Replicas

If a gamepad is made to be a complete replica of a official one, meaning that they act exactly as the original controller and appear to Windows as such, then chances are DS4Windows will just detect it as being the official controller and it may just work. For example, 8bitdo controllers that are compatible with Nitendo’s Switch usually present themselves as a replica of the Pro Controller and can be used as normal with DS4Windows.

For cases where the gamepad presents itself differently than the official one to the system (most DS4 replicas) then DS4Windows will not recognize them. DS4W detects controller by their Vendor and Product Identification (VID/PID), meaning that if a controller’s VID/PID is not already on DS4W code then it will just be ignored.

Adding support to new copy-cats may be as easy as just adding their VID/PID to the code or as hard as making major changes to the internal structures of DS4Windows. If you have a unsupported copy-cat feel free to reach us and kindly ask for it to be added to DS4Windows code while providing the maximum amount of information on it.