Questions

Brawlhalla controller not working on a Mac

Brawlhalla is free, it is on the Mac through Steam, and it is a controller game on every other platform. On a Mac, a pad that does nothing in it is a common complaint, and PS5 pads come up most. Here is what to check, in order, and the fix that works when none of them do.

Steps

1. Open System Settings, Game Controllers and press a button to confirm the Mac sees the pad.
2. Quit Brawlhalla, wake the controller, and launch the game again from Steam.
3. Flip the Steam Input override in Brawlhalla's Properties, Controller, and try Big Picture.
4. If the game still ignores it, map the controller to Brawlhalla's keyboard keys with InputConfig.

1. Check the Mac sees the controller

Open System Settings, click Game Controllers in the sidebar, and press a button. If the controller is not there, or nothing lights up, it is a pairing problem: forget it in Bluetooth and pair it again. PS5 pairing steps, Xbox pairing steps. A pad still paired to a console keeps jumping back to it, so unpair it there first.

2. Connect it before you launch

Quit Brawlhalla completely, wake the controller, press a button, then launch the game from Steam. Some games only look for controllers at start-up, and a pad that fell asleep while the game was open may not be picked up again.

3. Steam Input, and Big Picture

In the Steam library, right-click Brawlhalla, open Properties, then Controller, and change the override: try Disable Steam Input, relaunch, then try Enable. Some players also report that the game picked the pad up when launched from Steam's Big Picture mode. Both are free to try and take a minute. Why the Steam Input switch matters.

4. Look in Brawlhalla's own controls

Open the game's settings and find its controls page. If it offers nothing for your controller, the game is not reading it, whatever macOS and Steam say, and the rest of this page is your fix.

InputConfig is free on the Mac App Store. macOS 14 or later, no account, no tracking, open source.

Why this happens more on a Mac

On an Apple silicon Mac, Brawlhalla runs through Rosetta 2, according to player reports on AppleGamingWiki, and reports of the game not seeing controllers on M1 Macs go back to 2021. The Mac build gets far less testing than the Windows one. None of that is something you can fix from your side, which is why the keyboard route below exists.

The fix that always works: play it with keyboard keys

Brawlhalla has full keyboard controls, and a keyboard is never undetected. InputConfig reads your controller and sends the keys the game already listens to, so Brawlhalla sees a keyboard and you hold the pad. It is free, it is on the Mac App Store, and I built it because my own hands need a controller for things that were never made for one.

There is no ready-made Brawlhalla layout in the app yet, so this one you set up yourself, once:

1. In Brawlhalla, open the controls settings and write down the keyboard keys for move, jump, light attack, heavy attack, dodge and throw. Change any you like first.
2. In InputConfig, make a new preset. With your controller selected, choose Automatically insert available inputs and every stick, trigger and button gets a row.
3. Give each row a key: the left stick and the D-pad to the four movement keys, the bottom face button to jump, the left face button to light attack, the top face button to heavy attack, the right face button to dodge, a bumper to throw. Change the arrangement to whatever your hands like.
4. Press Activate, then in the game press each button once to check it does one thing. If a press does two things, Brawlhalla is also reading the pad; turn one of them off.
5. Add Brawlhalla to the preset's auto-switch list, and switch on automatic switching in Settings, Advanced, and the preset turns on whenever the game is in front.

Laying out every button at once and per-app auto-switch have the details.

PS5 controllers in particular

A DualSense pairs with a Mac by holding Create and the PS button until the light flashes. If it pairs but games ignore it, the PS5 controller not working on a Mac page goes through the other causes. The keyboard route above does not care which brand of pad you hold.

Questions

Related

• Controller works in Steam but not in the game on a Mac
• PS5 controller not working on a Mac
• Map every button at once
• Per-app profiles that switch by themselves
• How to use two controllers on a Mac

Free. macOS 14 or later. No account, nothing leaves your Mac. Open source on GitHub.