I have a MacBook Air and I want to get a controller to play games with. What would you guys recommend? I play mostly Steam games. I'm thinking it might be smart to get one of the newer controllers because they seem more comfortable, but I don't know how the driver support is. What do you guys think?

Rogue Legacy worked really well. For some reason Bastion didn't. That's all I've tried.

Driver support seems fine (for both XBONE and PS4). Having touched a PS4 controller, I'd say get it.

The good news is that connecting it to any PC (Mac or Windows) is pretty straightforward using guides like this. On my PC, it even recognizes the audio channel as a bluetooth speaker, so I think I could get PC audio out through the controller.

The bad news is that most games on Steam support XInput controls (used by 360 controllers) and not DirectInput (used by the PS4 controller). On the Mac, it may not be usable at all; on the PC, there's a tool for emulating an XInput device using a PS4 controller that works okay, though you'll want to test it on a game by game basis, since games that actually support the PS4 controller (Transistor and Broforce so far in my testing) will then register two controllers from one set of inputs.

On OSX, you'll probably need to connect the controller via Bluetooth, then use software like Joystick Mapper to map buttons to the keyboard. A pain, but it will work.

There is DS4 driver support for Mac?

Do you think I'd be better off getting a 360 controller then? I'm trying to make this as easy as possible. I'd need the PC adapter, right? After that would the gamepad automatically configure with Steam on Mac? Thanks.

Most game work fine with this, some don't. I just grabbed a 360 controller after a while. Works better.

I think I got a faulty DS4, but that's for another thread. My sticks are really loose and I'm still trying to figure out why people like this controller. I have trouble being accurate with the DS4 (on any game). But that's for another thread. But yeah, DS4 works just fine with PC 95% of the time. Only a handful of games won't work. Of course you'll have 360 button prompts on most games, but it's fine.

I've been using a DS4 controller with my laptop computer for awhile and haven't had much issue with the software, the newest version seems to work better for my setup at least. I have to make an effort to run the software before i turn on the controller. but other then that its fine.

Couple tips. Look though the app, there's some button combos that turn off/on the touchpad and quickly shutting off the controller faster then holding the PS button for like 10 secs that makes its better.

@mb said:

If you connect it using a cable, the DS4 shows up as a standard USB HID gamepad. You can also pair it over Bluetooth, but support seems to be a bit spottier.

@wolverine said:

I'd recommend a Dualshock 4 over a 360 controller. Because it registers as a standard HID controller, OS X supports it natively over USB and Bluetooth and doesn't require button remapping. Bluetooth can be a bit unreliable, though. You can get a 360 controller to work with OS X, but it requires third-party drivers and a remapping tool like Joystick Mapper.

Using a DS4 with an XInput wrapper like DS4Windows, the creator of which is a member here I believe (paging @jhebbel), works flawlessly over both USB and Bluetooth. All of the buttons are mapped like a 360 controller by default, and you can use the trackpad as a mouse input, change the colour and behaviour of the lightbar, and even setup macros for keyboard inputs and such. I've been using a DS4 on my PC with various XInput wrappers for about six months now and I can highly recommend the experience.

I'm at a loss for what all these drivers are for? I guess you get more functionality or something?

I plugged my PS4 controller in days after getting it at launch. Went to Device Manager, and said "Treat as 3rd Party Controller" or "Generic Controller" or something like that.

Done, end of story.

@geraltitude: The issue is many games are now adopting XInput as the sole input allowed, well DS4 uses DirectInput, so that forces us to use a wrapper (like mine, thanks for the plug @chumley_marchbanks ;-)) or stick with a x360/1 controller. Additionally using the wrappers add more functionality than can really even be listed in a forum post, but I believe it definitely gives the edge to the DS4 over other controllers, in fact I've had users approach me who already have x360 controllers wanting me to make the controllers work in my app to allow them the extra features.

@markonfire: Small correction, Audio is not possible on PC, the DS4 firmware actually shuts off the audio feature unless the HID handshake comes from an actual PS4. The hurdles to get around this are no small task and of the other fork developers which I keep in contact with the consus has been unanimous that the work required to try to hack such a feature is not something that any of us want to undertake, especially on what is for most of us a spare time project.

oh okay, so probably just the game I was playing allowed DirectInput and that's why it was just plug and play? (OR AM I TOTALLY LOST?)

What I thought happened was that I told my PC to basically pretend the DS4 is a 360 controller, but (as you can tell) I really have no idea what's going on under the hood. Just wanted to say for other users of the forum that I didn't download anything and was OK using the DS4, but seems irrelevant. As a bomb duder we can obviously trust your wrapper, so no reason to be weird about downloads.

@geraltitude: Some games being released do still support both standards, but that number seems to be shrinking especially games from Microsoft studios, you likely have not had experience with any of these games yet. Dark Souls 2 being the one that caused the most upset when released with only XInput support. But aside from this, even users that do only play DirectInput compatible games find use for the tool though, trackpad as mouse support being one of the most helpful features.

Hopefully the PS4 controller will lead to developers stopping this trend of xinput only games; getting any of my controllers has been a royal pain ever since this became a thing.

Most of the games I play where this is an issue, you'd want to use a d-pad so obviously I wouldn't want to use a 360 controller.

@belegorm: Actually the trend is going the other direction, with MS having its hand in so many development studios it has been trying to force the XInput only standard for years, and now with official x1 drivers out expect the trend to continue. Pure BS MS tactics but that fine, as long as DirectInput/XInput wrappers exist we will still be able to use our DS controllers.

Yep. It's pretty much all I use to play games on the Pc.

Edit: Never owned a mac. My comment is void now the thread title changed. Nothing to see here. Just keep reading down.

I'd imagine it would. I have a 2008 iMac and it's had native DualShock 3 drivers for as long as I can remember.

Burnout Paradise felt really good to play with a PS4 controller.

@jhebbel: Ah, yeah, it seemed too good to be true that it would be that easy. It would be a neat feature but you're right that it should be lower priority compared to a lot of things.

Here's a question: anyone think Steam might just handle this some day? It can already detect a PS4 versus a 360 controller; maybe someday it will just flip on XInput emulation as needed eventually. Would certainly make Big Picture easier to use.

@nodima: Having drivers is not the issue, the DS4 just uses DirectInput and windows PCs have had those drivers since doom lol.

@markonfire: Cannot discount anything, but I can't imagine why steam would do this, detecting the difference is a basic thing any program can do, but I doubt they would get into controller configurations any more than they already have, which is not at all.

I played a bunch of Angry VIdeo Game Nerd Adventures on it. For a difficult action-platformer, it worked very, very well.

Nope, I don't want to risk fucking it up. I rather just buy a controller that's built for a PC.

Edited thread title from "computer" to "Mac"

@falserelic: DS4s use DirectInput, essentially they ARE built for PC...

@jhebbel: Works great with DirectInput, issue is it doesn't work with Xinput which is what the vast majority of games supports now. Which is why you need tools like DS4Windows to use the DS4 with most modern games. If people just used directinput it wouldn't be an issue at all.

@amafi: Correct, but with MS pressuring the use of their standard this will never happen, more and more games are releasing with XInput only support.

@jhebbel: To be fair, directinput is also their standard. Only other standard I can think of is SDL which is super annoying to work with compared with either direct- or xinput.

@amafi: yea, but it was developed as an open standard, none of the licensing that you have to go through to become XInput compliant... MS reminds me a lot of Apple sometimes.