Testers
PS4 Controller Test
Test your PS4 DualShock 4 controller in the browser — check both sticks for drift, every button by its real PlayStation name, and the analog triggers.
No controller detected yet
Browsers only reveal a game controller to a web page after you press a button or move a stick on it — a deliberate privacy rule, not a bug in this page or a sign your controller isn’t working. If a PS5, Xbox, Switch Pro or USB controller is already connected, press any button on it now. Meanwhile, pick your controller below to see exactly where every button and stick sits.
Showing the PlayStation layout — selected manually.
The DualShock 4 is the PS4's controller, and while it reports through the browser identically to a PS5 DualSense — same button layout, same names — it's a different generation of hardware with its own specific failure points, most of them tied to how long these pads have simply been in service.
DualShock 4 stick drift: the age factor
Stick drift is the DualShock 4's best-known complaint, and unlike a newly released controller, most DualShock 4 units in circulation now have years of wear on their internal potentiometers. Let go of both sticks on this page and watch the resting reading settle — a healthy stick should sit close to zero on both axes even after years of use, but a controller that's seen heavy play is statistically far more likely to show a persistent offset than a controller that's only a few months old. If your left stick specifically drifts during movement in games, check it here first: a resting offset that grows the longer you own the pad is wear, not a setting to tweak around.
Battery degradation and Bluetooth dropouts
A DualShock 4's internal battery is not user-replaceable on most units and wears the same way any lithium battery does — years of charge cycles reduce both runtime and, more relevantly for this page, the pad's ability to sustain a stable Bluetooth connection under load. A controller that shows full charge in the PS4's own menu can still drop its connection intermittently once the battery has degraded enough, which on this page looks like the controller disconnecting for no obvious reason mid-session. Testing over a wired USB cable instead of Bluetooth isolates this immediately: if buttons, sticks and triggers all read correctly and consistently over USB but the pad keeps dropping over Bluetooth, that's a battery or radio problem, not anything this page or your browser is doing wrong.
Pairing a DualShock 4 fresh: the PS + Share hold
Unlike some newer pads, the DualShock 4's Bluetooth pairing mode isn't automatic — it requires holding the PS button and the Share button together until the light bar flashes rapidly, which puts it into discoverable mode for your computer's Bluetooth settings. This page has no way to trigger that pairing for you or to see the light bar's pairing flash; once paired at the OS level, press any button on the pad here and it will appear, since browsers withhold a connected controller from any web page until it sees a genuine input.
What the light bar and battery indicator can't tell you here
The DualShock 4's light bar colour and its battery percentage are both read through Sony's proprietary controller protocol, and neither is part of the standard 17-button, 4-axis mapping the Gamepad API exposes to a browser — so this page, like any browser-based tool, cannot show either one. What it covers instead is a complete mechanical check: every button by its real PlayStation name (Cross, Circle, Square, Triangle, L1/R1, L2/R2, Share, Options, L3/R3, the d-pad, and the PS button), both analog sticks for drift, and both triggers' analog range. That's the set of checks that actually predicts whether a used DualShock 4 is worth keeping versus replacing.
Same layout as PS5, different unit history
A DualShock 4 and a DualSense report the identical standard button layout — Cross at index 0, Circle at 1, Square at 2, Triangle at 3, and so on through the same 17 positions — which is why this page's PlayStation wireframe fits either one exactly. The meaningful difference isn't the button map, it's mileage: a DualShock 4 you're testing today has typically had several more years of charge cycles and thumb-time on its sticks than a DualSense would at the same point in the PS5's life, which is worth keeping in mind when reading a borderline drift result — a small resting offset on an old DualShock 4 is less surprising than the same reading on a controller a year old.
Questions
- Why does my DualShock 4 disconnect from the browser after a few minutes?
- The most common cause on an older DualShock 4 is battery degradation rather than anything about this page or your browser. The controller's internal battery is a wearing part — after several years of charge cycles, a pad that shows full charge in a menu can still brown out or drop its Bluetooth connection under load sooner than it used to, and a Bluetooth link that drops will show here as the controller simply vanishing until you press a button on it again. Try it wired over USB first: if the disconnects stop, that strongly points at the battery rather than the Bluetooth radio or the pad's buttons and sticks, which this page can test independently of the connection method.
- How do I pair my DualShock 4 with a new device over Bluetooth?
- Hold the PS button and the Share button together for a few seconds until the light bar starts flashing rapidly in a pairing pattern — that puts the controller into Bluetooth discovery mode, at which point it should appear in your computer's Bluetooth device list ready to pair. Once paired, come back to this page and press any button; browsers only reveal a connected controller to a web page after it registers a real input, so an idle pad that's successfully paired at the OS level can still look undetected here until you press something. If pairing fails repeatedly, forgetting the device from your Bluetooth settings and repeating the hold-to-pair sequence usually clears a stuck pairing.
- Does the light bar or battery level show up on this page?
- No. The light bar's colour and the battery percentage are read through Sony's own controller protocol, not through the Gamepad API standard every browser implements, so neither is visible to any web page — this isn't specific to this tool, it's a gap in what the browser standard exposes at all. What this page reads instead is every button, both analog sticks and both L2/R2 triggers, which covers the parts of a DualShock 4 that fail mechanically. If you need to check battery level or change the light bar colour, that has to happen through the PS4's own settings menu.
- Are DualShock 4 sticks more prone to drift than newer DualSense sticks?
- There's no verified figure this page can cite either way, and it won't invent one — but the DualShock 4's stick drift complaints are extremely well documented across years of use, largely because the controller has simply been in circulation far longer than the DualSense, giving its potentiometers more total wear time across the install base. Wear works the same way on both: a stick's resting reading drifts from zero as its internal sensor ages, regardless of brand. If you're checking an older DualShock 4 specifically, that extra time in service is exactly why the stick drift panel on this page is worth running before assuming a control problem in a game is the game's fault.