Xbox 360 Controller

Question

Level 1

31 points

Xbox 360 Controller

After a bit of research and questioning, i've been told that the Xbox 360 controller was best suited for playing games on my Mac. After going through some hassle of trying to connect a PS3 controller, who never wanted to show up in my Bluetooth Settings, i resigned a bought new wired controller. After new original Xbox 360 controller arrived, the problems began... again.

So for now i can say: it is not compatible with OS X El Capitan... at all! First i did was to simply connect it. It blinked shortly and went off to never light up again. I thought, this could be an expected behavior and launched Steam so test it anyway. Nothing happened, the controller remained unusable.

Next step: i found a new driver on Github. I downloaded the latest beta (because it mentioned better compatibility with OS X Yosemite), installed it and had to reboot only to see the controller stay unusable. Fired up Steam again, tried some games... no luck.

Going further: I googled many pages and did some fiddlings. Up until now downloaded all versions of the Github drivers, all of the tattiebogle drivers, uninstalled them, installed them, removed them again, installed them over another,... I also tried with kext-dev-mode on, authorized not properly signed kext, ... nothing happened: the controller remains unusable.

After doing all of this nonsense, i observed my logs and saw this two entries pop-up everytime i connected the controller to the USB port:

kernel[0]: Un-authenticated device attached

kernel[0]: read - failed to handle report: 0xe00002d7

I googled it without any result.

I can see the controller in my system summary, no matter what port it's connected to and it even seems to be recognized correctly, as e.g. the vendorID is mentioning Microsoft. But no matter what i am doing or trying, the controller remains *dead*.

Just for testing purposes i did connect it to my Xbox360 and to another Windows PC, just to sadly confirm: this controller is not compatible with OS X El Capitan but runs just fine on Windows or on the Xbox itself.

So now: is there still something i can do or can i call it a day and proclaim: don't buy the Xbox 360 wired controller for your Mac! The drivers are a waste of time and the controller is the worst choice for playing games on a Mac?

PS: please don't tell me i have to reinstall my Mac. I have tons of Apps, configured pretty individually and my systems runs smooth. I don't want to gamble on that...

Thx!

OS X El Capitan (10.11.1)

Posted on Nov 6, 2015 6:31 AM

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Answer 1

JimmyCMPIT

Level 7

29,258 points

Nov 6, 2015 6:56 AM in response to TenjuZenjin

contact the developer of the driver you downloaded.

MS 360 controllers are there own proprietary BlueTooth protocol so it does not work on Apple nor anything non-MS.

You need the wireless USB adapter and drivers that were developed for your OS, not legacy OS's. One won't work without the other.

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Answer 2

TenjuZenjin Author

Level 1

31 points

Nov 6, 2015 7:02 AM in response to JimmyCMPIT

Keep in mind that i bought a "wired" controller, not the wireless one, just because of that. Or do you tell me to buy the wireless adapter to be able to connect the wired controller? That would be absurd, no?

Either way: on GitHub it said that there were some issues with the wireless controller. This took me to the decision not to buy a wireless one, opting for the wired controller.

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Answer 3

John0001

Level 2

396 points

Nov 6, 2015 7:12 AM in response to TenjuZenjin

cant help with the 360 controller, but i've had great luck with the PS4 controller on Mac. If you're going wired anyway, just plug in the USB to the PS4 controller and Mac and you're all set.

As for Bluetooth, just hold the PS and select button down to enter pairing mode, and you'll see it in bluetooth settings; no 3rd party drivers / software required.

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Answer 4

TenjuZenjin Author

Level 1

31 points

Nov 6, 2015 7:33 AM in response to John0001

This means i did spend 30 bucks for a piece of junk (but i can still use on my 360) and that the the drivers are worthless. I should now spend 60 bucks on a controller i don't even own the console and if that goes wrong i literally send 90 bucks on plastic that does not fulfill it's intended goal. Great!

But thank you for for the advice anyway. I will keep this in mind, and if all goes down i will follow this path... Some guys already mentioned that trying to play on a mac is kind of heretic and if i do try i am literally doomed. I start to believe them, if i can't even get a controller running properly...

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Answer 5

Nov 14, 2015 8:37 PM in response to TenjuZenjin

mister did you fixed your issue whit the xbox360wirless controler for mac /elcapitan? i have the same trouble

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Answer 6

swebmx

Level 1

0 points

Nov 15, 2015 9:23 PM in response to FactorMuzik

Hello, and here is your answer, this driver working for me https://github.com/360Controller/360Controller/releases

im using this version 360Controller 0.15 (beta 3)

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Answer 7

TenjuZenjin Author

Level 1

31 points

Nov 16, 2015 1:42 AM in response to TenjuZenjin

I did, until now not solve the problem. I am really considering the PS4 controller solution. The Beta3 driver from Github as mentioned by swebmx does definitively NOT work on my machine, as already mentioned before.

But i came to another fact. I recently got a new Mac: iMac 27" Retina 5K, i7 and 32GB of memory. The first thing i did with this new machine was to install the Beta3 driver from Github and it worked, flawless without any glitches (besides the known ones...) ! I installed Steam and some of the games, tested and approved the install. Conclusion: on a new machine it works!

Now the question remains: what does conflict the driver, why doesn't it work properly on my MacBook Air? That's the thing i will try to investigate.

Someone got a clue?

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Answer 8

Nov 26, 2015 9:22 AM in response to TenjuZenjin

TenjuZenjin wrote:

But i came to another fact. I recently got a new Mac: iMac 27" Retina 5K, i7 and 32GB of memory. The first thing i did with this new machine was to install the Beta3 driver from Github and it worked, flawless without any glitches (besides the known ones...) ! I installed Steam and some of the games, tested and approved the install. Conclusion: on a new machine it works!

I recently got the same iMac as you, and the Beta 3 driver doesn't work for me. All the buttons show as working the the Control Panel, but no games recognise it!

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Answer 9

Feb 9, 2016 4:11 AM in response to TenjuZenjin

So I had the same problem (worked and after El Capitan, not at all), and I think I found the answer: The driver is not COMPLETELY unistalled, and previous versions (from Yosemite or whatever) do not work. This is how I got it working:

Obs: Optionally you can make a backup of all the files that will be deleted

1. Uninstall the PrefPane driver: Delete the file Pref360Control.prefPane from /Library/PrefPane/

2. Uninstall the extensions: Delete the files 360Controller.kext, Wireless360Controller.kext, WirelessGamingReceiver.kext from /Library/Extensions/

3. Reboot

4. Reinstall the driver: I used v0.15 beta 3, but probably will work with the newer ones as well.

5. BOOM: Wireless 360 working again! 🙂

Hope it helps!

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Answer 10

Apr 4, 2016 5:12 AM in response to rodrigocava

rodrigocava, thanks for pointing out the solution.

I had problems getting my controllers to work also and used the 0.15 beta3 (without having to download the whole Xcode to compile sources myself thank god).

I will also point out this post on macrumors for a more thorough uninstallation of the old xbox360 driver :

http://forums.macrumors.com/threads/uninstall-xbox-360-controller-driver.447793/ #post-16604675

After a thorough uninstall + reboot + install 0.15b3 drivers + reboot --> My pad is now once more recognised.

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Answer 11

May 22, 2016 5:59 AM in response to TenjuZenjin

Thank you all a lot.

I am running El Capitan 10.11.5 and have installed the newest version 0.16 https://github.com/360Controller/360Controller/releases - it works flawless so far.

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