Dylan DeverillandClaude Opus 5
588b2cc9bc
A profile whose game is no longer installed could not be seen, edited or deleted. SendInitState walks the installed list and looks profiles up against it, so an entry with no installed game was never sent to the page — while staying live in m_gameProfiles, still matched by MatchProfile, and under the new mode still turning the controller on. Invisible and working at once, and the case where deleting a profile is most likely to be what someone wants. What kept it unreachable is that the page names games by index into the installed list, and an orphan has no index. Raw ids cannot cross that channel: they hold non-ASCII and backslashes the parser does not unescape. So the indices are extended instead — one appended entry per orphaned profile, past the real games, with m_installedCount marking where they start. Apply and delete then work through the paths that already existed, unchanged, and SendInitState's profile loop picks the orphans up on its own because it iterates the same list. Their names come from displayName, which was stored for exactly this: naming a profile when the installed list cannot. Profiles older than that field fall back to the raw id. Nothing is pruned automatically. Not being in the installed list is not the same as being uninstalled — a deleted Start Menu shortcut, a Steam library on a drive that is currently disconnected, or a game whose shortcut was never created all look identical from here, and quietly deleting a profile in any of those cases would destroy real work to tidy a cosmetic problem. They are labelled and left, and if the game returns they simply stop being orphans. An enumeration that finds nothing at all is treated as knowing nothing rather than as everything being uninstalled. A COM failure reading shell:AppsFolder is far likelier than an empty PC, and flagging every profile as missing on that evidence would invite someone to delete all of them. Deleting an orphan drops its picker entry along with the profile. The entry only existed because the profile referred to it, and left behind it stops being pinned — after which the only section it could appear in is the one labelled INSTALLED GAMES, which it never was. 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