How to disable Switch Joy-Con from Steam?

[Nul]

I have a switch joy-con I have set up with joy2key to act as a shortcut tool for drawing and painting apps like Photoshop. After a lot of experimenting I have found the joy-con much more intuitive than Wacom's (overpriced) express key tool.

I also have several steam programs like "easy pose" and "camera bag" which I use while painting.

The problem is that once I open steam, my joy-con becomes a detected controller and suddenly my joy2key shortcuts stop working, as it seems steam is overriding it. I've noticed steam only recently added joy-con support which is why I never had this issue before.

There is an option to disable the "switch configuration support" from steam but no matter what I select the joy-con will always come up as a detected controller, and there doesn't seem to be any way to "forget" or disable a detected controller. The only solution is to exit Steam completely but as I said, this isn't very intuitive for me as I use steam programs while painting.

I tried using Steam's own controller configurations instead of joy2key to make the joy-con work with my painting apps, but the biggest problem I'm finding is that steam deactivates the triggers when using a single joy-con, probably because it thinks you want to use it horizontally, which I don't. It's also significantly laggier than Joy2Key.

Is there a file in the back-end somewhere I can delete to stop Steam from detecting my joy-con, without messing up my Xbox controller configurations on other games I play?

I'm not very optimistic that there is a simple solution here but I figured it won't hurt to ask.

[tintingaroo]

Select the controller then click 'Hide Device' at the bottom of the screen. If the button is not displayed you can also press the Start (or equivalent) button on a controller.

Dis-reconnect / power cycle and it should no longer be detected.

To undo, there should be 'Unhide Devices' at the bottom.

[Nul]

Thanks tintingaroo for the response. The option to 'Hide Device' would be ideal in the controller settings menu in Steam but I don't find that option anywhere, and none of the buttons on the joy-con seem to work as a "start" button.

Correct me if I am wrong but your solution seems to be for disconnecting the device from the entire computer, but as I still wish to use my device on programs outside of steam that is unfortunately not want I am wanting to do. I just want Steam to stop automatically registering my joy-con as an input device every time I open Steam up, because when it does it overrides my joy2key settings.

I'm not optimistic that this is something that can be fixed unless Steam itself updates to provide an option to disable certain controllers, but some further research has led me to find this is an ongoing issue so I'm very doubtful for a quick fix.

[tintingaroo]

It's a Steam function that only hides it from Steam.

You can press the Start button on your Xbox controller.

Can also do the process manually following the steps from bottom section of post:
https://steamcommunity.com/discussions/forum/1/3464975249570878405/#c3464975249571183239

You want to use the joycon VID / PID rather than the Dualsense from the linked post.
Left Joy-Con VID/PID:
57e/2006

Right Joy-Con VID/PID:
57e/2007


Other software (HIDHide) can also be configured to hide the device just from Steam.

[Nul]

Originally posted by tintingaroo:

It's a Steam function that only hides it from Steam.

You can press the Start button on your Xbox controller.

Can also do the process manually following the steps from bottom section of post:
https://steamcommunity.com/discussions/forum/1/3464975249570878405/#c3464975249571183239

You want to use the joycon VID / PID rather than the Dualsense from the linked post.
Left Joy-Con VID/PID:
57e/2006

Right Joy-Con VID/PID:
57e/2007


Other software (HIDHide) can also be configured to hide the device just from Steam.

Thank you so much for this workaround tintingaroo, your instructions worked perfectly! Very grateful for your help!