Xbox Controller Driver for macOS

Table of Contents

1. About
2. Installation
3. Uninstallation
4. Usage
5. My controller doesn't work!
6. I'm using a driver from the Tattiebogle website
7. My controller doesn't work with a game!
8. Original Xbox Controllers
9. Wired Xbox 360 Controllers
10. Wireless Xbox 360 Controllers
11. Wired Xbox One Controllers
12. Wireless Xbox One Controllers
13. Wireless Xbox One Controllers (Bluetooth)
14. Adding Third Party Controllers
15. Developer Info
16. Building
17. Building the .pkg
18. Disabling signing requirements
19. Re-Enabling signing requirements
20. Debugging the driver
21. Debugging the preference pane
22. Licence

About

This driver supports the Microsoft Xbox series of controllers including:

1. Original Xbox

   • Original Xbox controllers are supported by using a USB adapter.

2. Xbox 360

   • Wired Xbox 360 controllers are supported directly.
   • Wireless Xbox 360 controllers are supported with the Xbox 360 Wireless Gaming Receiver. Using a "Play and Charge" kit is not supported.

3. Xbox One

   • Xbox One controllers are supported when connected with a micro USB cable. Using the controller with the Wireless Adapter is not currently supported.
   • Bluetooth capable Xbox One controllers (released after August 2016) are natively supported by macOS without the use of this driver. However, installing this driver will enable force feedback (which is not natively supported) and allow you to plug the controller in via USB.

The driver provides developers with access to both force feedback and the LEDs of the controllers. Additionally, a preference pane has been provided so that users can configure their controllers and ensure that the driver has been installed properly.

Controller support includes ALL devices that work with an Xbox series piece of hardware. All wheels, fight sticks, and controllers should work. This includes things like the Xbox One Elite controller. If your hardware does not work with an Xbox console we cannot support it. Sorry.

This project is a fork of the Xbox360Controller project originally created by Colin Munro.

Installation

See the releases page for the latest compiled and signed version of the driver. Most users will want to run this installer.

Uninstallation

In order to uninstall the driver: navigate to the preference pane by opening your "System Preferences," navigating to the "Xbox 360 Controllers" pane, clicking on the "Advanced" tab and pressing the "Uninstall" button. This will prompt you to enter your password so that the uninstaller can remove all of the bundled software from your machine.

Usage

The driver exposes a standard game pad with a number of standard controls, so any game that supports gaming devices should work. In some cases, this may require an update from the developer of the game. The preference pane uses the standard macOS frameworks for accessing HID devices in addition to access of Force Feedback capabilities. This means that the preference pane is a good indicator that the driver is functional for other programs.

It is important to note that this driver does not work, and can never work, with Apple's "Game Controller Framework." This GCController framework corresponds to physical gamepads that have been offically reviewed by Apple and accepted into the mFi program. Due to the fact that we are not Microsoft, we cannot get their gamepad certified to be a GCController. This is an unfortunate oversight on Apple's part. If you would like to discuss this, please do so at this location.

Users have been maintaining a partial list of working and non-working games. Please contribute your findings so that you can help others debug their controller issues.

My controller doesn't work!

I'm using a driver from the Tattiebogle website

The Tattiebogle driver is NOT the same driver as this Github project. We do NOT support that driver. Under NO circumstances will we support that driver. If you download the latest version of this driver from the releases page we will do our best to help you out. This driver will install over the Tattiebogle driver. You don't have to worry about uninstalling the Tattiebogle driver first.

My controller doesn't work with a game!

We cannot fix game specific issues. This driver does its absolute best to put out a standardized format for games to use. If they don't take advantage of that, there is ABSOLUTELY NOTHING we can do. The best we can do for you is give you the "Pretend to be an Xbox 360 Controller" option in the "Advanced" tab. This will make any wired Xbox 360 or wired Xbox One controller appear to games as if it were an official Microsoft Xbox 360 Controller. That way if the game is only looking for Xbox 360 controllers and isn't looking for other devices like third party Xbox 360 controllers or Xbox One controllers, you should be able to trick the game. If you experience an issue with a game that this toggle does not fix, we cannot help you, sorry. That is just the nature of drivers.

Original Xbox Controllers

Make an issue describing your problem.

Wired Xbox 360 Controllers

Always check your controller with the preference pane found at: Apple Menu -> System Preferences -> Xbox 360 Controllers before creating an issue. If the controller works in this menu, then the driver is operating as intended. If your controller works with this menu, but not with a specific game, then read the My controller doesn't work with a game! section. If you have a third party controller, make an issue with the "Product ID" and "Vendor ID" of the controller. These can be found by accessing the Apple menu, selecting "About this Mac", and then selecting "System Report..." on the "Overview" tab. On the left hand side of the new window, select the "USB" option under "Hardware". If the controller is plugged in, there should be an entry in this window called "Controller".

Wireless Xbox 360 Controllers

Always check your controller with the preference pane found at: Apple Menu -> System Preferences -> Xbox 360 Controllers before creating an issue. If the controller works in this menu, then the driver is operating as intended. If your controller works with this menu, but not with a specific game, then read the My controller doesn't work with a game! section. Remember that wireless controllers must be connected using a wireless adapter. Plugging a "Play and Charge" kit into a wireless controller does not make it a wired controller.

Xbox One Controllers connected with USB

Always check your controller with the preference pane found at: Apple Menu -> System Preferences -> Xbox 360 Controllers before creating an issue. If the controller works in this menu, then the driver is operating as intended. If your controller works with this menu, but not with a specific game, then read the My controller doesn't work with a game! section. If your controller is recognized by the preference pane, but you aren't getting any response from button presses, this is likely due to an issue with macOS 10.11 and later. Apple changed some of the underlying USB code with this release and broke compatibility with some controllers. If you revert to macOS 10.10 or earlier, these controllers will work. If the preference pane can't find your controller, make sure that it is listed in Apple Menu -> About this Mac -> System Report -> Overview -> Hardware -> USB. This menu should list a device called "Controller." If it isn't listed there, then you likely have a "charge" Micro USB cable instead of a "data" cable. If the cable isn't sending data, then you can't use the driver. Try a different cable. If you have a third party controller that isn't recognized by the preference pane, make an issue with the "Product ID" and "Vendor ID" of the controller. These can be found by accessing the Apple menu, selecting "About this Mac", and then selecting "System Report..." on the "Overview" tab. On the left hand side of the new window, select the "USB" option under "Hardware". If the controller is plugged in, there should be an entry in this window called "Controller".

Xbox One Controllers connected with Wireless Adapter

Xbox One controllers connected with the Wireless Adapter are currently not supported. Please be patient as we figure out this complicated protocol.

Xbox One Controllers connected with Bluetooth

The Xbox One controller works with macOS automatically when connected over Bluetooth via System Preferences. Only specific Xbox One controllers released after August 2016 have Bluetooth capability. See Microsoft's support page for determining if your controller supports Bluetooth. Due to the fact that this controller works by default, it will not be supported by this driver. However, in order to get force feedback through the controller, you will need to install this driver. It will enable force feedback to the controller. Additionally, if you choose to plug this controller in via USB, the driver will support this configuration. Any problems with game compatibility in Bluetooth mode are completely out of our control and are up to you to solve in conjunction with the game developer.

Adding Third Party Controllers

First, disable signing requirements so that you can run your custom build with your third party controller added. Then edit 360Controller/360Controller/Info.plist. Add your controller following the pattern of pre-existing controllers by adding your vendor and product IDs to a new entry. After this, follow the information in the building section, following the "If you don't have a signing certificate" path to build your new .kext. Then, place your shiny new 360Controller.kext in to /Library/Extensions over the old one. You may need to take ownership of the driver in order for it to operate properly. You can do this with sudo chown -R root:wheel /Library/Extensions/360Controller.kext. Then, to make sure everything went according to plan, run sudo kextutil /Library/Extensions/360Controller.kext. This will load your kext into the OS and you should be able to use your controller. Once you reboot, your custom driver should be loaded automatically.

Developer Info

Drivers inherently modify the core operating system kernel. Using the driver as a developer can lead to dangerous kernel panics that can cause data loss or other permanent damage to your computer. Be very careful about how you use this information. We are not responsible for anything this driver does to your computer, or any loss it may incur. Normal users will never have to worry about the developer section of this README.

Building

Apple has recently changed how drivers work in Xcode 7. In order to build the driver, you will need Xcode 6.4 or earlier.

Additionally, to use the included build scripts, you will need to change your preferred Xcode installation using xcode-select.

You must have a signing certificate to install a locally built driver. Alternatively, you can disable driver signing on your machine, however this is a major security hole and the decision should not be taken lightly.

You will need a full installation of Xcode to build this project. The command line tools are not enough.

The project consists of three main parts: The driver (implemented in C++, as an I/O Kit C++ class), the force feedback plugin (implemented in C, as an I/O Kit COM plugin) and the preference pane (implemented in Objective C as a preference pane plugin). To build, use the standard Xcode build for Deployment on each of the 3 projects. Build Feedback360 before 360Controller, as the 360Controller project includes a script to copy the Feedback360 bundle to the correct place in the .kext to make it work.

To debug the driver, sudo cp -R 360Controller.kext /tmp/ to assign the correct properties - note that the Force Feedback plugin only seems to be found by OSX if the driver is in /System/Library/Extensions so it can only be debugged in place. Due to the fact that drivers are now stored in /Library/Extenions, this means that you must create a symlink between the location of the driver and /System/Library/Extensions so that the force feedback plugin can operate properly.

Building the .pkg

In order to build the .pkg, you will need to install Packages.app.

If you don't have a signing certificate

• Open 360 Driver.xcodeproj using Xcode.
• Select the 360 Driver project in the Navigator.
• Select the 360Daemon target from the top right corner.
• Select the Build Settings tab from the top of the screen.
• In the Code Signing section, find Code Signing Identity section and expand it.
• In the Release section, change the selection to Don't Code Sign.
• Set the code signing identity for 360Daemon, Feedback360, 360Controller, DriverTool, Pref360Control, Wireless360Controller, WirelessGamingReceiver and Whole Driver.
• Run ./build.sh to build the .pkg. This .pkg can be found in the Install360Controller directory.

If you have a signing certificate

• Open 360 Driver.xcodeproj using Xcode.
• Select the 360 Driver project in the Navigator.
• Select the 360Daemon target from the top right corner.
• Select the Build Settings tab from the top of the screen.
• In the Code Signing section, find Code Signing Identity section and expand it.
• In the Release section, change the selection to your Developer ID Application certificate.
• Set the code signing identity for 360Daemon, Feedback360, 360Controller, DriverTool, Pref360Control, Wireless360Controller, WirelessGamingReceiver and Whole Driver.
• Run ./build.sh to build the .pkg. This .pkg can be found in the Install360Controller directory.

Disabling signing requirements

Since Yosemite (macOS 10.10) all global kexts are required to be signed. This means if you want to build the drivers and install locally, you need a very specific signing certificate that Apple closely controls. If you want to disable the signing requirement from macOS, you will need to do several things.

First, execute these commands in your terminal:

sudo nvram boot-args="kext-dev-mode=1"
sudo kextcache -m /System/Library/Caches/com.apple.kext.caches/Startup/Extensions.mkext /System/Library/Extensions

Next, you must disable System Integrity Protection. To do this, boot into recovery mode by holding down CMD + R while the computer is starting. Once recovery mode has been loaded, open the terminal from the Utilites menu item. Execute the following command:

csrutil disable

Re-Enabling signing requirements

From recovery mode, execute the following command:

csrutil enable

Reboot into macOS like normal. You can reset the boot arguments by executing this command:

sudo nvram -d boot-args

This will remove ALL boot-args. If you have previously manipulated your boot-args, those changes will be erased as well!

Debugging the driver

Debugging the driver depends on which part you intend to debug. For the 360Controller driver itself, it uses IOLog to output to the system.log which can be accessed using Console.app. Feedback360 uses fprintf(stderr, ...), which should appear within the console of the program attempting to use force feedback.

Debugging the preference pane

These instructions work for Xcode 6.4, the most recent version of Xcode that can still build the driver. Most of these instructions are pulled directly from this blog post. Please visit it for futher information.

First, edit your build scheme for Pref360Control, and select the "Run" scheme, and make sure you are editing "Debug" (A). In the environment variables section, click on "+" to add a new environment variable (B). Name the new variable OBJC_DISABLE_GC, and set its value to YES.

Next, click the little disclosure triangle for the run scheme to reveal its detailed settings. Then select pre-actions. Click the "+" at the bottom to add a run script action. Enter /bin/sh as the shell, make sure that your target is selected to provide build settings, and type a shell command line to install the newly compiled pref pane in your personal Library folder:

cp -Rf ${CONFIGURATION_BUILD_DIR}/Pref360Control.prefPane ~/Library/PreferencePanes

Finally, select the run step, choose "other" from the executable drop-down menu, and select System Preferences in the Applications folder. Verify that "Debug executable" and "Automatically" are both checked.

Licence

Copyright (C) 2006-2013 Colin Munro

This driver is licensed under the GNU Public License. A copy of this license is included in the distribution file, please inspect it before using the binary or source.