cosmic-bluetooth-gamepad

COSMIC panel applet for managing Bluetooth game controllers.

Some controllers (e.g. PlayStation DualSense) does not automatically reconnect after being connected to a different device. This applet aims to solve that by allowing users to easily connect/disconnect controllers and auto-reconnect to previously paired controllers by their MAC address.

Main features:

• Connect/disconnect Bluetooth game controllers
• View battery level of connected controllers
• Auto-reconnect to previously paired controllers (This will remove the controller from the system Bluetooth settings, find, pair, trust and connect it automatically when in range)
• Rename paired controllers

Dependencies

• BlueZ + DBus (system Bluetooth stack)
• Build dependencies for libcosmic on Debian-based systems:
  • cargo
  • cmake
  • just
  • pkg-config
  • libxkbcommon-dev
  • libwayland-dev
  • libgl1-mesa-dev
  • libssl-dev
  • libexpat1-dev
  • libfontconfig-dev
  • libfreetype-dev

Build

cargo build --release

Build/Install with just

# build
just build

# install for current user
just install

# uninstall
just uninstall

Usage

Open COSMIC Settings → Desktop → Panel → Applets and add “Cosmic Bluetooth Gamepad” to your panel.

If you have previously paired controllers via system Bluetooth settings and then reconnect the device:

1. Open the applet menu
2. Find the controller in the paired list
3. Click the "Reconnect"
4. The applet will remove the device from system Bluetooth settings start a 60 second countdown
5. During the countdown, make the controller discoverable (on ps4/ps5 controllers, hold the Share button + PS button until the light bar starts flashing)
6. The applet will find, pair, trust and connect the controller automatically