Gamepad Tester

Connect a controller, press any button and the matching control on the diagram lights up. A button turns orange while you hold it and keeps a teal outline once it has registered, both sticks draw their position as you move them, and the trigger bars fill with the analog value. In two minutes you know whether every button, stick and trigger on the controller still works, and whether either stick has drift.

The tester works with any controller your computer or phone already recognises: Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One and 360, DualSense and DualShock 4, the Switch Pro Controller and Joy-Con, 8BitDo and most generic USB or Bluetooth pads. It runs on the Gamepad API built into every modern browser, so there is nothing to download and nothing leaves your device.

How to use the gamepad tester

1. Connect the controller with a USB cable or pair it over Bluetooth in your operating system's settings. Wired is the most reliable way to test; Bluetooth works too but can hide a cable fault or add latency.
2. Press any button once. Browsers deliberately keep a gamepad hidden until the first press, so the diagram stays dimmed until you do this. The controller's name and the number of buttons and axes then appear above the diagram.
3. Check the layout. The tester picks Xbox, PlayStation or Switch from the controller's vendor ID and relabels the buttons to match. If it guessed wrong, pick the right one above the diagram; Generic shows plain numbers.
4. Press every button once, pull both triggers all the way, click both sticks and roll each stick around its edge. The Not pressed yet list shrinks as you go and the counter reaches the total when everything has registered.
5. Press Reset to clear the tested marks and start over, for example after cleaning a button or switching the controller from Bluetooth to a cable.

Up to four controllers can be connected at once. The P1 to P4 slots above the diagram show what the browser sees; click a slot to switch the diagram to that controller. Each one keeps its own tested marks.

What each part of the screen checks

The diagram, the two stick panels, the trigger bars and the raw data grid all read the same controller state, but each one answers a different question.

Buttons

Every button on a standard controller is drawn on the diagram, including the shoulder buttons, stick clicks (L3 and R3), the d-pad, the Guide or PS button and, on PlayStation pads, the touchpad click. A button that never changes colour however hard you press it is not reaching the computer. A button that lights up when you press a different one is a wiring or firmware fault, not a browser problem.

Triggers

The two triggers are analog on Xbox and PlayStation controllers, so the tester shows them as bars from 0.00 to 1.00 rather than simple on or off. Pull slowly and the bar should fill smoothly. A trigger that jumps straight from zero to full is either a digital trigger (Switch, many arcade sticks) or a controller in a compatibility mode, not a defect.

Sticks and drift

Each stick panel plots the live X and Y values on a crosshair. Let go of the stick and watch where the dot comes to rest. The panel reports the rest offset as a percentage of full travel and colours it: teal under 5%, orange between 5% and 10%, red above. Red means the controller is telling the game you are pushing the stick when you are not, which is the definition of stick drift.

The home page gives you a live reading; the dedicated stick drift test samples both sticks for ten seconds with your hands off and grades the result, so you can compare before and after cleaning or calibration.

Raw Gamepad API data

The grid at the bottom shows the browser's own view of the controller: buttons[0] to buttons[16] (plus any extras) with their value, and axes[0] to axes[3] to four decimal places. This is the same data every web game and emulator receives. It is useful when a controller has a non-standard layout, when you are checking a remapping tool, or when a support agent asks exactly which index a button reports as.

How to read the results

Which controllers and browsers work

Chrome and Edge give the fullest picture: standard mapping for almost every pad, vibration, and the touchpad button on PlayStation controllers. Firefox and Safari read buttons and sticks just as well but do not expose vibration. The table lists what to expect from the controllers most people test.

Controllers that use DirectInput rather than XInput, including many cheap PC pads and most fight sticks, still work but their buttons arrive in the order the manufacturer chose. The tester marks these as non-standard mapping and the diagram labels may not match; use the raw data grid, where the index numbers are always correct.

When to run a controller test

Buying second-hand. Run the full button sweep and the stick drift test before money changes hands. Drift and a worn trigger are the two faults sellers most often leave out of the listing, and both show up here in under a minute.

Before a warranty claim. Support teams ask whether the fault reproduces outside the game. A screenshot of this page with the rest offset in red, or a button that never lights, is the evidence they want.

Games not responding. When a game ignores the controller, this page tells you which side the problem is on. If every button lights up here, the controller and the operating system are fine and the game's input settings or an overlay such as Steam Input are the cause. If nothing lights up, the fault is with the controller, the cable or the pairing.

After cleaning or repair. Run the joystick test to confirm a replacement stick module reaches full travel in every direction, and the vibration test to check that both motors still fire after you reassemble the shell.

Comparing connections. The latency test and polling rate test show the difference between USB and Bluetooth on the same controller, which decides whether a cable is worth running to the couch.

What the test cannot see

The Gamepad API reports buttons, axes and basic rumble, and nothing else. Battery level, the DualSense adaptive trigger resistance, touchpad finger position, motion sensors, the speaker and the light bar are not readable from a web page on any browser. A controller can also behave differently inside a game than here: Steam Input, DS4Windows and similar tools sit between the controller and the game and may remap or hide inputs that this page shows correctly.