Nintendo Switch Pro Controller Support?

infinitymdm

Hello!

I received a Nintendo Switch Pro Controller as a Christmas gift this year, and I'd like to use it with my system.

Is this currently possible?
If so, what do I need to do to set things up?
If not, is there somewhere I can contribute to this feature?

What I know:

According to this Phoronix article, hid-nintendo is being merged into mainline in the Linux 5.16 kernel. That should bring native (?) Switch controller support to Linux. So my initial thought is that I'll need to wait for 5.16 to be rolled out.

However, in my research I've stumbled across several guides on "How to use your Switch Controller with Linux" and the like that provide instructions for several mainline distributions. These pretty much universally direct me to the joycond GitHub repo, which I note is run by the same user as hid-nintendo is. Following one of these guides, I cloned/built/installed joycond, and attempted to pair my controller plugged in with a cable. However, I can't see it in Steam and the joycond service doesn't seem to be providing any helpful logs. It could be an issue with the controller, could be an issue with the USB handshake, could be that I don't have hid-nintendo, I'm not sure. So once again I assume that it is not currently possible to connect and use my Switch Pro Controller.

If anyone has been able to use a Switch Controller with Solus, please leave a comment with your procedure and I'll give it a try. Otherwise, let me know that I should just be patient and wait for 5.16.

Thanks!

brent

type in 'nintendo' in search function and see the first article, which, ironically, has a link to another Phoronix article dated Jan 2021 in which full kernel integration into 5.12 was promised. Evidently that ship sailed...your article says wait for 5.16.
I really think where there is a will there is a way. I hope some forum users know as we have gamers here...

your article's read me had "installation
clone the repo
Install requirements (sudo apt install libevdev-dev or sudo dnf install libevdev-devel libudev-devel)
cmake .
sudo make install
sudo systemctl enable --now joycond"
and if you did all that like you said you did then the usb handshake you mention...
...is valid. typelsusb into terminal with your controller plugged and if you see the name/manufacturer of the controller then solus obviously sees it. If Solus does not see manufacturer then a driver issue?
If Solus does see it then type 'nintendo' into software center and see what looks like bridge programs best I could tell.
Where do you get hid-nintendo and what led you to believe you need it?
all spitballin passing thru here. no gaming expert I.

infinitymdm

brent I don't have the hid-nintendo driver, but according to that Phoronix page it's a native driver for Switch controllers (Pro or Joycons). I'm not 100% sure I do need it, but I was wondering if that was why I can't get things working.

As for joycond, I did all that stuff, and I can see it running using systemctl.

Brucehankins I can't believe I didn't try to just pair it from the get-go 🤦‍♂️

I can pair the controller just fine, but the issue remains that it doesn't show up in Steam or work in any of the games I've tried so far. Also, the "pairing" indicator LEDs never shut off, which has me somewhat concerned.

I'm looking into the logs for the bluetooth service now. Initially the bluetooth service was giving me a "Failed to set mode: Blocked through rfkill" error message, but that seems to be resolved after a quick search. Now I'm getting "profiles/input/device.c:ioctl_is_connected() Can't get HIDP connection info". Digging into that error message now.

Interestingly, I also get some output from the joycond service now that the Controller is paired via bluetooth. I'm getting the following two lines on repeat:
no match found for /sys//devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:14.0/usb1/1-14/1-14:1.0/bluetooth/hci0/hci0:2/0005:057E:2009.000D/input/input38/event23/device/device/leds/*home no match found for /sys//devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:14.0/usb1/1-14/1-14:1.0/bluetooth/hci0/hci0:2/0005:057E:2009.000D/input/input38/event23/device/device/leds/*player*5
This makes me think it's trying to set the controller LEDs to "player 5"? I'm not quite sure what I'm looking at here.

I'm thinking another possible approach might be to remove joycond and see if things work OOTB, like you suggested. I'll probably give that a try.

Let me know if you guys have any other ideas. Thanks for the pointers so far. Here are some pointers in return.

Brucehankins

I used one on my Plasma system with no additional set up, just connected it over Bluetooth and it worked perfectly OOTB. I didn't try much with Steam since my laptop is a bit underpowered for AAA games and Destiny is borked on Linux, but it was picked up instantly by Stadia running in Opera and Brave.

infinitymdm

Brucehankins Lesson learned... after disabling and removing joycond, I was able to use my controller with no issues. It pairs like normal, and registers correctly in steam.

It seems I picked the path of greatest resistance. Thanks for pointing me back in the right direction.

Brucehankins

infinitymdm glad it's working! Let me know what you think using it after a few days.

I ended up switching to an Xbox One X controller because of the haptics and shoulder buttons. Does it make me any better at the games? Definitely not. Does it really feel all that different? Not too much. Do I like the custom grey and blue colors more? 100% yes.