PS4 controller not working with Mac, help?

Post date: 2021-02-28 07:55:53

So I bought a game controller for some fun during the pandemic. PS4 controllers are supposed to be plug-and-play on Macs, no drivers needed. The computer sees the controller connected to USB, but the games don't. What could be wrong?

The machine is an early 2008 20-inch iMac running OS X El Capitan 10.11.6
The controller is a Nacon PS4 with a USB wire (not wireless).

When I plug in the controller and go "About this Mac > System Report... > USB" I can see it show up as "PC Compact Controller" from Bigben Interactive, which is the parent company of Nacon. So the controller is communicating with the computer.

But OpenEmu (v 2.0.9.1) doesn't recognize it, under "Preferences > Input" it says "no available controllers".

I've got some joystick mappers, even though theoretically I don't need one, and they also don't recognize it. Enjoyable (v 1.2 (650)) says "No input devices found", Joystick Mapper (v 1.1.0 (2)) says "No Joysticks Connected".

The curious thing is: 2 years ago, I bought a cheap-ass controller, and it worked perfectly. Maybe I was on a previous version of OS X? I don't remember. But I remember all joystick mapper apps working; Air Supremacy working, and I even wrote a little Unity app to display the raw controller input. (This was used to determine that the analog sticks were cheap and janky, jumping all over the place, and thus the controller was returned)

Now that I got a more expensive controller, it won't work. Help!

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