Questions

How to use a racing wheel on a Mac

Yes, with limits. Plug the wheel in by USB, with a USB-C adapter on a MacBook, and the Mac sees most wheels with no driver. Whether a game uses it is the hard part. Since macOS 13 Ventura, Apple supports a few popular wheels, and it named the Logitech G29 and G920, but only games written for that support see them. Most other wheels are plain USB devices that the Mac reads and most games ignore.

I make InputConfig, a free Mac app that turns a wheel and pedals into the keys and mouse movement a keyboard racer expects. It does not do force feedback, and it cannot make a game think a wheel is plugged in. Here is what works on a Mac, what does not, and how to set it up.

What macOS does with a racing wheel

There are two paths, and the one your wheel takes decides almost everything.

• Apple's racing wheel support, macOS 13 and later. Apple added support in macOS Ventura for popular wheels, pedals and shifters, and named the Logitech G29 and G920. A game has to be written for it, and Apple's developer documentation says only one app can receive a wheel's input at a time. These wheels are not gamepads, so do not expect one under Game Controllers in System Settings; that list is for gamepads.
• Most other wheels. Thrustmaster, Fanatec, Moza, PXN, Hori, and older Logitech wheels such as the G27 and Driving Force GT reach the Mac as standard USB HID devices, the same kind of device as a joystick. The Mac reads the wheel, the pedals and the buttons, but a game only uses them if it reads HID devices itself, and few Mac games do. If the wheel has a mode switch, use the position its manual gives for PC.

To check that the Mac sees a wheel at all, open System Information and look under USB. If it is listed there, the cable and the wheel are fine, and the question is the game.

Racing games on a Mac, and which ones take a wheel

The honest picture: most of the sims people buy a wheel for have no Mac version. iRacing, Assetto Corsa, Assetto Corsa Competizione and the F1 series do not run natively on macOS, and Gran Turismo is PlayStation only. The PC games reach a Mac through a stream from a PC, a cloud service, or a Windows wrapper such as CrossOver, and whether a wheel survives that trip depends on the stream or the wrapper, not on the Mac.

Native Mac games with controller settings of their own are the other route. Euro Truck Simulator 2 and American Truck Simulator run natively, and Mac players use wheels in them, with mixed reports on newer macOS and Apple silicon. Start in the game's own controls screen. If the game lists the wheel and the wheel steers, you are done and need nothing else.

When the game ignores the wheel, or lists it and nothing moves, the fallback is to turn the wheel into keys, which every keyboard-driven racer understands. That is the rest of this page.

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

Logitech G29, G920 and G923

These are the wheels people ask about most, and the answer is mixed. Apple named the G29 and G920 when it added wheel support, so a Mac game written for Apple's support can use their wheel, pedals and shifter. Games that read wheels the older, direct way are a different story. One Mac player on the SCS Software forum reported a G29 that showed up in Euro Truck Simulator 2's controls on macOS 14 and did nothing when turned, where the same wheel had worked on an Intel iMac running macOS 11.

Logitech's settings app, G HUB, has a Mac version, and searches for G HUB not detecting a G29 on a Mac are common. The G923 comes as a PlayStation and PC model and as an Xbox and PC model. Apple's announcement named neither, so check a game's supported wheels before you count on it.

Thrustmaster, Fanatec, Moza and other wheels

These reach the Mac as HID devices, so the Mac sees the wheel, the pedals and the buttons. What you lose is the maker's software. The apps that set the rotation angle and the force feedback strength and update the firmware are, for most of these brands, made for Windows. Check the maker's download page for a macOS version before you buy, and do any firmware update on a Windows PC first.

Turn a wheel and pedals into keys with InputConfig

InputConfig reads a wheel the way it reads a joystick, as a raw HID device. It does not use Apple's racing wheel support. It reads every button and the standard axes; a few devices pack their axes in a way it does not decode yet. I have not tested every wheel, and that includes the G29 and G920 on current macOS, so check first. The first two steps take a minute and tell you whether yours works.

1. Connect it. Plug the wheel in and open InputConfig. If it does not appear, tick it under InputConfig, Devices in the menu bar, and the app opens it directly.
2. Steering. In a preset, turn on One-Stick Driving under Accessibility Tools Suite. Choose Custom, set the controller slot to the wheel's, and step the Steer axis number until its live bar follows the wheel. Pick Mouse (analog) for games that steer from the mouse, or Keys (A / D), which the app pulses so a small turn gives a gentle steer. Raise the steering curve for a calmer centre.
3. Gas pedal. Step the Throttle axis number until its bar follows the gas pedal, and turn on Throttle axis is a trigger (rests at one end). The app pulses the accelerate key, W by default, holding it longer in each pulse the further you press. If the bar runs backward, turn on Invert throttle.
4. Brake. Add a row, press Scan, push the brake pedal, and send the game's brake key, S in most games. A pedal rests at one end of its travel, not in the middle like a stick, so check the row in the Live Visualizer with your foot off and on before you rely on it.
5. Paddles, shifter and buttons. Scan each one onto a row and send the game's keys: shift up and down, handbrake, look back, reset.
6. Make it automatic. Under Automation & Gaming Utilities, add the game to the preset's apps, and turn on automatic switching in Settings, Advanced. The layout then runs whenever the game is in front. See per-app auto-switch.

Keys are on or off at heart, so pulsed steering is close to a wheel but not the same. Where a game offers mouse steering, choose Mouse (analog); it is the smoother of the two. The one-stick driving guide has the game settings that help, such as an automatic gearbox.

Force feedback

InputConfig does not drive force feedback. On a Mac, only a game that supports your wheel itself can. With the wheel mapped to keys, the motor gives no resistance, so a force feedback wheel turns freely unless it has a mechanical spring.

Pedals, shifters and button boxes on their own

Pedals, a shifter or a button box on its own USB cable is a separate device, and every connected device gets its own slot, so one preset can hold all of them. They do not have to drive a car. A pedal can hold a push-to-talk key, a shifter can switch scenes, and a button box makes a macro deck. A pedal rests at one end of its travel, so check each one in the Live Visualizer before you give it a job.

Questions

Related

• How to connect a joystick to a Mac
• One-stick driving
• One-stick driving, set up properly
• Euro Truck Simulator 2 on a Mac with a controller
• Other controllers
• Racing Game preset

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