DualSense adaptive triggers on PC over Wi-Fi or Bluetooth

Adaptive triggers are the DualSense feature people miss first when they move from a PS5 to a PC across the room. A game can make L2 and R2 stiffen, click, or buzz under your finger: a bowstring that fights back, a gun that jams. On PC, games that support them generally want the controller plugged into the gaming PC by USB, and a streamed or relayed pad usually loses them entirely.

Dish carries them over Wi-Fi. Here’s how it works and how to set it up.

Why adaptive triggers usually stop at the cable

A game sets a trigger effect by writing it to the DualSense it sees. Two things get in the way when the controller isn’t plugged into the gaming PC:

• The game has to see a DualSense. Most streaming hosts and controller relays show the game a virtual Xbox or DualShock 4 pad. Neither has adaptive triggers, so the game never sends an effect.
• The effect has to get back to your hand. Even when the game writes one, something has to carry it from the PC to the controller you’re holding.

How Dish carries them

With Satellite on Windows, your games see a DualSense. When a game writes a trigger effect, Satellite sends it over the same encrypted connection as your input, and Dish writes the same effect into your real controller, block for block.

Where your DualSense can be:

• On an Android phone, plugged in over USB, with the controller card in Direct mode (the bolt icon).
• On a Windows or Linux PC, including a laptop or a Steam Deck running Dish, plugged in over USB or paired over Bluetooth.

If you play on the touch screen instead, the on-screen DualSense marks a trigger while the game is shaping it, and the phone buzzes for trigger rumble.

The rest of the DualSense comes along

Adaptive triggers aren’t the only thing that needs a real DualSense at the other end. Over Satellite on Windows, Dish also carries:

• The lightbar. The color the game picks shows on your controller.
• Player lights and the mute lamp. When a game lights the mute lamp, the pad’s own microphone is switched off behind it, as on a console.
• HD haptics. The detailed vibration in games like 007 First Light. See DualSense haptics on PC without a cable for how that part works.
• Microphone and speaker. Party chat on the PC hears you through the pad, using the DualSense’s own headset mic where the device running Dish exposes it, or your phone’s microphone.
• Touchpad, gyro, and battery.

How to set it up

1. Install Satellite on the Windows PC that runs the game, from the downloads page. Its installer adds the HIDMaestro driver, which is what lets Satellite show your games a DualSense.
2. Connect your DualSense to Dish: by USB to your phone, or by USB or Bluetooth to a PC running Dish for Windows or Dish for Linux.
3. Pair Dish with Satellite with the 4-digit PIN from Satellite’s dashboard.
4. Set the controller type to DualSense. This is the step that’s easiest to miss: an Xbox pad has no adaptive triggers, so with any other type the game never sends an effect.
5. On Android, check for Direct mode. If Direct mode can’t be set up, Dish falls back to Standard mode and says so once. In Standard mode, Android doesn’t let an app write trigger effects to the pad.

Then launch a game that uses adaptive triggers and pull one.

If the triggers stay loose

• Check the controller type on the controller card. It must say DualSense.
• Check the mode pill on Android: the bolt icon is Direct, the cable icon is Standard.
• Open Diagnostics. It shows, per controller, the last kind of feedback the host sent. If no trigger effect ever arrives, the game isn’t sending one to the pad it sees.
• Turn Steam Input off for the game if it shows Xbox button prompts. Steam is probably translating the pad, and the game is talking to the translation.

What works where

Adaptive triggers need Satellite on Windows. When Dish pairs with a Sunshine, Apollo, or Wolf host directly, it carries buttons, sticks, analog triggers, gyro, the touchpad, rumble, the lightbar, and battery, but not trigger effects yet. Satellite on Linux carries the same set as the Moonlight hosts. The what’s new page has the full table.

Related reading

• DualSense haptics on PC without a cable: the 007 First Light fix
• Use your phone as a controller for Sunshine, Apollo, or Wolf
• Flagship features: motion, touchpad, lightbar, and battery

Dish and Satellite are free and open source. If your triggers push back again, tips keep the project going.