Even if you have the most powerful gaming rig in town, you may still feel the need of a controller/gamepad similar to the ones present on consoles. It’s just uncomfortable to play some games using the keyboard and mouse, or at least that’s how some gamers perceive it. It’s pretty difficult to play games like those from the Mortal Kombat, Tekken, or Street Fighter series without a gamepad. You need something more compact when it comes to simulating one-on-one fights.
Assuming you don’t want to buy yourself a whole PlayStation or Xbox console just to play some of your favorite games the way you want, you can surely spend a lot less money if you just buy a controller of one of those gaming machines and connect it to your laptop or desktop PC.
Put your faith in the Xbox Wireless Gamepad!
Today we’ll proudly explain to you how you can connect an Xbox Wireless Gamepad to your laptop or desktop PC in order to achieve a similar experience as in the case of controlling a true console.
There are two ways to connect the Xbox controller to your PC: by USB cable or by Bluetooth.
How to connect via USB
To connect the Xbox controller to your PC via USB, you must do it via Micro USB or USB-C Cable. As long as your laptop or PC is running on Windows 11 or Windows 10, there’s no need to do anything special to advance with the setup process. It’s pretty deductible.
How to connect via Bluetooth
Connecting your Xbox controller to the PC/laptop via Bluetooth is a bit more difficult, but still, there’s nothing to worry about as long as you’ll follow a few steps listed here!
When you’re ready to use the controller, you must press and hold the Guide button for a few seconds. When the button begins flashing, you can release it.
You’ll need to buy a Bluetooth USB Dongle if your PC doesn’t have a Bluetooth function built-in.
You must follow these steps to proceed:
- Keep the controller powered on by maintaining the Guide button pressed.
- Hold the pairing button for a few seconds and stop when it begins to blink
- Right-click on the Bluetooth Tray Icon
- Add a Bluetooth device by selecting the right option
- From the drop-down menu that appears on “add Bluetooth or other device,” select Bluetooth
- From the menu, select “Xbox Wireless Controller.”
That’s pretty much all you need to know when it comes to connecting an Xbox controller to your PC! Congrats!
Surely there are a lot of gamepads for PC available out there on the market, which means that there is a lot of material to choose from. But an Xbox or PlayStation console represents some of the best choices if you’re tired of controlling your games only from the keyboard and mouse.
How to get a USB dongle
Assuming you need a USB dongle for your PC, you must keep in mind that such a device is usually extremely cheap. You can even get it for $9 on Amazon. You can even get your hands on a USB dongle that’s compatible with Windows 7, the age-old operating system that no longer receives technical support from Microsoft since early 2020. It seems that even almost three years after that event, still a lot of apps and pieces of hardware remain compatible with Windows 7.
Of course, the USB dongle is compatible with recent Windows versions as well, such as Windows 10 or Windows 11.
The Xbox Wireless Gamepad was mainly built for the Xbox One S and Xbox One, and it’s practically the same as in the case of the Xbox 360 and Xbox.
