How To Get Steam To Recognize Xbox Controller

Gone are the days of dubious controller support and workarounds, with some games supporting some controllers and some functionality and others not. Today, through Steam, you can employ basically utilise any controller with any Steam game, and you tin customize your controller's layout to your centre'due south content, equally well equally browse through and download many custom controller configurations built past developers and fellow gamers alike. Here'south how y'all tin can use any external game controller to play Steam games.

What controllers can yous use with Steam?

The entire list of supported controllers is rather long, but all the major players are covered:

Xbox 360 controllers (Wired/USB dongle)
Xbox One controllers (Wired/Bluetooth)
Xbox One Aristocracy controllers (Wired/USB dongle)
Xbox Series X controllers (Wired/Bluetooth)
PS4 controllers (Wired/Bluetooth)
Switch Pro controllers (Wired/Bluetooth)
Multifariousness of Logitech and HORI controllers

Chances are whatever controller you take will end up working with Steam, merely if you practice happen to have something especially old or cheap (or both), your mileage may vary.

How to apply your controller with Steam

Your first pace will exist to connect your controller to your PC. For some controllers, like the Xbox One Elite controller, this is washed wirelessly by way of a USB dongle, but with many others y'all tin can use Bluetooth just fine (see our listing to a higher place).

Next, open Steam, click "Steam" at the elevation-left corner, and then click the "Settings" option.

Within the "Controller" tab, click the "General Controller Settings" button, which will open some other window. From the "Controller" tab, you can besides arrange controller functionality in certain situations, like within Steam'south Big Pic style or on the desktop.

In the Controller Settings window, you can enable support for whichever type of controller you lot have connected. Note that pretty much every single game that has controller support will support the Xbox 360/1/Series X controller off the bat, so you don't need to cheque the "Xbox Configuration Support" box for those. In fact, if you're hooking not-Steam games into Steam, you're probably amend off without it as it's known to cause issues.

Far fewer games support native PlayStation controller input, and even fewer support Switch Pro, so you lot'll desire to enable Configuration Support for those if you lot use those controllers. Essentially, Configuration Support maps those controllers as Xinput/Xbox controllers, so when you play with them yous'll encounter Xbox buttons displayed in the game on-screen… which tin exist a lilliputian disruptive!

Any controller non made by PlayStation or Xbox that isn't the Switch Pro controller is considered a generic gamepad.

How to choose what games to play with a controller

Once y'all accept your controller connected and Steam's controller support enabled, all you have left to do is pick which game you desire to play with a controller and choose your layout.

Start upwardly Steam in Big Picture mode (which can be accessed past clicking the icon straight to the right of your username at the top right of the Steam client) and navigate to whichever game you'd like to play. It's important to call up that y'all can enable Steam controller support for any game and not just games that have fractional or total controller support built in.

This goes for all games, including real-time strategy games and entire genres of games you wouldn't necessarily call back to play with on a controller.

From the game'due south menu in Steam'southward Big Picture mode, simply click "Manage Game," and and so in "Controller Options," brand sure it's set to the "Forced On" option. Once enabled, click the "Controller Configuration" button to customize your controller's layout to your middle'due south content. Anything and everything about your controller is tweakable.

Within the Controller Configuration window is also a list of controller layouts for the particular game in question as an option. Some layouts are made by the developers themselves, and some are merely popular fan-fabricated command schemes.

Using your controller with Steam is 1 thing, but calibrating your controller correctly in the start place is a whole other ballgame. If you lot're on Windows, though, the process is piece of cake. You might too want to acquire how to check your controller for deadzones.

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