Remapping the back buttons on the steam controller (2026)

[teslatankx]

Has anyone figured out how to remap the back buttons without using the existing controller buttons? I hate using the Steam Controller settings to rebind them, and assigning them to a key that isn’t on the controller doesn’t work because Input Remapper won’t detect it. Input Remapper only detects controller bindings, and I’d prefer to assign different functions to the back buttons instead of reusing the default ones, so I’m not sure what to do.

[xop01]

Input Remapper can only map buttons the kernel already reports. On the 2026 Steam Controller the back buttons are not sent as their own buttons. They get turned into the normal controller buttons before Input Remapper ever sees them. That is why it only offers controller bindings, and why a keyboard key never shows up as something you can press to record.

It cannot map a button it does not receive. Steam Input still sees the back buttons, which is the path that can bind them to other keys. A driver that reads this controller directly, such as sc-evdev, is the other route, and that project is still early.

@teslatankx