How to Connect a Nintendo Switch Pro Controller to a PC?

The Nintendo switch pro controller is among the most expensive “baseline” controllers in the current generation of consoles. It is well-built, comfortable, and has a tremendous directional pad. In short, it’s a perfect combination of top-tier performance capabilities and excellent build quality to impress its users. It can be complicated to get the pro controller to function with your PC games since windows see it as a direct Input controller rather than an XInput controller. Examples are Xbox Series S/X and Xbox One gamepads. 

Naturally, you must first connect your switch pro controller to your PC before using it. There are wired and wireless alternatives available. However, wireless as well as wired is the simplest to connect. Well, we will show some famous methods to connect the controller to the system and try our best to answer how to connect a Nintendo Switch Pro Controller to PC without any trouble. Read this post until the end since we’ll walk you through the additional steps needed for steam and non-steam games for better communication. 

How to Connect a Nintendo Switch Pro Controller to PC?

There are several ways to connect the switch pro controller to the PC. Some of them are given as follows:

Using Wireless Connection

The second easiest but most efficient way to connect the Nintendo Switch Pro Controller to a PC is by using Bluetooth. You can establish a stable wireless connection by using this feature. But again, the condition is there must be a Bluetooth Adapter/dongle or Onboard Bluetooth feature. Steps include: 

• Step 1: Press and hold the Sync button on the top of the gamepad for a few seconds until the indicator lights don’t start blinking.

• Step 2: Right-click the Bluetooth icon > select Add Bluetooth Device.

• Step 4: Select Add Bluetooth and Device.

Note: To add a Bluetooth or other device, select it.

• Step 5: Select your Pro Controller device from the list. Wait until the connection is established.

Note: After completing the above procedure, now, you can move towards the Steam Setup, the following process to connect your Pro Controller to the computer. 

Using Wired Connection

The first and foremost easy way to connect the Switch Pro Controller to your PC is by a wired connection. These are the following steps to follow when you use a cable connection to connect your switch pro controller to your PC;

• Step 1: Locate the USB-C port on the front of the Controller. 

• Step 2: Plug USB-C compatible wire into the port > plug the other end into the PC. 

Note: Your PC will automatically detect the “Pro Controller” without any issue—you may receive some notification if you have turned the notifications on.

Steam setup

After connecting the Pro Controller to the PC using wired connectivity or wireless communications, the next step is setting it up as per requirements. 

Note: Steam should instantly launch into the big picture when you plug in the pro controller, steam should launch into the big picture instantly. If not, open Steam and sign into it.

• Step 1: Click the Steam menu button in the section’s top-left corner.

• Step 2: Select Settings from the drop-down menu > select Controller > General Controller Settings.

• Step 3: Mark/Select the Switch Pro Configuration Support, so Steam can detect what controller is used to play games. 

The mouse cursor should vanish if the pro controller is plugged in, and you should be able to use the gamepad to browse the big picture. If you wish the A/B/X/Y buttons to be mapped as they are on the pro controller, you can enable the “Use Nintendo button format“.

Hardware Setup

The pro controller support from steam is acknowledged, but due to the way windows recognizes the controller, you’re out of luck if you want to use it with non-steam applications. Either a hardware Bluetooth adapter created for various gamepad types or a software-based XInput wrapper can be used to correct this. The switch pro controller connects to the adapter through the physical sync button rather than your PC’s Bluetooth menu. The adapter handles all of the XInput details.

Software alternative

The most potent and challenging choice is to connect the controller to the PC through software. Instead of relying on steam or a USB adaptor, you use a software wrapper to convert the inputs from the pro controller into a format that Windows 10 can more easily understand. With the help of the open-source application X360ce, you may manage how Windows interprets your non-XInput controller. They should work if you can set up and work with software wrappers until the switch pro controller behaves as you desire.

What are Joy-Cons? How to use Joy-Cons?

The main Nintendo Switch Controllers are Joy-Cons. They have a unique design consisting of two distinct units, which makes them the most intriguing. Sadly, by default, the two Joy-Cons will be treated as specific controllers. That makes them useless for playing anything complicated, like a first-person shooter, but it’s ideal for two-player games. This indicates that the controller can be used for a single player and, if desired, can be detached and used as two controllers.

Several tools and apps might assist you in connecting Joy-Cons as a single unit. Unfortunately, this technique only works with Windows, so if you have a Mac device, you will not be able to use this option.

• Step 1: Connect your PC and Joy-Con controllers using the above methods.

• Step 2: BetterJoy can be downloaded from GitHub > extract the files to your preferred folder.

• Step 3: Run ViGEmBUS Setup as administrator after opening the subfolders > activate the drivers.

• Step 4: Navigate to the primary file after installing the drivers > run BetterJoyForCemu as an administrator.

Note: The application will now detect your controllers as a single entity.

Conclusion

The Nintendo Switch Pro Controller is a great tool to control and play several current-era games on your computer. But connecting it to the PC is difficult for some users. Therefore, we have tried to tell you how to connect the Nintendo Switch Pro Controller to your PC and use it to play games. If you have followed our article and wish to use the switch controllers to play games on your PC, you can get started in just a few easy steps. The pro controller can be connected using Bluetooth to your Windows or macOS computer if you aren’t using steam. 

But we’re saving this option for when you intend to use the pro controller with games on a different platform. Moreover, the pro controller and Joy-cons are great for playing older games compatible with the direct input API with straightforward controls outside the steam universe. Both controllers can be used to play games on your PC’s emulator, which is convenient if you like to use present hardware to play classic Nintendo games. Playing your old favorites with updated controllers may be tricky, but once you do, it’s a lot of fun.