Retail gamepads, arcade panels, USB encoders, buttons soldered to the GPIO header: Recalbox drives them all. This section gathers the "controllers" tutorials.
Everything happens in START → CONTROLLER SETTINGS:
| Entry | What it does |
|---|---|
CONFIGURE A CONTROLLER |
starts the visual configurator: your pad is drawn on screen and each button to press lights up |
TEST A CONTROLLER |
checks that an already configured pad responds correctly |
PAIR BLUETOOTH CONTROLLERS |
starts a scan for a wireless controller |
FORGET BLUETOOTH CONTROLLERS |
clears every Bluetooth pairing |
AUTO PAIR ON BOOT |
automatically reconnects paired controllers at startup |
ALWAYS SHOW PAD OSD / PAD OSD TYPE |
permanently displays the connected controllers' layout, and picks its artwork |
RUMBLE |
enables force feedback on pads that support it |
INPUT P1 to INPUT P8 |
manually assigns a controller to a player slot |
Recalbox recognises a great many controllers out of the box: see Input devices for what works with no effort at all, and 8BitDo on Recalbox for that brand's models.