Live viewer

The Live Viewer is a real-time controller viewer that renders your pad as a true-to-life 3D model and lights up every button, stick, and trigger the moment you press it. It doubles as a full controller diagnostics and controller tester, so you can confirm a device works, spot a stuck input, and read battery and connection at a glance. It is free, and it needs no account.

Overview

Live Viewer reads your connected controller and mirrors it on screen as an accurate 3D model. Press a face button and it lights up. Roll a stick and the on-screen stick follows its position. Pull a trigger and the model reflects the exact travel. Alongside the model you get device info, connection type, and battery level, plus a built-in controller test and a motion visualiser that shows gyro orientation in real time.

Because it reflects the raw input stream, Live Viewer is the fastest way to answer a simple question: is this input actually reaching Windows, and is it clean. Every press, tilt, and pull is shown as the app receives it, before any remapping or tuning is applied.

Why use it

Controller problems are hard to diagnose blind. A face button that feels mushy, a stick that reports movement while centered, a trigger that never reaches full pull, a paddle that does nothing: all of these are obvious the instant you can watch the input live. Live Viewer turns a vague "something feels off" into a concrete reading you can act on.

It benefits everyone. New users confirm a fresh controller is detected and working before they map a single button. Advanced users use it as a controller diagnostics bench to isolate drift, dead zones, and intermittent connections. Streamers and buyers use it to verify a used or refurbished pad end to end.

Use cases

Check a new or used controller. Run through every button, both sticks, both triggers, and any paddles to confirm the whole device responds before you rely on it.
Hunt stick drift. Leave both sticks centered and watch whether the on-screen sticks stay put. Movement with your hands off the pad points to drift, which you then correct in Calibration.
Confirm trigger travel. Pull each trigger slowly and watch it reach full range. A trigger that stops short is a hardware or calibration issue, not a game setting.
Verify motion and gyro. The motion visualiser shows the pad's orientation live, so you can confirm the gyroscope reports before you set up motion aiming.
Test after a remap. Watch inputs arrive while you build a mapping so you know exactly which control you are binding.

Supported devices and compatibility

Live Viewer works with every controller OmniControl supports, over USB or Bluetooth, each shown as its own live 3D model: Sony DualSense, DualSense Edge, DualShock 4, and DualShock 3; Microsoft Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, Xbox 360, and Xbox Elite Series 2; the Nintendo Switch Pro Controller; and generic HID gamepads.

DualSense extras, including gyro/motion, the touchpad, and the lightbar, are available over USB only. Over Bluetooth the standard buttons, sticks, and triggers still show live, but those extras are not reported. OmniControl runs on Windows 10 and 11, 64-bit.

Limitations

Live Viewer shows the input stream as OmniControl reads it, not what a game ultimately receives. If you have remaps or tuning active, the raw model still reflects the physical input, which is intended for diagnosis. Getting a customized controller into a game that only accepts one kind of pad is the job of Emulation, which is a Pro feature. The gyro and touchpad views for a DualSense require a USB connection, as noted above.

Tips and best practices

Use Live Viewer as your first stop whenever a controller misbehaves, then move to a dedicated tool once you have located the fault. Drift, off-center sticks, and short trigger travel all belong in Calibration; binding problems belong in mapping.

Tip

To test for stick drift, set the controller down on a flat surface, take your hands off it, and watch the on-screen sticks for a full ten seconds. Any movement while you are not touching the pad is drift, and Calibration can measure and correct it.

Works with the rest of OmniControl

Live Viewer is the diagnostic core that the rest of the platform builds on. Pair it with Calibration to correct hardware drift, with mapping to watch bindings as you create them, and with the Overlay to mirror your live pad on stream. For a deeper walkthrough, read the full Live Viewer documentation.

Warning

OmniControl is built for single-player and controller-friendly games. It is not a tool for defeating anti-cheat, and kernel-level anti-cheat competitive shooters are out of scope by design. Live Viewer only reads and displays your controller, but that does not exempt any title's rules. OmniControl will not help you bypass a game's protections.