How To Use Controller And Mouse At The Same Time

The PlayStation 5 and Xbox Serial X may be the new hotness for living room gaming, only if y'all want the benefits of PC gaming with the comfort of the couch, hooking your rig upward to a 4K TV still provides one of the best gaming experiences you can go today. In that location's only one trouble: reaching for the mouse and keyboard to open up a game is a fleck of a hassle.

Steam's built-in Large Movie Fashion aims to solve this by creating a couch-friendly interface y'all can navigate with a gamepad, only that isn't a one-stop shop anymore. Other launchers (like Epic and Origin) have go more ubiquitous and desktop settings (like HDR) require tweaking.

Thankfully, in that location are a countless third-political party tools that allow you to navigate Windows with nothing only your game controller. Here are the all-time we've plant for most people's needs.

Steam: The Choice You Probably Already Have

If yous have Steam installed on your gaming PC, you already have desktop controller support born. In fact, it may already be active. Steam enables some shortcuts chosen "Chords"—combinations of buttons on your controller that map to certain functions on your PC.

If you lot have an Xbox controller connected, for instance, you can printing and concur the Xbox button while moving the right stick to move the mouse. Concur the Xbox button and press the right trigger to click, or left trigger to invoke a correct-click. If you keep Steam running in the groundwork, this will do in a pinch with no futzing necessary.

If you plan on using your controller as a mouse for more than a few random clicks, though, you may want to enable full controller support on the desktop. Open the main Steam window and head to Settings > Controller > General Controller Settings. Check the box for your controller—PlayStation, Xbox, Switch Pro, or Generic—and you should at present be able to move your mouse with the right stick on your controller. From the Settings > Controller page, yous can click the Desktop Configuration button to customize which buttons emulate which keyboard keys.

This method has some downsides, though. If you launch a game from Steam, the client will automatically disable the gamepad-as-mouse feature while you lot're in the game. That way, the game will treat your controller like a controller, with all its own default keybindings. But if you launch a game from outside Steam, your controller will still be recognized as a mouse, and your controls won't work properly.

As a result, your best bet is to add together those non-Steam games to your library—as long as Steam detects it and the overlay works properly, it'll disable the mouse feature. If that doesn't work—some games don't always play nicely with this characteristic—you may want to try one of the beneath options instead.

Gopher360 or InputMapper: Simple, Gratis, and Organisation-Wide

If yous desire something a bit simpler and are okay installing a small extra program, check out Gopher360(Opens in a new window) for Xbox and other controllers. Information technology's a fleck old and technically abandoned, but it still works well, fifty-fifty with the latest Xbox Series X controller. Just catch the latest version from the Releases(Opens in a new window) page, re-create it somewhere safe on your organisation, and double-click it to start the programme.

Y'all can minimize the command window that appears, and yous should have full use of your Xbox controller as described on the dwelling page(Opens in a new window) (left stick moves the mouse, the A button sends a mouse click, and and then on). You lot can and then press the Start and Back buttons at the same fourth dimension to disable the mouse feature whenever you launch a game.

You lot tin too suit the sensitivity and customize the push button layout through Gopher360's config file, stored in the same location equally the plan itself. Pro tip: add a shortcut to Gopher360 in your startup folder so it launches with your calculator. If you feel a problem where the cursor doesn't appear after waking the computer from sleep, y'all can fix that with a small registry tweak(Opens in a new window).

Sony's DualShock controllers are a bit unique, since they don't interact with Windows in quite the same style equally Xbox controllers. And then if yous want to utilise your PlayStation 4 controller as a mouse, you'll desire a separate programme chosen InputMapper(Opens in a new window). Download the latest release, install it, and launch the program. When you plug in a DualShock controller (or connect it over Bluetooth), you'll go a prompt to configure the gamepad.

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You can create a profile that maps the controller to its Xbox 360 equivalents (and then information technology works in games that don't support PlayStation controllers), or equally a mouse and keyboard (where the DualShock'southward touchpad moves the cursor and tapping it clicks the mouse). You can customize the button mappings and plenty of other tweaks from the programme'southward main window.

Controller Companion: Polished and Customizable

If yous're willing to pay a few bucks, a newer plan called Controller Companion(Opens in a new window) is probably the nearly elegant fashion to get this functionality on your PC. Subsequently purchasing the $2.99 plan and installing it through Steam, y'all'll be able to use the left stick to move your mouse, the A button to click on items, and—if you press in the left stick—you'll even get a handy virtual keyboard you can use to type quick bits of text.

Best of all, Controller Companion will auto-disable itself when it detects a total-screen app running, which means it should seamlessly switch between mouse emulation and in-game controls automatically. If it doesn't, though, you can press the Start and Back buttons simultaneously to manually disable information technology while you play.

Controller Companion has a number of piece of cake-to-tweak options in its Settings window, like adjusting the pointer speed, dead zones, and creating profiles for specific applications. While it doesn't work out-of-the-box with PlayStation controllers (again, due to the way Windows recognizes them), it comes with a button to set Xbox Controller Emulator, which should work in conjunction with DualShock gamepads.

Yous should also exist able to use InputMapper as described above, but if you programme on using your controller as a mouse regularly, it'southward well worth the couple bucks for Controller Companion.

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