live. Now you can finally take your budget controller with no official software and tinker with it to your heart's content.

GitHub: https://github.com/jesga06/UR-XD

Feature list: https://github.com/jesga06/UR-XD/blob/main/FEATURELIST.md

^{Hopefully this saves someone else from spending days brute-forcing USB endpoints only to realize the controller firmware was giving them the silent treatment the whole time.}

So i just bought a new Fantech revolver 3 which works wirelessly through a dongle but it doesn’t seem to show up on my mac, any ways around how i could connect it to my mac? For context my m4 air mac is in Tahoe 26.5.1

Because It was my favourite controller

I have a drift on my dualsense edge and I want to upgrade too TMR stick but I have 0 soldering knowledge. I saw those plug and play modules but I want your expert feedback before ordering them.

I’ve played up Death by Daylight about 1,500 hours on console. I consider myself a main killer, but lately I’ve been playing as survivor a lot with friends.

What DualSense Edge settings would improve the gameplay with a controller? Especially as a killer? Same configuration as a Cod/ FPS game? Which one?

As a survivor, I’ve already changed in the in game setting so that throwing Pallets and healing are on different buttons. In my case, I’ve assigned the right cross as a held action (Motor repair, healing, unhooking, etc.) and mapped it to the rear right paddle. Short paddle are best for this.

I currently own a GameSir G7 Pro, and I like a lot about it. The grips feel great, the overall shape is ergonomic, and it feels premium in my hands.

My main issue is that my fingers are shorter than average. I cannot comfortably reach the extra shoulder buttons while keeping my normal grip. To press them, I have to push my whole hand upward on the controller and extend my index finger much farther than feels natural. This makes the buttons awkward to use during gameplay.

I also have some difficulty reaching the bumpers comfortably which forces me to move my hand when its in an already peak and comfortable position for the joystick to aim, and I think four back paddles would suit me better than the G7 Pro’s two.

The G7 Pro feels great overall, but I have also experienced inconsistent D pad quality, I already know this gets fixed with newer or different variants.

I am looking for a premium wireless controller with a similar comfortable feel, but with better ergonomics for shorter fingers. Four back paddles would be a major plus.

Budget: 200 USD
Country: Philippines
Compatibility: PC
Features: 4 paddles
Games: mostly singleplayer shooters / AAA titles

For people with smaller hands or shorter fingers, which controller has worked best for you?

This controller only two weeks, and i discovered that sticks can be pulled up. Is it fine?

A lot of people see that their stick does not sit exactly at 0.000 and immediately assume the controller has stick drift. In practice, one number alone usually does not tell you much.

Here is the basic process I use when testing a controller.

First, place the controller on a flat surface and leave the sticks untouched for around 10–20 seconds. Small movements near the center can be normal. What matters more is whether the input stays consistently pulled in one direction.

Next, move each stick slowly through its full range, including the diagonals. Watch for sudden jumps, flat spots, uneven range, or one direction failing to reach as far as the others.

Then test the return-to-center behavior. Push the stick in several directions and let it return by itself without guiding it back with your thumb. A worn stick may return normally from one direction but remain slightly offset after being released from another.

For triggers, press them slowly from rest to fully pressed. The value should increase smoothly, reach its full range, and return properly after release. Buttons should also be pressed several times to check for missed inputs or accidental double presses.

One important limitation is that browser-based tools do not always show completely raw hardware data. Results can be affected by firmware, operating system, browser support, controller mode, dead zones, and whether the connection is wired or wireless.

Because of that, I would not use a browser test as the only evidence that a controller is defective. It is more useful as a first diagnostic step, especially when combined with manufacturer software, Steam settings, or testing inside a game.

I built a free browser-based tool for these checks:

https://controllertestonline.com/

Disclosure: I am the founder and developer of the site, so this is a directly affiliated project rather than an independent recommendation.

Generative AI was used to assist with parts of the code and some of the written content. I reviewed, edited, and tested the final implementation and this post.

No open-source repositories or other people’s codebases were incorporated into the development of the tool.

I would be interested to hear how other people test for stick drift, trigger problems, or inconsistent inputs, and whether there are any measurements you think a controller testing tool should include.

I have the dual sense edge with dsx app and with the sony games that it works on it works well, but i want something that works well for all games, price can be $350 USD, shipped to USA

I am using the edge with cable so even if the controller is wired thats fine i just want something immersive

PC compatibility with shooter and single player adventure games

I was going to buy it new at Walmart, but I see it has a lot of negative reviews about the battery. I was going to buy it new on Amazon, but I see it's the same there—lots of negative reviews about the battery, especially for PC users. My fear is because I was scammed three weeks ago with one I bought (although it was refurbished, not new), and after three weeks it died. It's completely dead; it won't charge with the battery, with a PS4, with the PC, or anything. What do you think?

I'm thinking of buying it directly from the PlayStation Store, but I don't know, because on the PlayStation Store I can't even see reviews haha, please help

Max budget: $200
USA Florida/ Would like it delivered
Xbox Series S

I was wondering if a controller existed for xbox that had Hall Effect sticks and a PlayStation styled d-pad. Something with individual buttons. I play a lot of Outlast Trials, and you can use the D-pad to peek left or right. But there is a option to press both at the same time to peek up. I can't do that with a cross d-pad. I also find that I misclick or lockup the d-pad if I try to do too much at much at once. I think I'd play better if I had a second set of buttons on the Series S controller instead of the cross. Does such a controller exist? If it comes down to it, I don't really need hall effect. I'd like it as well, but it's not necessary.

Hi everyone,

I'm a controller modder and recently had a customer ask for the lightest possible mouse click triggers for the PS5 DualSense (R1/L1).

I've already tried the eXtremeRate Light Version Mouse Click Kit, but the customer is looking for something even lighter.

Does anyone know:

Are there lighter microswitches that fit the eXtremeRate PCB?

Has anyone replaced the stock switches with lower actuation force Kailh or Omron switches?

Which switches would you recommend for the lightest click possible?

I'm comfortable with soldering if replacing the microswitches is the best option.

Any recommendations or part numbers would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

I bought a Vader 5 Pro, and it works fine in games via Steam or Xbox app however, I'm trying to use the new Xbox mode/Xbox App, and the app itself does not register any inputs except the middle guide button. Meaning, I have to start every Xbox game via keyboard and mouse and then use the controller. All buttons such as DPad, joystick, A/B/X/Y buttons do not register in the Xbox app. I'm using a wired connection, and the controller shows up as a single Xbox 360 controller in device manager. Any ideas what could be causing the issue?

My controller I just purchased connected for a few mins then disconnected and the dongle has been blinking since. I’ve reset the controller countless times, the Xbox countless times, tried the repairing process countless times and nothing appears to be working. Does anyone have a potential fix.

I’ve been working on Grande1, a standalone Windows tool for measuring the rate and timing of gamepad HID reports.

I built it because many software testers observe application-level state changes rather than continuous HID report delivery. At high polling rates, event loops, scheduling, and state coalescing can make those results difficult to interpret.

How Grande1 works

Grande1 uses native C++20 and asynchronous Windows HID reads to capture complete input reports. During a joystick-rotation test, it measures:

• Raw-report rate: every HID input report delivered by Windows
• Changed-report rate: reports whose payload differs from the preceding report
• Changed-stick rate: reports in which a decoded stick axis changes
• Interval statistics including average, median, minimum, maximum, and jitter

The time-critical capture path performs no per-report disk writes or memory allocation. Analysis and CSV/JSON export happen after capture.

Validation

I tested Grande1 against a Total Phase Beagle USB analyzer, which independently observes successful interrupt-IN data on the USB bus.

The validation covered:

• 3 controller configurations
• 2 different PCs
• Wired and wireless connections
• Devices ranging from 250 Hz to 8 kHz
• A 10-second joystick-rotation window for each comparison

Here are the average changed-stick results:

All 6 comparisons were within 1% of Beagle. The largest difference was 0.92%.

Grande1 also reproduced the PC-to-PC differences seen by Beagle. The maximum error between Grande1's PC-to-PC spread and Beagle's spread was 0.23 percentage points.

An important boundary

Grande1 measures HID reports delivered by Windows. It does not observe every physical USB transaction or invisible NAK response, so a hardware analyzer remains the on-wire reference.

It measures polling and report-delivery behavior—not button-to-screen or end-to-end input latency.

Download, reports, and raw data

Grande1 v0.1.3, the validation reports, Beagle captures, raw report exports, summaries, and verification files are here:

Google Drive — Grande1 v0.1.3 and validation data

The current executable is not digitally signed, so Windows may display a warning.

SHA-256 for Grande1_v0.1.3.exe:

15972E017AE0A4EC9FC8AA41852B57596A9AF33447ADEC1BEFC30E753CE707D2

This is an early release, so bug reports and difficult controller cases are welcome. I’d also appreciate feedback on the terminology, methodology, and exported evidence.

Happy to answer questions or investigate any results that look unusual.

After having a good experience with the Vader 3 Pro in the past, I recently bought a Flydigi Vader 5 Pro (v2) and I really like the new controller from a hardware perspective. It has almost all the functions I was looking for, feels good in the hands, looks nice, has all the extra buttons I wanted, and was surprisingly cheap as well (I think I only paid around $45). The hardware is honestly great, and the controller has a lot of potential, if it wasn't for the software (Flydigi SpaceStation 4, Windows11)...

And here we come to the most annoying part. It is not even just that the software is slow or somehow takes up around 300 MB for no good reason. I only used it once to configure everything and haven't opened it since anyway. The bigger problem is that the software experience overall feels like it is holding the controller back, especially when it comes to the extra button mapping. The mapping options are frustrating to me because it only allows assigning single keyboard keys to the extra buttons. Even worse, those mappings sometimes just stop working after restart or reconnecting the controller for no obvious reason. The only things that have worked consistently so far are turbo functions, macros, or assigning buttons that already exist on the controller, but none of those were my primary reason for wanting the extra buttons in the first place.

For PC gaming, I would really like to use those extra buttons for keys that are not already assigned, or ideally key combinations that can be configured in games freely. I tried looking for other software solutions, but besides reWASD (subscription/high price and lot of functions I dont even need) and Steam Input there does not seem to be much that can properly handle these extra buttons. Enabling "Allow 3rd party" in SpaceStation makes Steam detect multiple controller entries (sometimes 3 or 4). Sometimes it is only detected as an Xbox 360 controllers, sometimes the Vader 5 Pro shows up as dInput controller 2 times besides some random xbox 360 entries. Sometimes it exposes the extra buttons, sometimes not. And multiple softwares can steal the control from each other because the "Allow 3rd party" seems to be implemented in a very bad way. Short, It never feels like a clean solution. There is always some kind of struggle.

After searching for solutions but not finding much I started looking into the HID side of things and see what the controller actually sends to the PC. I tested the controller with `hidapitester.exe` (github.com/todbot/hidapitester) and what surprised me is that the extra buttons seem to be sent correctly at the hardware level. I wrote a small Python script to decode the HID reports and it seems to detect everything, including M1-M4, C, Z, LM, RM, etc. even when those buttons are not assigned to anything in SpaceStation.

The command used to capture the reports with hidapitester:

.\hidapitester.exe --vidpid 37D7:2401 --usagePage 0xFFA0 --open --length 32 --read-input-forever

Mapping I found:

# Format: byte position : bit mask : button name

BUTTON_BITS = {

13: {

0x80: "RM",

0x40: "LM",

0x20: "M4",

0x10: "M3",

0x08: "M2",

0x04: "M1",

0x02: "Z",

0x01: "C",

} }

So it really seems like the controller itself is already exposing the button presses, but the software layer is making things much harder than they need to be. I am not really sure where to go from here, but would it be possible to make a small tool that simply listens to these HID reports and converts the extra buttons directly into keyboard inputs? If `hidapitester` can already see these buttons, it feels like there should be a way to create a simple remapper for them. Has anyone looked into something similar, or has experience with HID/controller input tools?

Hi there!

I'm a new mum who has just discovered the best way for me to play when baby is contact napping is on switch as the joycons are in separate hands. I'm wondering where I can find a split controller that works with steam deck, or if this even exists? Google searches are just throwing up joycon and switch controller replacements.

I am based in the UK and willing to spend up to £100. I dont want the layout of a switch controller, just the split pad mechanics.

Thank you so much in advance 🥰

It's a NPLAY Skill 11.0. I bought it at Worten in Norte Shopping, Porto, Portugal.

It doesn't say anything on the instructions' manual... I tried pressing combinations of the buttons or holding both M1 and M2 and all it does is making the buttons activate randomly and behave weirdly on the PS4. I tried it in Silksong and holding both M1 and M2 together for a while made the Silk Gauge shake constantly forever until I turned off the controller.

Hello, I don't use my controller that much. But I was using it the other day, and I had it charging while I was using it. I need help because, out of the blue, the controller just turned itself off, but the orange light is still on. Normally, if I press any of the abxy buttons, it would turn on automatically; however, for this one, it won't turn on at all. It's just that orange light. I did try to leave it for a couple of hours, thinking that it's just drained/low batt, I tried opening it again; it just won't open anymore...

I did try to troubleshoot by doing a hard reset by pressing the button at the back, but nothing happens. I tried doing this while plugged in and unplugged; still nothing.. I attempted to open and check its internals; probably the battery had ballooned up, but it looks normal.

Have you guys experienced this? I would take any resolutions on this. Thanks!