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Dylan DeverillandClaude Opus 5
a087c236b2
Everything about how the controller behaves — paddle bindings, both trackpads, and which kind of pad the game sees — is now configured in one window and saved per game, rather than spread across tray checkboxes that applied everywhere at once. Installed games come from the Start Menu and the packaged-app list. Steam does not shortcut its library with .lnk files, so its games are read from the .url shortcuts it does write; Xbox and Store titles register no shortcut file at all and come from the shell's app list instead. None of these sources can tell a game from any other program, so the picker searches rather than scrolls — a saved profile is pinned, everything else is reached by typing. Trackpads are configured per pad. The previous pair of toggles could only ever describe one pad doing one thing, because a single TrackpadMouse instance was switched between pads by a bool; there are two now. A pad can move the pointer, scroll, feed the DS4 touchpad, or do nothing, and its click is an ordinary binding dispatched down the same path as the paddles — it used to be hardwired to a left click that only fired while that pad drove the mouse. Key bindings can carry Ctrl, Alt, Shift and Win. The modifiers ride in the free top byte of the packed binding, so values written by earlier builds decode unchanged. Windows is chosen from a toggle rather than pressed: the Start menu opens before the page is told anything, which is what made that key unbindable before. Choosing modifiers rather than typing them also keeps combinations like Alt+Tab from being claimed by the system mid-capture. Ctrl+Alt+Delete is refused outright, being the Secure Attention Sequence that no ordinary process can send. Profiles follow the foreground application, and nothing polls to do it. An unelevated process cannot subscribe to process-start events — the WMI class that reports them requires administrator rights, as does an ETW kernel session — but SetWinEventHook reports foreground changes for the cost of one hook and no thread. Focus is also the better question than "is it running": a launcher that starts a game and stays resident answers yes long after the game has exited. Steam profiles are keyed by app id, which a foreground window cannot supply, so Steam's manifests are read to map that id to an install directory; a game's launcher, its anti-cheat service and the game itself all live under it and all resolve to the same profile. Auto Mode still decides whether the controller is ours at all, so a profile only loads while we hold the pad. A balloon names the profile when one loads, under the notification setting, because a profile that quietly fails to match is otherwise invisible. 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".
CMake Targets
| Target | Description |
|---|---|
SteamlessController |
Main system tray application |
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