Wipe out default gamepad keys

[Jopp-gh]

AntiMicroX remapping works great.

Problem

The problem is, AntiMicroX triggers together with default gamepad keys.

• AntiMicroX should wipe out/suppress default gamepad keys before to apply custom keys.
• Or deactivate gamepad keys, as keyboard input is way more versatile.

Alternatives

I tried to use windows tools like x360ce but tools like this need additional libs to run on Linux. An easier method would be to have AntiMicroX do wipe out default gamepad keys.

[MLuc24]

It can't suppress them, and that's architectural rather than a missing option.

AntiMicroX reads your pad and then injects keyboard and mouse events through uinput (src/eventhandlers/uinputeventhandler.cpp, with other/60-antimicrox-uinput.rules for the permissions). It never takes the pad away from anyone — there's no EVIOCGRAB anywhere in the tree, which is the ioctl a program would use to claim an evdev device exclusively. The "grab" you'll find in the source is the key-grabber dialog in the UI, not device grabbing.

So the model is additive by construction: the game still sees a gamepad because nothing is hiding it, and it also sees your synthetic keypresses. Adding a "suppress default keys" toggle would mean AntiMicroX grabbing the device outright, which changes what happens to every other program on the system while it's running.

The practical fix is to hide the pad from the receiving application instead. Most games use SDL, and SDL has a hint for exactly this:

SDL_GAMECONTROLLER_IGNORE_DEVICES=0x045e/0x028e

(VID/PID of the pad you want that process to ignore — lsusb gives you both). Set it only for the game's launch command and AntiMicroX keeps working normally, because it's per-process rather than system-wide. There's also SDL_GAMECONTROLLER_IGNORE_DEVICES_EXCEPT if the inverse is easier to express.

If it's a Steam game, disabling Steam Input for that specific title usually gets you the same result with less typing, since Steam is often what's presenting the pad to the game in the first place.

The x360ce comparison is worth unpacking: that works on Windows by substituting a DLL the game loads, which is a different mechanism from anything available here — the Linux equivalent really is "stop the game from opening the device", not "intercept it after it does".

[Jopp-gh]

I didn't answer immediately, as I had to test it out first: your hint works like a charm 😊

Maybe some udev rule could be handy, but as you highlighted here:

Set it only for the game's launch command and AntiMicroX keeps working normally, because it's per-process rather than system-wide.

I've seen, not all games need this, therefore I'm OK to keep things the way you suggested it. Thanks!