Using a PS4 con­troller on PC – all options

Gaming on your PC with a con­troller might provide a better gaming ex­pe­ri­ence and you often don’t have to buy a new con­troller at all. If you already own a PlaySta­tion 4, you can connect its con­troller to a PC or laptop in different ways. We’ll show how you can get started.

Most games can be played well on the PC with keyboard and mouse — es­pe­cial­ly first-person shooters and build-up strate­gies work well on tra­di­tion­al PC setups for gamers. The situation is different for action games, for example jump ’n’ runs or fighting games. These games are usually easier to play with a suitable con­troller.

Probably the simplest pos­si­bil­i­ty for a con­nec­tion is obvious:

• The PS4 con­nec­tion cable, used to charge the DualShock 4 con­troller, can be connected to the computer via USB port.
• Starting with Windows 10, the con­troller is usually rec­og­nized and the necessary con­fig­u­ra­tion is carried out au­to­mat­i­cal­ly and quickly.
• Af­ter­wards, the con­troller is ready for use and you can jump right in.

Depending on how old the game is, however, it might be that the button con­fig­u­ra­tion should be sorted out be­fore­hand. This can be done, for example, with a free tool like the DS4 con­troller, which we’ll present at the end of the article.

Even with this con­nec­tion method, some games require a separate con­fig­u­ra­tion of the con­troller. Next, we’ll show how to customize the PS4 con­troller and change the button as­sign­ment for a game.

Unlike con­trollers from the Xbox series, which are tailored for use with Windows, some games do not recognize the PS4 con­troller on PC. In other cases, the pre-set as­sign­ment of the buttons is not ideal, so they might need to be adjusted. In both cases, programs like DS4 Con­troller help to recognize a PlaySta­tion con­troller and assign buttons in­di­vid­u­al­ly.

This software converts con­trollers so that they are con­sid­ered Xbox con­trollers for Windows. This is necessary because Windows uses the Xinput interface to link con­trollers to a computer. The Xinput interface is limited to linking Xbox com­po­nents to Windows, both of which are made by Microsoft.

With the use of programs like DS4 for Windows, it is suggested to the PC that the connected con­troller is an Xbox con­troller. It does not matter whether you connected the PS4 con­troller to the PC via USB or Bluetooth.

Since the con­trollers have the same buttons (only with different names), ori­en­ta­tion is easy. For example, the [X] on the Xbox con­troller is the [square] on the PS4 con­troller, the [circle] cor­re­sponds to the [B] button, and the two joysticks and the di­rec­tion­al pad are also used by both man­u­fac­tur­ers.

In this way, you can also directly find out via cus­tomiza­tion whether the logic of the PlaySta­tion as­sign­ment in the game cor­re­sponds to your preferred control options: Many PlaySta­tion games like the “Witcher” series, “Uncharted” or “The Last of Us” follow a very similar button as­sign­ment, so that, for example, racing is triggered via [L3] or ducking with the [Square] button. You can adjust this to your pref­er­ences — if not au­to­mat­i­cal­ly rec­og­nized correctly — with the DS4Windows con­troller.

In the menus of the games on the PC, the Xbox des­ig­na­tion is mostly used, so you will have to rethink a bit at this point. With a bit of practice within the games, however, the system becomes clear quite quickly, and nothing should stand in the way of hours of fun with the con­troller on the PC.

DS4 for Windows must continue to run in the back­ground so that you can use the PS4 con­troller on the PC. Therefore, the program has to be started again after a restart — or you can allow an autostart when the computer is booted.