Gaming Controllers (Dualshock etc) non-responsive in Steam, GeForce Now, Epic Games

[Nick.haley]

Posted this also on reddit ... controller support seems fine via things like Apple Arcade, but elsewhere is not working on M1 Macs. I only have a Dualshock PS4 Controller to test out, but it's working on Big Sur on Intel Macs. I tested input on 'Controllers Lite' and saw all the buttons are responsive both wired and over Bluetooth on M1 MacBook Air.


Who do we try to contact, Apple Support, the gaming platforms, or Sony?

 

[dmccloud]

To my knowledge, none of those applications you list have released M1-native versions of their apps yet, which means that the x86 binaries are being translated by Rosetta. Chances are you will have to wait for M1 versions of those apps to be released before controller support works as intended.

 

[Nick.haley]

To my knowledge, none of those applications you list have released M1-native versions of their apps yet, which means that the x86 binaries are being translated by Rosetta. Chances are you will have to wait for M1 versions of those apps to be released before controller support works as intended.

Definitely they’re not native apps, however this Intel app does receive controller input.

 

[dmccloud]

Definitely they’re not native apps, however this Intel app does receive controller input.

Steam, Epic, etc. might use some sort of intermediary layer for controller input, which can not be properly translated via Rosetta. Once they release M1-compatible versions of their clients, that issue should be resolved. Both Steam and GeForce Now also have their overlays (intended for use when streaming to Twitch, YouTube, etc.) which hook into the controller input, akin to how the PS4 and XBox One can use controller input when streaming from those consoles.

 

[Nick.haley]

Got a workaround so happy.. I'm running GeForce Now, in Chrome native version, appearing as a Chromebook!

 

[Frankbo]

Got a workaround so happy.. I'm running GeForce Now, in Chrome native version, appearing as a Chromebook!

How did you manage to get this working? I’m picking up my mba today and interested in getting this to work

 

[ArPe]

To my knowledge, none of those applications you list have released M1-native versions of their apps yet, which means that the x86 binaries are being translated by Rosetta. Chances are you will have to wait for M1 versions of those apps to be released before controller support works as intended.

Rosetta has controller support. It has access to the USB and Bluetooth devices as normal.

 

[ArPe]

Definitely they’re not native apps, however this Intel app does receive controller input.

Doesn’t need to be native. Apps communicate with the same controller frameworks regardless of CPU architecture.

If an app or title isn’t doing it properly then the developer is the problem. I see new Apple Arcade games with working and broken controller support. All the games tested are x86 at the moment.

 

[Nick.haley]

As for why it's happening I imagine there's a translating bit of software that simply has broken in the move to arm.

To get it working I use native (Apple Silicon) version of Chrome, download User Agent Switcher for Chrome and use this string to appear as a Chromebook: Chrome OS / Mozilla/5.0 (X11; CrOS aarch64 13099.85.0) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/84.0.4147.110 Safari/537.36 with indicator flag ASX as detailed here.