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tara.r Feb 16, 2015 @ 10:51am

XBOX ONE CONTROLLER AND BORDERLANDS 2 STEAM

How do I set up my xbox one controller to play borderlands 2 on steam on mac and also pc

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Showing 1-14 of 14 comments

stewedyeti Feb 17, 2015 @ 12:24am

It's a piece of cake on PC, as all you need to do is follow the instructions Microsoft has provided here[support.xbox.com]. You'll need to plug the controller into the PC using a micro USB cable, though.

On your Mac, however...

Using an Xbox One controller on OS X for games published by Aspyr requires some fancy footwork, so before helping you, I'd like to know that you or someone you know (that can do it for you) is confident enough in their Mac skills that they won't completely fudge up installing very early versions of unofficial third-party drivers.

So basically, I need you to answer these questions:

Do you know what a driver is?
Do you have an Xbox 360 controller (preferably wired) you can use instead?
Do you, or can you, properly back up your computer using Time Machine before installing the software necessary to make an Xbone controller work?

If you don't know the answer to the first question, or you don't feel totally confident in your abilities, please do not attempt the instructions I provide. If you said yes to the second question (or can just go buy a used one), there's no reason to use the Xbone controller and it would be more trouble than it's worth. The third question is self-explanatory, and you should be doing this anyways. If you decide to follow my instructions, having a recent Time Machine backup will be a life-saving mulligan if something goes wrong; however, I'm far too lazy to also give you instructions to restore from the backup in that case, so you'll have to look into that yourself.

All that said, if you're a competent user, this shouldn't be too difficult for you.

Aspyr-ported games like Borderlands 2 use drivers made by Aspyr and loaded within the game itself. Those drivers support only the wired Xbox 360 and PS3 controllers, and do not support the Xbox One controller (though it's possible they will add support at some point in the future). Normally, you have to install a third-party driver to use the 360 controller on OS X, and for a while that driver conflicted with Aspyr's driver, but I haven't had any issue lately so I don't know if one of them fixed that.

The reason I'm telling you all of this is because in order to use the Xbone controller with Aspyr games you have to install a customized version of the 360 drivers that tricks Aspyr games into thinking that the Xbone controller is one the game supports. You have three options, but they're all complicated and, if performed incorrectly, could potentially screw up your computer (software-wise, not physically, which is why a backup is a great idea). Each of the options have specific pros and cons.

I'm only going to explain the easiest option unless you reply that you know how to clone git repositories, build the cloned project in Xcode, and disable Yosemite's kext signing requirement/enable kext development mode (assuming you're doing all of this on Yosemite). This is the most straight-forward option, but you'll need to keep an eye on the project's respository[github.com] if you ever want to update to a newer and thus less buggy version.

Download and install this driver package here[dl.dropboxusercontent.com]. (Before doing so, it's a good idea to make sure the controller isn't plugged in.)

Afterwords, you'll need to restart your Mac. This driver will let you use Xbone and 360 controllers, and should work for you in Borderlands 2. I don't actually have an Xbone controller to test, but this information is coming from the developer working on the Xbone drivers[github.com] and who has implimented it into the updated 360 controller drivers everyone uses (or should be using instead of the stagnant Tattiebogle drivers).

tara.r Feb 17, 2015 @ 11:16am

Thanks!, It worked!!

stewedyeti Feb 17, 2015 @ 12:28pm

That's good to hear and you're most welcome

:3 Jun 5, 2015 @ 2:34pm

Thanks!

dLA󠀡󠀡󠀡󠀡󠀡󠀡󠀡 Jun 6, 2015 @ 1:12am

Thanks!

IceMan Jun 18, 2015 @ 1:44am

Is there anything you need to do to activate the driver after it is installed or should it be recognized once I start Borderlands 2?

stewedyeti Jun 18, 2015 @ 1:48am

Originally posted by IceMan:
Is there anything you need to do to activate the driver after it is installed or should it be recognized once I start Borderlands 2?

You should just need to reboot the ol' computer and it should load on boot. You can check if it's working before launching BL2 by going to System Preferences and clicking the "Xbox 360 Controllers" icon that should now be on the bottom row. There it will tell you if a controller is found and you can test that it's properly reading all of the signals.