InputConfig: Controlling a Mac With Whatever Device Works for You
June 25, 2026 | Projects
InputConfig is an open-source, accessibility-focused macOS app that I built so a person can run their Mac with whatever device actually works for their body. It remaps input hardware, game controllers, the mouse, the keyboard, and MIDI gear, into anything the computer can do. The short version is that it grew out of an older project of mine called JoystickConfig, and it exists because the standard ways of putting input into a computer do not work very well for my hands. I did not set out to make a clever utility. I set out to make my own computer usable again, and InputConfig is what that turned into.
Why I Built It
I have a progressive neuromuscular disease that weakens my hands and limits my dexterity. Keyboards and trackpads assume a kind of fine, steady control that I do not reliably have, and one-size-fits-all key mappings assume your fingers can reach and hold things that mine often cannot. For a long time I worked around that with brute effort, but effort runs out, and the gap between what I wanted to do and what my hands would let me do kept getting wider. If you can map a comfortable device to do anything on the Mac, you stop fighting the computer and start using it again.
That is really the whole idea. A controller that sits easily in my hands, with big buttons and sticks I can actually feel, becomes a full way to drive the machine. I built the accessibility I needed, and then I cleaned it up enough that other people could use it too.
What It Actually Does
The center of the app is a deep bindings editor. Every button, stick, and pad on a device can be mapped to keyboard keys, mouse actions, macros, or turbo and auto-repeat, and you can chain those together so a single press does a whole sequence. You build these as presets, and if you do not want to start from scratch there is a Smart Preset Maker that gives you a working starting point you can then tune. There is also a live visualizer that shows your inputs in real time, which is genuinely useful when you are trying to figure out why a binding is not behaving the way you expected.
On top of remapping, there is a layer of control that matters a lot when your input is not steady. Variable Sensitivity and Deadzone Calibration let you tame a shaky or weak hand so small involuntary movements do not register. There is Haptic Feedback and Spoken Feedback, Light Bar control, gyroscope and motion control, and a Touchpad Mouse mode for when the buttons themselves are hard. It can send MIDI output for music software, it keeps Lifetime Statistics, and it does per-preset calibration for the touchpad, motion, and zero point. It supports a wide range of controllers, including DualSense, Xbox, Switch Pro, Joy-Cons, 8BitDo, and more.
Gamer Features Are Accessibility Features
Here is the part I care most about. Most of these features get marketed as gamer features, the kind of thing a competitive player tweaks to shave milliseconds off a reaction. Deadzones, sensitivity curves, turbo, motion control, remapping. But every one of those is also a real assistive tool the moment your hands stop cooperating. A deadzone is a tremor filter. A sensitivity curve is a way to make a weak push go far. Turbo means I do not have to mash a button I can barely press once.
Macros are the clearest example. A five-step task that would normally cost me five awkward, tiring actions becomes one button, and that one button is something I can hit comfortably. Spoken feedback means I do not have to look at a tiny indicator to know what mode I am in, and motion control gives me a way to do things when buttons are the hard part. The same app is useful to a gamer chasing performance and to someone with a disability trying to get through the day, and that overlap is not a coincidence I stumbled into. It is the entire point.
One App, Many Lives
Because the mapping is so open, the same install ends up doing very different jobs depending on who is holding the controller. One preset turns a DualSense into a careful, deadzone-tamed pointer for everyday Mac work. Another turns it loose for a first-person game with the sensitivity cranked. Another sends MIDI so the sticks and pads run a music performance. None of those are separate tools. They are just presets, and switching between them is fast.
I like that InputConfig does not force a person to identify as one type of user. You are not a gamer or a disabled person or a musician in its eyes, you are just someone with a device in your hands and something you want the computer to do. The app's only job is to close the distance between those two things.
Where It Stands
InputConfig is a project I built, and it is open-source and accessibility-focused at its core. I am still adding to it, still tuning the parts that touch my own daily use most, and still finding cases where a small option makes a big difference for someone whose hands work differently than mine. That feedback loop, where I am both the developer and an actual end user who depends on the thing, keeps it honest.
If there is one takeaway, it is that the line between assistive technology and ordinary technology is thinner than people assume. A lot of accessibility is just giving someone the freedom to choose their own input, and then making that input capable of doing everything. That is what I wanted for myself, and it turned out to be worth building for other people too.
Written by Ryleigh Newman