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Dashboard

PadForge's home screen. Engine status, virtual controllers, motion server, web controller, and driver health on one page.

Dashboard overview showing engine status, virtual controllers, and driver health

Sections

Eight sections, stacked top to bottom.

Section Purpose
Input Engine Master power switch and live polling readout.
Virtual Controllers One card per slot, plus an Add card.
Motion Server DSU/Cemuhook gyro broadcasting for emulators.
Web Controller Browser-based controller for phones, tablets, and other PCs.
Remote Link Share controllers with a paired PadForge on another PC.
Overlays On-screen indicators: the menu ring or grid, the shift layer flyout, and profile switch announcements.
Touchpad Overlay On-screen touch surface that drives a PlayStation slot's touchpad.
Drivers Install status for HidHide and MIDI Services.

Missing drivers, disconnected controllers, and a stopped engine all surface here.

Input Engine

The engine card sits at the top with four elements in a row.

Element Description
Power flame Starts and stops the engine. The flame's look shows state (see below).
Status text "Forging", "Idle", "Stopping…", or "Stopped".
Polling frequency Live polling rate in Hz, e.g. 987.3 Hz. Dash when stopped.
Device count Online vs. total, e.g. 2/3 devices online. Online means plugged in right now. Total includes remembered devices.

Power flame states

The power control is a flame. Its fill and glow show what the engine is doing.

State Look
Forging Ember (orange) flame with a glow. Running and processing input.
Idle Gold flame. The engine started, but no slot is enabled with a device mapped and no linked PC is sharing input, so there's nothing to process.
Stopping Gold flame, flashing while it winds down.
Stopped Hollow flame outline in steel. No fill.

Tip: Turn on Auto-start engine on launch in Settings to skip the manual power click each time.

Virtual Controllers

Each virtual controller slot gets a card under the engine card.

Card layout

A virtual controller slot card showing the power flame, type track, device roster, status counts, and stage ledger

Element Location Description
Power flame Top-left Slot status, shown as a flame (see below). Click to enable or disable.
Slot number Next to the flame Global controller number (1, 2, 3, ...).
Type track Second row A recessed segmented strip of six type icons: Xbox, PlayStation, Nintendo, Extended, Keyboard + Mouse, MIDI. The active type is lit ember. The others are dim. Click a dim icon to switch type. When Windows MIDI Services is missing, the MIDI icon alone shows a no-entry cursor and a tooltip saying it's required. The other types have no such gate.
Per-type instance number After the type track Position within the type, e.g. #2 for the second Xbox slot.
Device roster Third row Every mapped device, each with a device-class icon, a Bluetooth icon on wireless links, and a battery icon plus percent when the device reports it. Offline devices dim. Hover for the full untruncated list, one device per line. Shows "No device mapped" when the slot is empty.
Status text + counts Fourth row The slot state in words (see below), then 2 mapped, 1 connected.
Stage ledger Fifth row One small icon per pipeline stage the slot's devices have: sticks, triggers, gyro, lighting, touchpad, audio. An icon glows ember when that stage carries a non-default setup and stays steel when it is untouched. Hover an icon for a per-device readout.
Delete button (X) Upper-right Removes the slot. Appears on hover.

Slot status

The power flame and the status text both track the slot's state. Hovering the flame shows the status word.

Status text Flame Meaning
Forging Ember, with a glow Enabled, a device is connected, output is live. Holds through the HIDMaestro inactivity grace period (default 60 s).
Idle Ember, with a glow A mapped device dropped offline. The controller holds through its grace period, so the flame stays the same as Forging until the timeout tears it down.
Awaiting devices Gold Enabled and mapped, but nothing is connected and the controller is down, or the engine is stopped.
Virtual controller failed Gold. Steel outline if nothing is mapped The slot's latest attempt to create its virtual controller failed. Outranks Awaiting devices. PadForge retries after you toggle the slot, switch its type or profile, or its devices drop offline and return.
Cold Steel outline Enabled with no devices mapped.
Initializing Flashing ember The controller is coming up.
Disabled Steel outline Turned off with the power flame.

Click anywhere on a card (except the delete or power flame) to open the slot's configuration: Button and Axis Mappings, Stick Deadzones, Trigger Deadzones, Force Feedback, Adaptive Triggers, Lighting, and Macros.

Reordering slots

Drag a card by its body to reorder slots inside the same type group. Xbox, PlayStation, Nintendo, Extended, Keyboard + Mouse, and MIDI each reorder on their own. Cross-type drops are ignored. The per-type instance number (the #2 on the second Xbox slot) updates as soon as you drop.

Same-profile reorders are a pointer swap. No kernel rebuild, no game disconnection. Different-profile reorders rebuild only the positions whose profile changed. See Controller Slots.

Add Controller

An Add Controller card sits at the bottom when at least one type still has room. Click it to pick a type. The card disappears when every type is at capacity. See Controller Slots for limits.

Motion Server

Broadcasts gyroscope and accelerometer data over UDP using the DSU/Cemuhook protocol. Cemu, Dolphin, Yuzu, and Ryujinx read it for motion controls like gyro aiming.

Control Description
Enable DSU motion server (CemuHook Motion Provider protocol) Starts and stops the server.
Port UDP port. Default 26760. Change only on conflict. Range 1024-65535.
Status indicator A flame beside the status text. Ember when running, a steel outline when stopped.

The DSU protocol caps at 4 slots, so only the first 4 virtual controllers broadcast motion data.

See DSU Motion Server for full details.

Web Controller

A browser-based controller you can open from any device on the same network.

Control Description
Enable web controller server Starts and stops the web server.
Port HTTP/WebSocket port. Default 8080. Range 1024-65535.
Status indicator A flame beside the status text. Ember when running, steel outline when stopped. The text reads "Running on <url>".

See Web Controller for full details.

Shares controllers with a paired PadForge on another PC over your network. A device on one PC shows up as an ordinary input device on the other.

Control Description
Enable Remote Link server Starts and stops listening for peers.
Reconnect automatically Re-establishes known pairings when they come back online.
Port Link port with a reset button. Default 27500.
Status indicator A flame beside the status text: ember and "Listening on <port>" when running, steel outline when stopped.

Identity Protection

Sets how this PC stores its pairing identity. Secure — this PC only keys it to the machine. The portable modes carry your pairings on a thumb drive between machines.

Paired PCs and Nearby PCs

Paired PCs lists your established pairings, each with rename, connect, and revoke, plus a revoke-all. Nearby PCs lists peers discovered on the network. Connect by address reaches a peer by IP when discovery can't find it.

See Remote Link for full details.

Overlays

The on-screen indicators PadForge shows while you play. Turning one off never changes what the input does, only whether it is announced. Three checkboxes, all on by default.

Checkbox What it shows
Menu Overlay The on-screen ring or grid while a radial or touch menu is engaged. Menus still fire with the overlay off, so layouts you know by muscle memory can run without the picture. Per-menu position, size, and opacity live on each menu's own settings on the Menus tab.
Shift layer flyout A flyout with the engaged shift layer's name and color while any slot holds a non-Base layer, whichever page is open. When several slots hold one at once, the selected pad wins, then the lowest-numbered slot.
Profile switch overlay The new profile's name when a macro switches the active profile. Automatic per-app switches don't show it. They flare the profile pill in the status bar instead.

Touchpad Overlay

An on-screen, transparent touch surface you can pin to any monitor. Drives the touchpad on the assigned DualShock 4 or DualSense slot. Useful when no physical touchpad or phone is handy.

Control Description
Enable touchpad overlay Shows the transparent overlay window.
Opacity Slider plus percentage box, 0-100%, with a reset button.
Reset position Recenters the overlay on its monitor.
Status indicator A flame: ember while the overlay is showing, steel outline when hidden.

The overlay tracks 1-2 finger contacts and forwards them to whichever PlayStation-output slot has a touchpad bound. Multi-touch is supported when the OS reports touch events. Mouse drag falls back to single-finger.

Drivers

Install status for each driver. Name on the left, status on the right.

Driver / Service Purpose When to install
HidHide Hides physical controllers from games to prevent double input. Games see both the physical and the virtual controller.
MIDI Services MIDI virtual controller output through Windows MIDI Services. Requires Windows 11 24H2 (build 26100) or later. You want to send MIDI to DAWs, synths, or VJ tools.

When Windows MIDI Services is missing, the MIDI type icon on a slot card shows a no-entry cursor and a tooltip saying it's required. Install or remove drivers from Settings. HIDMaestro and the full driver list live on the Driver Management page.

Last updated for PadForge 4.1.0.