Tool
Racing wheel tester
Plug in a racing wheel, press any button on it, and this page lists every axis and every button it reports, by number, moving as you move it. Turn the wheel and one bar follows it. Press a pedal and another one moves. Shifter gears, paddles and rim buttons light as buttons.
Run a five-minute test
- Plug the wheel in, with its power supply connected, and press any button on it.
- Let go of the rim. The steering axis should rest close to 0.
- Turn the wheel slowly from lock to lock. The bar should climb smoothly, with no jumps and no dead patches.
- Press each pedal slowly to the floor and let it go.
- Press every button and paddle, and move the shifter through each gear.
The numbers are the wheel's own, in the order it reports them. Move one control at a time, and the bar that moves is that control's axis.
Read a wheel's axes
- Steering. One axis: -1 at full lock one way, 1 at full lock the other, 0 in the middle.
- Pedals. Usually one axis each. Many pedals rest at one end and reach the other end on the floor, so a released pedal reads -1 or 1.
- Combined pedals. Several older Logitech wheels describe their gas and brake as one shared axis, so the two pedals push one bar in opposite directions.
- Shifter and paddles. Each gear and each paddle is a button: 0 released, 1 pressed.
- The D-pad. It can show as four buttons, or as one axis that jumps between fixed values, depending on the wheel and the browser.
A jump in the same place every time you pass it is a worn spot on that sensor.
If the wheel does not show up
Climb this ladder, smallest step first:
- Press a button. A browser hides every controller from a page until a button is pressed while that page is in front.
- Connect the power supply. A wheel needs its power as well as USB.
- Skip the hub. Plug straight into the computer. Some hubs drop game devices.
- Check the mode switch. A wheel in a console mode may not present itself as a standard USB device. Racing wheel not working on a Mac lists the position for common wheels.
- Try a second browser. A browser shows only the devices it accepts as game controllers, and browsers differ on which ones those are.
What a browser does not do for a wheel
A browser does not send force feedback, so the motor is not tested here. It shows raw numbers, not the wheel's angle in degrees. On a Mac, wheels never appear in System Settings under Game Controllers, because macOS does not treat them as gamepads. The joystick and racing wheel tester for Mac covers that case: InputConfig draws the common wheels as themselves, with the angle in degrees and each pedal from 0 to 100 percent.
It works. Now give it a job
A tester tells you the controller is fine. On a Mac, InputConfig is the app I make for the next step: it turns the buttons and sticks you just tested into keys, the mouse pointer, clicks and scrolling, in any app or game. It is free, and its Live Visualizer draws the same live picture inside the app, with the touchpad and motion sensors a browser does not pass to a page. Test it here, then put it to work there.
Questions
How do I test a steering wheel online?
Plug the wheel in with its power supply, press any button on it so the browser shows it to this page, then turn the wheel. The bar that moves is the steering axis: it should run smoothly from one end to the other and rest near 0 in the middle.
How do I test the pedals?
Press each pedal slowly to the floor and let it go. Each one should move a bar of its own from one end to the other and come back. If the gas and the brake move one bar together, the wheel reports its pedals as one combined axis.
Why does a pedal read full with my foot off?
Many pedals rest at one end of their axis and reach the other end on the floor, so a released pedal reads -1 or 1, not 0. That is how the pedal reports, not a fault.
Can I test force feedback online?
No. A browser does not send force feedback, so the motor in the wheel base stays off during this test.
Related
Free. macOS 14 or later. No account, nothing leaves your Mac. Open source on GitHub.