Use Joy-Cons as one controller on PC — no BetterJoy, no drivers
On the Switch, two Joy-Cons are one gamepad. On Windows, they're two confused half-devices — unless something merges them. Here's every way to do that, compared honestly, including the only method that never touches your PC's Bluetooth or drivers.
Why Windows can't do this by itself
Each Joy-Con is its own Bluetooth device. Pair both to a PC and Windows dutifully lists two controllers, each with one stick and half the buttons — and no game knows what to do with that. Merging them into a single usable pad always needs a piece of software in the middle. The question is where that software runs, and what it costs you.
The four ways to merge Joy-Cons, compared
- Steam. Free and built in: pair both halves to the PC and Steam Input combines them. The catch: it only exists inside Steam. Fortnite, Minecraft Launcher, Epic, standalone emulators — anything launched elsewhere sees the two raw halves again. And you still need working PC Bluetooth that can hold two connections.
- BetterJoy. The classic free answer, and it does merge system-wide. The toll: your PC must have Bluetooth, you install the ViGEmBus kernel driver (whose upstream project is no longer actively developed), run as admin, and live with a community tool whose issue tracker is measured in the hundreds — endless-reconnect loops and "could not start ViGEmBus" are its greatest hits.
- Paid remappers (reWASD and friends). Polished, actively maintained — and a subscription-priced answer to a problem you can solve free, which still requires the PC to have Bluetooth.
- Merge on your phone instead. Controller Gateway pairs both halves to your Android phone and joins them there — left stick and D-pad from the left half, buttons and right stick from the right, ZL/ZR as triggers, exactly like the Switch. The PC receives one standard Xbox controller over Wi-Fi. Nothing is installed on the PC beyond the free receiver, which sets itself up on first launch; the PC needs no Bluetooth at all.
The no-drivers merge
Pair the Joy-Cons to your phone, tap Start, and your PC has one clean Xbox controller in every game and launcher. A merged pair counts as one controller, so it's free forever.
Get Controller Gateway — freeSet it up in about a minute
- Install the free PC receiver — a small Windows tray app that sets up the virtual controller and firewall rule itself.
- Pair both Joy-Cons to your phone — hold each rail's round sync button until the lights sweep, then connect in Android's Bluetooth settings.
- Open the app, tap Find PC, then Start. The app shows Joy-Con (L + R) as one controller, and Windows sees one Xbox pad.
Flip "Use Joy-Cons as one controller" off and each half becomes a properly-mapped sideways mini pad — rotated stick, D-pad as the face buttons, SL/SR as shoulders. One Joy-Con pair, two players. (Two simultaneous controllers is part of the one-time £2.99 unlock.)
When the other methods are the right call
Fair's fair: if you only ever play through Steam on a PC with solid Bluetooth, Steam Input is free and excellent — use it. If you need Joy-Con gyro aiming or HD rumble on PC, BetterJoy exposes Switch-specific extras a standard Xbox controller doesn't carry, and that's worth its setup pain to some players. For everyone who just wants the pair to work as one pad in everything — without driver surgery, without PC Bluetooth, without paying a subscription — merging on the phone is the shortest path.