If you’re like most people, you use your computer keyboard for more than just typing. You might use it to control your media player, web browser, or other applications. But if you want to use your keyboard for gaming on your PC or Mac, you may find that the traditional keyboard layout isn’t ideal. Fortunately, remapping your controller’s keys to keyboard keys is easy on both Windows and MacOS. Here’s how to do it on each platform: Windows

  1. Open the Control Panel by clicking the Start button and typing “control panel” into the search box. When Control Panel appears in the results list, click it to open it.
  2. Under System and Security, click Keyboard and Mouse. The Keyboard and Mouse window will open. (If it doesn’t open automatically, click the link under System and Security in the left column of Search Results.)
  3. In the Keyboard section of Keyboard and Mouse window, click Change Keyboards or Add a New Keyboard . The Change Keyboards window will open (see below). 4. In the Change Keyboards window, under Layout , select US English . 5. Click OK . The new layout will be applied to all current keyboards in Windows (or any other language that uses US English as its standard layout). 6. If you want to keep using a different layout for specific applications or games, repeat steps 3-5 for each layout you want to use separately from US English . 7. To revert back to using US English as your default keyboard layout, simply close all windows associated with changing layouts (including the Change Keyboards window), restart your computer, and then reopen the Change Keyboards window by clicking its link in Search Results under System and Security . 8. If you ever need to change back to a different language’s standard keyboard layout again (for example if you switch between languages ..

You’ll lose some analog input—for example, the joysticks will just function as arrow keys that are on or off without the usual range of sensitivity—but for some games, that’s not a huge issue.

If you’re just looking to play Steam games with a controller, Steam already has great built-in tools for remapping controllers in its Big Picture Mode and will be a much easier solution than anything else listed here. For use system-wide or in non-Steam games, you’ll need a third party application.

RELATED: How to Remap Xbox, PlayStation, and Other Controller Buttons in Steam

Connect Your Controller

This step is obvious, but with so many kinds of controllers on the market, it can be a challenge to get them working correctly, especially on macOS. We have a comprehensive guide for most mainstream controllers that you can reference if you’re having issues, but most current-gen controllers will be plug and play on Windows and macOS. Last-gen and earlier controllers may need custom drivers and a bit of setup.

RELATED: How to Connect Any Console Game Controller to a Windows PC or Mac

You can make sure the controller is connected by opening up the “Devices” tab in Window’s settings. Head to Settings > Devices > Bluetooth & Other Devices and look under “Other Devices.”

On macOS, you can usually find USB controllers in the “System Information” app, under “USB.” Bluetooth controllers should show up in the Bluetooth menu in the top menubar.

Windows (And Linux) Setup – AntiMicro

There are a couple of good commercial options out there, most notably reWASD, but AntiMicro is free, open source, and does its job just as well. It also works on Linux as well.

Download the latest release from Github (or the portable version if you don’t want to install it) and open it up.

So long as your controller is connected, you’ll see this screen laying out all the sticks and buttons. You can click any of these to set a mapping to any keyboard key, or the mouse. If you press the buttons on your controller, it should light up the button in AntiMicro, so you won’t have to worry about figuring out which one “Button 14” is.

Mapping a joystick to WASD or arrow keys turn it from an analog input to a digital one, which can be less responsive, but you can configure the dead zones and other settings by clicking on the “L Stick” button in the middle.

The joysticks also work well when mapped to the mouse, which brings back some analog control. That’s good for any games requiring first-person aiming.

There are a few advanced options in the settings, like macro support and profile switching. But, out of the box, AntiMicro works well for simply remapping a controller to keyboard keys.

MacOS Setup – Enjoyable

For macOS, Enjoyable is a great alternative to AntiMicro that’s even simpler to use. Just run the app, press a button on your controller, then press a key on your keyboard, and repeat for each button you want to map. After that’s done, press the run button (it looks like a “>”) in the top right corner, and it should be good to go. It doesn’t have any presence on your Mac’s menubar, so you must have the window open while you want to use your controller.

Enjoyable supports multiple profiles, switching profiles with buttons, and moving the mouse. The joysticks can be a bit glitchy to map, as it tends to switch between multiple axes. But, with some trial and error, it should work fine.