Gamepad: buttons property

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.

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

The buttons property of the Gamepad interface returns an array of GamepadButton objects representing the buttons present on the device.

Each entry in the array is 0 if the button is not pressed, and non-zero (typically 1.0) if the button is pressed.

Value

An array of GamepadButton objects.

Examples

Depending on the type of button, we need to access the GamepadButton.value or GamepadButton.pressed properties. This example supports both:

function gameLoop() {
  const gp = navigator.getGamepads()[0];

  if (gp.buttons[0].value > 0 || gp.buttons[0].pressed) {
    b--;
  } else if (gp.buttons[1].value > 0 || gp.buttons[1].pressed) {
    a++;
  } else if (gp.buttons[2].value > 0 || gp.buttons[2].pressed) {
    b++;
  } else if (gp.buttons[3].value > 0 || gp.buttons[3].pressed) {
    a--;
  }

  ball.style.left = `${a * 2}px`; // ball is a UI widget
  ball.style.top = `${b * 2}px`;

  requestAnimationFrame(gameLoop);
}