"Legacy mode" bindings are always available for any game. Even games that support native Steam Input actions still allow the player to mix in legacy mode bindings in the configurator.
Through legacy mode, you can rebind any input on your controller to any emulated system input -- mouse, keyboard, or gamepad (ie, XInput events).
The legacy mode binding screen looks like this:
To apply an emulated input, simply click on the appropriate input.
Mouse
Available bindings include left, middle, and right mouse buttons, mousewheel up, mousewheel down, and two auxiliary mouse buttons (4 and 5).
Keyboard
Available bindings are all the keys on a standard keyboard. Note that the inputs here are sent by scancode, so although the display here is a standard USA English keyboard, the input that is actually sent depends on your system language/keyboard layout. So inputs like "WASD" on the configurator layout will actually map to whatever keys are in the corresponding positions in your system layout.
Non-standard keyboard layouts
There are some known issues with this if you are using a layout other than the default one for your language -- e.g. Dvorak or Colemak for English. There can also be issues if the default layout for your language doesn't match what we expect (there are some known issues where the Polish one doesn't match the layout most games expect). In this case you must either fix the keyboard bindings in game, or in the configuration.Gamepad
All the typical gamepad buttons in the XInput standard (those that typically appear on an Xbox 360 / Xbox One controller) are available here.
Special inputs
In addition to emulating mouse, keyboard, and gamepad input, there are also a row of special bindings at the top:
Change Action Set/Layer
This lets you activate Action Sets or
Action Set Layers that you have defined yourself. This is useful for games that have various different "modes" that you might want different control bindings for, such as "walking" vs "driving" vs "flying", etc.
Show Virtual Keyboard
This brings up the on-screen virtual keyboard via the Steam overlay.
Take Screenshot
This takes a screenshot.
Select Cursor Position
This lets you generate a mouse click on a specific screen position as its own binding. For instance, if you need to click a particular button on a game's GUI that doesn't have an exposed hotkey of any sort. This is particularly useful in games like
Papers, Please and Hearthstone -- check out this player's
video as an example.
Warning
Although Steam Input re-scales the mouse position proportionally with resolution, many games do not apply consistent proportional scaling to their GUI elements. This means that a cursor position binding that works in one resolution on a given game might not work in a different resolution because all the elements have moved around in unexpected ways.Toggle Magnifier
This toggles the operating system's magnification tool, zooming in on the current mouse position.
Currently the only operating systems that support the magnifier are Windows and Steam OS.
Power/System Options
This lets you issue various system commands.
Options include:
- TURN OFF CONTROLLER
- OPEN BIG PICTURE
- MINIMIZE BIG PICTURE
- QUIT BIG PICTURE
- SUSPEND HOST PC
- SHUTDOWN HOST PC
- RESTART HOST PC
Set Light Options
This lets you control how the controller's LED functions (if it has one). Only PS4 Controllers support colored light options.
- Default User Setting
No change to how the light functions
- Default XInput Slot Number Setting
Slots 1-4 are colored red, blue, green, and purple, respectively.
- Custom Setting
- Controller Light Color
Change the color of the light
- Controller Light Saturation
Change the intensity of the light
Music
This lets you control music playback from your Steam music player.
Options include:
- STEAM MUSIC PLAY/PAUSE
- STEAM MUSIC NEXT
- STEAM MUSIC PREVIOUS
- STEAM MUSIC VOLUME UP
- STEAM MUSIC VOLUME DOWN
- STEAM MUSIC MUTE
Empty
This does nothing, and is used for clearing out a previously selected special action.
