Gamepad API

Baseline Widely available *

This feature is well established and works across many devices and browser versions. It’s been available across browsers since March 2017.

* Some parts of this feature may have varying levels of support.

Secure context: This feature is available only in secure contexts (HTTPS), in some or all supporting browsers.

The Gamepad API is a way for developers to access and respond to signals from gamepads and other game controllers in a simple, consistent way. It contains three interfaces, two events and one specialist function, to respond to gamepads being connected and disconnected, and to access other information about the gamepads themselves, and what buttons and other controls are currently being pressed.

Interfaces

Gamepad: Represents a gamepad/controller connected to the computer.
GamepadButton: Represents a button on one of the connected controllers.
GamepadEvent: The event object representing events fired that are related to gamepads.

Experimental Gamepad extensions

GamepadHapticActuator: Represents hardware in the controller designed to provide haptic feedback to the user (if available), most commonly vibration hardware.
GamepadPose: Represents the pose of a controller (e.g. position and orientation in 3D space) in the case of a WebVR controller. This is not used by the newer WebXR standard.

Extensions to other interfaces

Navigator

Navigator.getGamepads(): An extension to the Navigator object that returns an array of Gamepad objects, one for each connected gamepad.

Window events

gamepadconnected: An event that will fire when a gamepad is connected.
gamepaddisconnected: An event that will fire when a gamepad is disconnected.

Tutorials and guides

Specifications

Specification
Gamepad # gamepad-interface
Gamepad Extensions # partial-gamepad-interface

Browser compatibility

BCD tables only load in the browser