Haptika

A fast, interactive gamepad testing application for Linux.
Built with pure C, GTK 4, and Libadwaita.

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Haptika is a native Linux application for testing and inspecting game controllers. It lets you verify that every button, stick, trigger, touchpad, and sensor on your gamepad is working correctly, with real-time visual feedback and sub-millisecond input latency.

Unlike browser-based gamepad testers or aging CLI tools, Haptika is a proper desktop application that integrates perfectly with the GNOME desktop, follows the GNOME Human Interface Guidelines, and talks directly to the kernel's input subsystem for maximum accuracy.

Why Haptika?

	Haptika	jstest-gtk	Browser testers
Real-time visual feedback	✅	✅	✅
Analog stick visualization	✅	✅	✅
Pressure-sensitive buttons (DS3)	✅	❌	❌
Touchpad tracking (DS4/DS5)	✅	❌	❌
Motion sensors (accel/gyro)	✅	⚠️	⚠️
Battery & connection info	✅	❌	❌
Controller hardware info	✅	❌	❌
Clone/authenticity detection	✅	❌	❌
Speaker testing	✅	❌	❌
Vibration/rumble testing	✅	❌	⚠️
Hotplug support	✅	❌	✅
SDL3 + evdev dual backend	✅	❌	❌

Features

Input Testing

• Buttons/D-PAD — every button lights up in real time when pressed
• Analog sticks — circular visualizer showing precise stick position and travel
• Triggers — vertical bar indicators for analog trigger depth

Advanced Input

• Touchpad finger tracking — real-time visualization of finger position on DualShock 4 and DualSense touchpads
• Motion sensors — tilt indicator for accelerometer data and bar graphs for gyroscope X/Y/Z axes
• Pressure-sensitive buttons — reads the analog pressure values from DualShock 3 face buttons, shoulder buttons, and D-pad (the only Linux tool that does this)

Dual Backend

• SDL3 — the default backend, provides standardized button/axis mapping, rumble, touchpad, sensors, and battery info for most controllers
• evdev — raw Linux input backend, shows every axis and button the kernel exposes without any mapping layer
• One-click switching — toggle between SDL3 and evdev on the same controller without disconnecting

Hardware Information

• DualShock 3 — Bluetooth address, clone/authenticity detection
• DualShock 4 — firmware build date, hardware/software version, board model (JDM-001 through JDM-055), Bluetooth address, clone/authenticity detection
• DualSense / DualSense Edge — firmware versions (main, SBL, Venom, Spider), board model (BDM-010 through BDM-060X), serial number, color variant, MCU unique ID, PCBA ID, battery barcode, VCM barcodes, Bluetooth address

Device Management

• Hotplug — controllers are detected and removed in real time
• Battery status — percentage and charging state displayed in the header bar and device list
• Connection type — Bluetooth or USB indicator
• Controller icons — 30+ custom SVG icons for PlayStation, Xbox, Nintendo, Sega, Atari, and other controller families

Output Testing

• Vibration — adjustable low-frequency and high-frequency motor intensity
• Speaker — plays a 440 Hz test tone through the DualSense's built-in speaker via PipeWire (USB only)

Installation

Dependencies

• GCC or Clang (C11)
• Meson ≥ 0.59
• GTK 4
• Libadwaita 1
• SDL3 ≥ 3.2.0
• libevdev ≥ 1.11.0
• libudev ≥ 249
• libpipewire 0.3 (optional, for speaker testing)

Building from source

meson setup build --prefix=$HOME/.local
ninja -C build
ninja -C build install

Then run haptika from your terminal or find it in your application launcher.

Usage

1. Launch Haptika
2. Connect a controller — it appears in the device list automatically
3. Click a controller to open the input viewer
4. Press buttons, move sticks, pull triggers — everything updates in real time
5. Use the header bar buttons to:
   • Switch between SDL3 and evdev backends
   • View controller hardware info (Sony controllers)
   • See battery level and connection type

Permissions

Haptika needs read access to /dev/input/event* devices. If your controller doesn't appear, you may need to add your user to the input group:

sudo usermod -aG input $USER

Then log out and back in.

For DualShock 4/DualSense hardware info, Haptika also needs access to /dev/hidraw* devices. On most modern distributions this works automatically. If the info dialog shows an error, your system may need a udev rule granting access to Sony HID devices.

Technical Details

Haptika is written in pure C11 with no C++ dependencies. The UI is built entirely in code (no .ui XML files) using GTK 4 and Libadwaita widgets. Custom widgets for analog sticks, touchpad, tilt indicator, and button indicators use GtkDrawingArea with Cairo rendering.

The architecture follows a clean module separation:

• device_manager — unified device tracking across SDL3 and udev, with topological hardware matching to merge both views of the same physical device
• input_session — abstract polling interface with SDL3 and evdev implementations
• input_viewer — dynamic UI that builds itself from the device's reported capabilities
• widgets/ — reusable custom GTK 4 widgets for gamepad visualization

The SDL3 backend polls at 1000 Hz (1 ms timer) for sub-millisecond input latency. The evdev backend uses poll() for event-driven, zero-latency input processing. So Haptika can also be used as an input lag tester of sorts!

License

Haptika is licensed under the GNU General Public License v3.0.

Contributing

Contributions are VERY welcome (I don't have every controller ever released). Please open an issue first to discuss what you'd like to change.

Acknowledgments

• SDL3 for the gamepad abstraction layer
• libevdev for raw evdev access
• dualshock-tools for DS4 reverse engineering reference
• dualsensectl for DualSense reverse engineering reference
• DsHidMini for DualShock 3 OUI database