switch2controllerpc

Use your Nintendo Switch 2 controllers as a regular PC gamepad. Pair your Joy-Cons or Pro Controller 2 to Windows over Bluetooth and your PC sees them as an Xbox 360 or PlayStation 4 controller — so they Just Work in Steam, Game Pass, emulators, and most native PC games.

Includes high-precision gyro aiming, on-the-fly Joy-Con split / merge, and a button preview so you can verify every button works before booting a game.

Will it work for me?

You need:

• A PC running Windows 10 or 11 with Bluetooth (built in, or a USB Bluetooth dongle).
• A Switch 2 Joy-Con, pair of Joy-Cons, or Pro Controller 2.

You do not need a Switch console or a Nintendo Online account.

Getting started (about 5 minutes)

1. Download

Grab the latest switch2pc.exe from the Releases page. It's a single file — put it anywhere you like (Desktop, Downloads, a folder of your choice).

2. Run it

Double-click switch2pc.exe.

Windows SmartScreen warning — on first launch Windows will likely show "Windows protected your PC / Unknown publisher". This is because the .exe isn't code-signed (signing certs cost money and this is a hobby project, not because the file is unsafe). Click More info → Run anyway.

The first time you launch it, the app checks for ViGEmBus — the virtual-gamepad driver that lets Windows see your controller as an Xbox or PS4 pad. If it's not installed yet:

• You'll see one UAC prompt asking to install it. Click yes.
• The installer runs automatically and the app finishes starting.

You won't see either of these prompts on later launches.

3. Connect a controller

The app window shows a "press button to pair" hint. What you do depends on whether this app has seen your controller before:

• First time with this app — Hold the small Sync button on the controller (recessed, on the side rail of a Joy-Con; on the top edge of the Pro Controller next to the USB-C port) until the player LEDs start flashing. The app pairs it and adds it to a player slot.
• Already used it with this app before — Just press any button on the controller. It reconnects automatically.

Important: do not pair the controller through Windows Settings → Bluetooth. This app uses its own (faster, lower-latency) pairing path. If you previously paired the controller via Windows, remove it from Windows Bluetooth first, then sync it here.

That's it. The controller appears as a card at the top of the app window and is now usable as a gamepad in any game.

The app window, explained

Player cards (top of the window)

Each connected controller gets a card with a live preview of its inputs. Press any button on the physical controller and you'll see the matching button light up red on the diagram — handy for confirming every button works before you load a game.

Each card has:

• ✕ — disconnect this controller (the app keeps running so you can reconnect later).
• Split / Merge (when two Joy-Cons are connected) — combine the pair into one virtual gamepad, or split them into two single-player gamepads.
• V / H (on a single Joy-Con) — vertical hold (one hand) or horizontal hold (sideways, like a tiny NES pad).
• L / R (on combined Joy-Cons) — which Joy-Con's gyro the game receives.
• Vibrate — buzzes the controller. Useful for figuring out which physical controller is "player 1".

General settings

• Emulation: Xbox vs PS4 — pick what your controller pretends to be.
  • Xbox (default): looks like an Xbox 360 pad. Works in basically every PC game.
  • PS4: looks like a DualShock 4, with native motion sensing. Pick this for games that have proper PS4 / gyro support.
• Layout: Xbox vs Switch — Switch and Xbox have A/B/X/Y in different positions on the face.
  • Xbox: position-based. Pressing the bottom face button reports as A.
  • Switch: label-based. The button physically labeled A reports as A, even though it's in a different spot than an Xbox A. Pick this if you want what the controller says to match what the game shows.
• Joy-Con Mouse — turn this on to use a Joy-Con as a mouse by sliding it on a flat surface (it has an optical sensor on the rail).
• Mouse Sens. — how fast the mouse moves when you slide the Joy-Con.

Gyro settings

The Switch 2 controllers have a gyroscope, which lets you aim by tilting the controller. This is much more precise than a thumbstick once you get used to it.

• Mode
  • FPS (yaw) — turning the controller left/right turns the camera. The setting for shooters.
  • Steering (roll) — tilting the controller works like a steering wheel. Good for racing games.
• Sensitivity — how fast the camera moves per degree of tilt.
• Activation
  • Toggle — press the gyro-trigger button once to enable aiming, again to disable.
  • Hold — only aim while you hold the trigger.
• Stick Assist — adds extra fine-tune from the right stick on top of gyro motion. Useful for quick 180s while gyro handles the precision.
• Calibrate Gyro — place the controller flat and still on a desk, then click. The 2-second countdown measures your controller's "resting" state so it doesn't drift. Do this once per controller; redo if you ever notice drift. Calibration is saved per controller (by MAC address) in config.yaml.

Custom button mappings

Switch 2 controllers have buttons that PC games don't know about (GL/GR back buttons, Chat, the rail SR/SL on detached Joy-Cons, Home, Capture). Map them to whatever you like:

• Pro Buttons — the GL/GR back paddles on the Pro Controller, plus the Chat / C button.
• Joy-Con Rail — Left SR and Right SL (the rail buttons that face you when a Joy-Con is detached).
• Shortcuts — HOME and Capture. Map them to launch Steam Big Picture, the Xbox Game Bar, your Steam library, etc.

Using it with Steam

Steam adds its own controller layer that can double-remap buttons on top of what this app sends. To stop that:

1. Open Steam → Settings → Controller → click Show Advanced Settings.
2. Turn on Enable Steam Input for Xbox controllers.
3. Set PlayStation Controller Support to Enabled (not "Enabled in Games w/o Support").

Now Steam passes through what this app sends without re-remapping.

Troubleshooting

Nothing happens when I press a button on the controller.

• Make sure Bluetooth is actually turned on in Windows.
• If you previously paired the controller with Windows directly, open Settings → Bluetooth, remove it, and try again with the Sync button.
• Hold Sync until the LEDs flash — a quick tap doesn't trigger pairing mode.

The controller pairs, then disconnects after a few seconds.

• Another app might be grabbing it (Steam in controller-setup mode, BetterJoy, JoyToKey, etc.). Close those and restart switch2pc.
• The battery may be very low. Charge the controller for a few minutes and retry.

Gyro slowly drifts when I'm not moving.

• Click Calibrate Gyro with the controller flat and still on a desk.

The ViGEmBus install failed or got skipped.

• Download and install it manually from the ViGEmBus releases page, then relaunch switch2pc.

The window looks blurry or scaled weirdly.

• The app sets itself DPI-aware on launch. If it still looks off, right-click switch2pc.exe → Properties → Compatibility → Change high DPI settings → "Override high DPI scaling behavior", set to "Application".

Building from source

If you want to hack on the code:

git clone https://github.com/CareyScott/switch2controllerpc
cd switch2controllerpc

python -m venv .venv
.\.venv\Scripts\Activate.ps1
pip install -e .[dev]

# Run from source
python -m switch2pc

# Build the .exe
.\scripts\build.ps1
# Output lands in dist\switch2pc.exe

Requires Python 3.11+ on Windows 10 or 11.

How it works (technical sketch)

• discoverer.py uses bleak to scan for Switch 2 Bluetooth LE advertisements (Nintendo manufacturer ID 0x0553) and pair via GATT.
• controller.py parses the controller's input reports and drives vibration, LEDs, and calibration. A 1 kHz interpolation thread keeps mouse motion smooth even when reports arrive less often.
• virtual_controller.py uses vgamepad (over ViGEmBus) to expose either an XInput Xbox 360 device or a DualShock 4 device to Windows.
• bootstrap/vigem.py checks for ViGEmBus on launch and offers to install it if missing.
• gui.py plus preview.py are the tkinter UI and the live-input preview canvas.

About this fork

This repo started as a clean repackage of TommyWabg/switch2-controllers-windows10-gyro, which itself forked Nadeflore/switch2-controllers. The controller protocol code is upstream's work; this fork adds packaging and first-run UX:

• First-run ViGEmBus bootstrap — the app detects whether the driver is installed and runs the official installer with a single UAC prompt if not. No separate install step.
• Standard Python project layout (src/, pyproject.toml) so contributors can install with pip install -e .[dev].
• UTF-8 everywhere (upstream requirements.txt was UTF-16 LE and tripped some tooling).
• No leaked personal data — the shipped default config has no MAC-address-keyed gyro calibration; each user calibrates their own controllers on first run.
• CI release pipeline that builds a signed-when-possible .exe on every tagged release.
• License — MIT, with attribution to both upstream authors.

Credits

• Nadeflore — original Switch 2 controller protocol reverse engineering.
• TommyWabg — Windows 10/11 gyro fork that this repo is based on.
• Nefarius — ViGEmBus, the kernel driver that makes virtual-controller emulation possible on Windows.
• yannbouteiller — vgamepad Python bindings.

License

MIT. See the LICENSE file for the attribution note on upstream code.