Free Gamepad / Controller Test

When a controller test is worth running

A controller can feel wrong long before it fails completely. A character drifts slowly to one side, a trigger does not reach full travel, or a button registers only some of the time. This page lets you see the raw numbers your browser receives, so you can tell whether the problem is in the hardware or somewhere else, such as a game setting.

It is useful before buying or selling a used controller, after cleaning or repairing one, when pairing a new Bluetooth pad with a laptop, or when a browser game does not respond the way you expect. Because it shows every controller the browser exposes, you can also connect two pads and compare them side by side.

A worked example: checking for stick drift

Start the test, press any button so the controller appears, then let go of everything. On a typical standard-mapped controller, the left stick is reported as Axis 0 (horizontal) and Axis 1 (vertical). A healthy stick at rest usually reads very close to 0.000 on both axes.

Imagine Axis 0 settles at 0.042 and Axis 1 at -0.018 with the stick untouched. With the dead-zone slider at its default of 0.10, both readings show the note inside dead zone, because their absolute values are below 0.10. Now suppose Axis 0 rests at 0.135. That reading sits outside a 0.10 dead zone, which is the kind of offset that can cause slow drift in games that use a small dead zone. Raise the slider to 0.15 and the label changes to inside dead zone, which tells you roughly how much dead zone a game would need to hide the drift.

Then push the stick fully left and right. A healthy stick should reach values near -1.000 and 1.000. Do the same for triggers, which on many controllers appear as buttons with values from 0.00 to 1.00.

Understanding the readings

The page uses the browser Gamepad API and refreshes the readings about 20 times per second. Each controller shows its name as reported by the browser, its index and its mapping. A mapping of standard means the browser has arranged buttons and axes in the common layout; nonstandard means indexes follow the device or driver, so B0 might not be the button you expect.

Axes range from -1 to 1 and are shown to three decimal places with a meter bar. Buttons are labeled B0, B1 and so on, with a value from 0 to 1 and a pressed marker. Digital buttons jump straight from 0 to 1, while analog triggers move through the values in between.

Common mistakes to avoid

Do not panic if nothing appears at first. Most browsers hide a controller until you press a button while the page is active. Also remember that the dead-zone slider is only a reference line on this page; it does not change the controller or any game.

Avoid judging a controller from one reading. Move each stick in slow circles, let it spring back several times and watch where it settles. Small resting values that change each time are normal; a consistent offset in one direction is more meaningful.