Dylan DeverillandClaude Opus 5
2d93ceba28
Both of these follow from the mode added in the previous commit. Profiles used to be rare — you made one when you wanted a game to play differently — and it turned them routine, because under "off unless a game profile is running" a profile is also how you say a game should have the controller at all. Two things that did not matter when profiles were rare matter once there are a dozen. The first is that every profile was a full copy of the controls, forked from the default at the moment it was created and never tracking it again. A profile made only to turn the controller on had no business carrying controls of its own, and improving the default did nothing for any of them. useDefaultMappings makes such a profile a follower: ActiveProfile resolves it to the default rather than copying anything, so editing the default reaches every game following it without a single stored profile being touched. Games never saved before start out following; games already saved keep what they were saved as, and the stored controls stay written either way, so unticking gives a game back exactly the controls it had. False is the stored default, because every profile written before this had controls of its own and reading those back as followers would have discarded them. The second is that there was no way to remove a profile. Creating one is a couple of clicks and undoing it was impossible, which is a poor trade in any case and a worse one now that an unwanted profile also turns the controller on by itself. The delete path reuses what was already there: the registry writer already pruned subkeys past the end of a shrunken map, and ActiveProfile already resolves a missing id to the default, so the runtime consequence of deleting the live game's profile is a fallback that already existed. Like applying, it makes no control decision while the window is open — a row may be listening for a button press, and dropping the controller under it would end that mid-capture. Closing the window re-evaluates, which is what actually lets go. The page keeps one modal rather than gaining a second. Escape, the backdrop and the keydown handler all assume exactly one thing can sit above everything else, and a second would have had to be taught to each of them. Applying now pushes unconditionally instead of comparing the edited id against the live one. That comparison cannot see the new case: edit the default while a following game is live and the ids do not match, but the live controls have just changed. Only ActiveProfile knows about following, so it decides. The game index the page sends moved into GameIndexFrom, shared by apply and delete so one place decides what a valid index is. It also tightened apply, which used to let a malformed index fall through to the same branch as an absent one and be read as the default profile. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
SteamlessController
A lightweight Windows system tray app that lets you use a Steam Controller as a standard gamepad — without Steam running.
When Steamless Mode is active, the app disables the controller's built-in keyboard/mouse emulation (lizard mode) and exposes it as a virtual Xbox 360 controller via ViGEmBus, making it compatible with any game that supports XInput or the Xbox controller.
Features
- NEW in 1.9 - Bluetooth! Use the controller wired, through the dongle, or paired over Bluetooth LE
- NEW in 1.8 - Automatically enable/disable based on if Steam is running, or a Steam game is running!
- NEW in 1.8 - Advanced debugging and local logging to help diagnose issues
- Rumble Support v2.0
- Support for multiple Steam Controllers! Long live split screen!
- New shiny UI for remapping L4/L5 R4/L5 back buttons!
- Support for Xbox OR PlayStation controllers - with PS Touchpad and Gyro plumbing.
- System tray icon shows connection and mode status
- Steamless Mode — disables lizard mode and exposes controller as Xbox 360 gamepad
- Trackpad Mouse — use the right (or left) trackpad as a mouse cursor
- Back Buttons for Clicking — the upper paddles (L4/R4) left-click by default; rebind any paddle to a gamepad button, right click, or Off
- Use Left Trackpad Instead — mirror all trackpad/back-button functionality to the left side for left-handed users
- Start with Windows — launch automatically at login
- Settings persist across restarts
Requirements
To run
- Windows 10 or later (64-bit)
- ViGEmBus driver installed
- Steam Controller — wired USB (PID
0x1302), wireless dongle (PID0x1304), or Bluetooth LE (PID0x1303, pair via Windows Bluetooth settings) - Steam closed (Steam claims the controller when running)
To build
- Visual Studio 2022 with the Desktop development with C++ workload
- CMake 3.20 or later (included with Visual Studio, or install separately)
- Windows SDK 10.0.22000 or later (installed via Visual Studio Installer)
Building
git clone https://github.com/your-username/SteamlessController.git
cd SteamlessController
cmake -B build
cmake --build build --target SteamlessController
The executable will be at build\Debug\SteamlessController.exe.
For a release build:
cmake -B build/release -G "Visual Studio 18 2025"
cmake --build build/release --config Release --target SteamlessController
If you have Visual Studio 2022, replace
"Visual Studio 18 2025"with"Visual Studio 17 2022".
Building the installer
The installer is compiled from resources\InnoInstallerScript.iss with Inno Setup. It needs two things a fresh clone does not have.
Release builds of all three executables it packages. The command in the previous section builds only the tray app:
cmake --build build/release --config Release --target SteamlessController
cmake --build build/release --config Release --target SteamlessDeviceCycle
cmake --build build/release --config Release --target ViGEmBusProbe
SteamlessDeviceCycle is the elevated helper that restarts the controller's device node. ViGEmBusProbe is how Setup checks whether the driver actually installed, and it stays in the install folder afterwards as a diagnostic.
The ViGEmBus driver installer, which is not in this repository — it is a 6 MB vendored binary, and *.exe is gitignored. Download it from ViGEmBus releases and place it here:
resources\ViGEmBus_1.22.0_x64_x86_arm64.exe
The filename must match #define ViGEmSetup at the top of the script. Inno resolves [Files] sources when it compiles, so a missing or differently named payload fails the build outright rather than producing an installer that silently ships no driver. If you update the ViGEmBus version, change the #define to match the new filename.
CMake Targets
| Target | Description |
|---|---|
SteamlessController |
Main system tray application |
SteamlessDeviceCycle |
Elevated helper that disables and re-enables the controller's device node, run as an on-demand scheduled task. Shipped by the installer. |
ViGEmBusProbe |
Reports whether a ViGEm bus is present by enumerating its interface. Used by Setup to verify the driver installed, and shipped as a diagnostic. |
SteamProbe |
Console diagnostic tool — dumps raw HID report bytes as you interact with the controller. Useful for protocol research. |
RawControllerProbe |
Checks whether Windows.Gaming.Input.RawGameController can enumerate the Steam Controller (requires WinRT). |
How it works
The Steam Controller exposes a vendor HID collection (usage page 0xFF00) that carries all game input in a 54-byte report (ID 0x42) at ~60 Hz. By default the firmware runs in lizard mode, emulating a keyboard and mouse so the controller works without drivers.
SteamlessController sends HID feature reports to disable lizard mode, then reads the raw input reports and translates them into a virtual Xbox 360 controller via ViGEmBus. A background heartbeat re-sends the disable command every 800 ms to keep lizard mode off.
The full input report layout is documented in src/steam/SteamController.h.
Third-party
- ViGEmClient — MIT License, built from source as a static library