Dylan DeverillandClaude Opus 5
838cd7ae68
Measured on a four-slot receiver (PID 1304), the gap between ConfigFlags landing in the registry and the devnode admitting to problem 22 ran from 96 ms to 330 ms across its slots, on an idle machine: 22:27:30.533 MI_03=0/1 flag written, node still reports healthy 22:27:30.863 MI_03=22/1 node catches up, 330 ms later The previous window was 450 ms, which covers that measurement and very little else. Judging a disable inside the gap is the failure this window exists to prevent — it reads as "the disable was refused", which skips the re-enable and clears the pending record while the flag is already committed, leaving a devnode switched off with nothing tracking it. A slower or busier machine has no headroom there, so size it for the bad case: ~950 ms. It is only ever spent on the path about to conclude the disable failed, and a device that goes down promptly still pays none of it. 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