Setting up a Nintendo Switch Pro Controller for

Dolphin/Melee
Edit:
There’s also BetterJoyForCemu, which can also recognize 3rd Party switch controllers. I (lemone) have
only tested it very briefly and it worked in Cemu (it’s originally intended use case) mostly fine, but it kept
inputting X every 2 seconds. You can try it out here https://github.com/Davidobot/BetterJoy/releases. It’s
a bit easier to set up than this, but I haven’t really tested it fully.

Edit 2:
It seems like Steam Input is implemented different across Windows, Mac and Linux. We have already
confirmed that this method does not work on Mac and there doesn’t seem to be another 3rd party
program that fixes this looks like Steam Big Picture actually does fix the problem for macOS, but were
still waiting for Slippi to get ported to mainline Dolphin for it to work without Steam. Modern mainline
versions of Dolphin do support the Pro Controller out-of-the-box on macOS, so we have to wait until the
Slippi team backports these additions to Slippi’s Dolphin.

1. Connect your controller

The simple way to do this is the use a USB-C cable to connect your controller to your Computer. If
your Computer supports it, you can also connect it wirelessly via Bluetooth. All you need to do is
press the sync button on your controller and connect to it in your Bluetooth settings.

2. Add Slippi to Steam

We will make use of Steam’s cross-controller compatibility with this. You will also need to make sure
that you launch Dolphin through Steam from now on, otherwise this will not work.

Click on the Add a game and go to Add a Non-Steam Game…

 In the Popup, click on Browse and then go to the folder where Slippi is located. There, select
Dolphin.exe and click on Open.

3. Configure your controller

Back in Steam’s main window, click on Steam in the top left and select Settings.
 Here, go to Controller and click on General Controller Settings.

Make sure it looks like this. Once your done, you can exit out by pressing B on your controller.

Next up, go back to that Settings window and click on Desktop Configuration.

By default, it should look something like this. Here, press X to browse through the preset
configurations.
 On the left, go to Templates and then select Gamepad from the 2 shown options.

Once your in the preview, press X to apply this configuration. Once you’re done with that, press B to
confirm and exit out of the configuration window.

4. Configure Dolphin
Now open Dolphin through Steam. If you open it without going through Steam, the controller won’t be
seen. Since Slippi is set to look for Gamecube controller adapters by default, it won’t work with your Pro
Controller out of the box.
After you’ve opened Dolphin, go to the Controller settings at the top of the window.

Once there, change the Controller type for Port 1 from

GameCube Adapter for Wii U to Standard Controller. After
that, press Configure.
Here you can configure the button layout of your controller. If you have a Hori or PowerA
Gamecube-style Pro Controller, I’d recommend the layout above. Otherwise you can tinker around with
the layout, although remember: you can’t rebind the buttons in-game, so if you do want to start playing
this game offline once you have a Gamecube controller, keep the button layout as vanilla as possible!

Workaround if your controller is still not seen (mostly for macOS users):

- Open Steam’s Big Picture mode (top right of your

steam window)
- Open Dolphin from your Library
- Go to “Manage Game” -> “Controller Options”
- Set “Steam Input Per-Game Setting) to
“Forced On”
- Launch Dolphin

You should now see a “Input/0/GamePad-1”

(or similar) as an option when configuring
your controls

You will need to launch Dolphin through Big

Picture every time for this to work. It sadly
isn’t a set-and-forget fix

And that’s it! Now you can start up Melee and it should work just fine. The only thing you won’t be able to
do is lightshield, since the shoulder buttons are all digital without any analog input.