Stickshift

Play Minecraft with a controller. Not a keyboard emulator with a stick taped to it, analog movement, menus that expect a d-pad, an inventory you can actually work, and glyphs that show your pad's own button names.

Stickshift talks to your controller through SDL3, the same library Minecraft 26 already runs on. It ships no native libraries of its own and sees exactly the devices the game sees.

What you get

Playing

• Analog movement and camera, with per-stick deadzones and response curves
• 82 bindings, all rebindable, across gameplay, movement, camera, hotbar, menus and typing
• Face buttons follow your platform, so a Nintendo pad doesn't answer backwards
• Hotbar wheel: hold, point, release

Menus

• Every vanilla screen is navigable, including the creative inventory
• An inventory pointer that moves freely but settles onto slots, with split and quick move
• On-screen keyboard for chat, commands and signs, with tab completion
• A button guide along the bottom showing what does what, wherever you are

Feel

• Rumble tied to what happens in the world, with an intensity control
• DualSense adaptive triggers, a bow that resists as you draw it, a shield brace, a catch on the sword swing. Each trigger has its own switch and strength, because wanting the bow doesn't mean wanting the sword
• Motion aim that applies only while a ranged shot is ready, which is the one place in this game a stick is genuinely poor

Default layout

Shown in PlayStation labels. Stickshift draws whatever your own controller prints.

Action	Input
Move / look	Left stick / right stick
Jump	Cross
Sneak	Circle
Sprint	L3
Attack / mine	R2
Use / place	L2
Inventory	Triangle
Swap hands	Square
Drop item	D-pad down
Perspective	D-pad up
Hotbar next / previous	R1 / L1
Hotbar wheel	Touchpad
Pick block	R3

Setting up

Drop the jar in mods/, plug in a controller, play. There's nothing to configure first.

Settings are at Options → Controls → Stickshift, with bindings on their own page.

Requirements

Minecraft 26.3 · Fabric Loader 0.19.5+ · Fabric API · Java 25 · Client-side only

Known limitations

This is a beta and these are real:

• Tested on a DualSense over Bluetooth. Xbox, Switch Pro and generic pads are supported in code and covered by tests, but nobody has held one while it was running. If that's you, a report either way is worth a great deal.
• No virtual mouse. Every vanilla screen works. A mod config screen with nothing focusable will still need a mouse.
• Adaptive triggers over Bluetooth can be unreliable. Effect reports share the link with the pad's input reports and are the ones dropped. A cable fixes it.
• One controller at a time. Hot-swapping works; two at once isn't built.
• No profiles. One set of bindings per install.

Reporting problems

Say which controller you have and how it's connected. If something feels wrong rather than being obviously broken, that's still worth reporting most of what's been fixed here was found that way, not by a crash.

Modpacks

Welcome, as long as the pack credits Stickshift and links back to this page.