Steam Deck Controller working in Windows with Handheld Companion

hello everybody so if you're running Windows on your steam deck one of the first things you might notice is that the steam deck controller isn't recognized in Windows the trackpad defaults to working as a mouse and the shoulder triggers work for Mouse clicks but if you run a game without using steam the controls just won't work so if I wanted to play my games from the PC game pass description or Battlenet or maybe some of the free games I collected through the epic game store I'll have to get Windows to see the steam deck controller as a controller so luckily there are a few workarounds that are aail able I've tested most of them but my favorite so far is one called handheld companion so handheld companion has a lot of neat features besides just making the controller work though as you can see I'm running Diablo I and it does recognize the controller so all the skills are showing the correct button labels handle companion also brings a lot of the features steo Wells has built in like it shows the hardware stats overlay at the top of the screen you can also open up a quick tools menu to access additional options and settings I haven't worked with much of the advance advaned features such as power management but it seems to offer that as well there's also a huge amount of customization you can do as far as button configurations go it's not as much as Steam input but it's pretty close I have noticed some bugs with various features though for example the hardware stats overlay seems to make the game stutter or freeze for a second when you change the amount of info it displays some games continue on after the stutter but some of them might crash to the desktop so for now I'm just not using that if I need to check on the frames per second I'm getting through a game I'll just use the Xbox game bar and there's also a bug with the quick tools menu taking a couple of buttons presses to show up this is not a big deal but I also noticed it happens with the Xbox guide button too in general though I mainly use it just so I can have controller support with the steam deck controls and that case it seems to be Rock Solid and bug free for every game I tried with it so let's move on to where to get it from and how to install and set it up so I'll put a link to the website in the description below but you can also go to Google and just search for handhel companion as one word and from the results basically you'll be looking for their GitHub page so here's the handhel companion GitHub page if you scroll down below the file list you'll actually see quite a bit of information on what the handle companion can do so one of the cool things is that you can trick Windows into thinking you have either an Xbox style controller or a PlayStation controller because the PlayStation controller you use for PlayStation Remote Play or their now service also it says here while I'm us using it on the steam deck it also works for other handl PCS such as the Rog Ally other windows-based handls probably don't have a problem with their controls working but I think if you want all the additional features handout companion offers it might be worth a try to put it on there but anyways to download the software you want to go back up to the page and look on the right for releases section and choose the latest version the developers seem very active in fixing bugs and adding features so the newest version is usually not very old and the update notes are very Det detailed if you want to read through them head down to the asset section and download the handle companion executable file if you're using an overly secure browser like Edge you might have to jump through some menus to allow it to download basically you have to keep telling it that you want to keep this file and you do want to download it and it is safe as far as you know but after it is complete just run the download so my screen capture blacks out during the Windows security notification so I'll show the external view for just a second but essentially you just have to hit yes install so run through the install hitting next a couple of times I'm going to uncheck the desktop icon because I like to put mine in the start menu but hit next a few more times and let it install it's going to go download some required components so it might take a while depending on your download speed so from what I can tell handle companion uses a few different software and it gives you an all-in-one install and a pretty interface to get get them all working together so this means you might see a few new apps in your taskbar or the start menu after everything is complete so restart when you're ready and we'll go through a software startup and initial setup to get it started so now that Windows load again we can run the handle companion app I already added it to my start menu but if you also didn't create a desktop shortcut you can find it in all apps under handle companion run the app and allow it to make some changes you'll have to click yes on the security thing again so I have a mouse connected because once the app starts up it'll disable the trackpads but you can also use a touchcreen or navigate the app with the controller itself after it started so this is the Handel companion app that shows the steam deck controller is emulating an Xbox controller this will probably be the normal configuration because the seam deck buttons and the controller layout actually mimics the Xbox controller so if games show button labels and controller inputs it should match up pretty well now you can change it to emulate a PlayStation dual shock 4 controller but I only recommend this if you're going to be using your steam deck for PlayStation Remote Play From a PlayStation console or the PlayStation Now streaming service since they specifically require a PlayStation controller but for now we'll leave it as an Xbox controller there's a couple of other settings below which you can change if you'd like I've noticed the steam deck vibration isn't very good so you can turn it off here if you like to the profile section is probably where you'll be spend most of your time I'm just going to edit the default profile and make one change that you might want to consider two so head down to the bottom and click on controller layout here you can change what each button does you can even set the rear trigger buttons if you wanted to so I'm here to change the options button though as you can see the steam button and the options button are both set to the guide button but by default the guide button is the Xbox button on the Xbox controller and it basically just opens the game bar and we don't don't need both buttons to set to it so I'm going to disable the options button next we'll go to the hotkeys menu we want to set the summon quick tools menu to the options button click on press to Define trigger here then press the physical options button on the steam deck you'll see that it set it to the options button click and now you can bring up the quick tools with that button so now that we did that you can actually set what you want to show up in the quick tools menu you can click the pin icon next to the listed item for example if you scroll down there's a selection for the Escape key on a keyboard click on the pin next to it and when you open the quick tools you'll see a button for the Escape key on it which might be handy if you're playing a very old game that requires it to get out of menus or something you can also set custom shortcuts this way for certain key mappings the last section you might want to look at is the settings I'm not going to make any changes but here you can set handle companion to run on Startup or minimize on close instead of shutting down I usually like keeping mine all manual though since I'm not always using my windows steam deck to game so let's get out there and try running a game before I do that I'll turn on the overlay so you can see the hardware stats this is also accessible through the quick tools menu there's four icons on the bottom of the menu and the second one controls the overlay I like using extended because it shows the most stats and it's also in a line at the top so it's not in the way I'm going to turn on CIA Stars while it's loading here's what the minimal overlay looks like basically it just shows the frame rate now if you want to change it in game it might stutter or freeze so try not to do change it too often also I just realized that the startup screen is a spoiler since I completed the game so I'll black it out and post I really like the versatility of this quick tools menu there was a couple times I had to bring up the keyboard to type in something in certain games and I really love the fact that they put the brightness controls here so now I can change it without going back out to Windows as you can see the game is showing controller button prompts and the controls are working well I hope this video helped I haven't tried anything really Advanced with handle companion yet so if anyone finds something really cool about it let me know in the comments until next time see you

Channel: Loaded0

Views: 16,427

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Id: kOTGWLI4YS0

Length: 8min 10sec (490 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 03 2023