BetterJoy itself is portable — it never had an installer — but it persuades you to install two system-level components (the ViGEmBus driver and, in the classic setup, HIDGuardian), and it hides your controllers from the rest of Windows while it runs. Deleting just the folder therefore leaves the parts that matter. This guide removes everything, in the only order that avoids the classic trap: a controller that stays invisible to every other program after BetterJoy is gone. If your controller is already stuck invisible, start with our dedicated HIDGuardian recovery guide, then return here for the rest.
Step 1: release your controllers before touching anything
While BetterJoy is running, it adds connected controllers to HIDGuardian’s list of affected devices — which is precisely why they “disappear” for other software. Release them first, while the machinery is still intact:
- Open BetterJoy one last time, with your controllers connected.
- In your browser, go to
http://localhost:26762/— the HidCerberus page served locally by the HIDGuardian setup. - Under Currently affected devices, remove every entry.
- Close BetterJoy completely (check the system tray; it may be minimised there rather than closed).
Skipping this step is the number-one cause of “I uninstalled BetterJoy and now nothing sees my Pro Controller.” (Newer BetterJoy versions offer an option to remove affected devices at shutdown, which does this for you — but verify on the localhost page anyway.)
Step 2: uninstall the HIDGuardian layer (if you installed it)
If you ran the driver installers from the v7.1 package, you have HIDGuardian and its HidCerberus service. Inside your extracted BetterJoy folder, open Drivers\HIDGuardian\ and run “HIDGuardian Uninstall (Run as Admin).bat” — right-click, Run as administrator. Use the bundled uninstaller rather than deleting driver files by hand: filter drivers removed out of order can take other input devices with them, which is a much worse afternoon. If you later plan to install the community fork, this step is doubly important — its HidHide must never coexist with HIDGuardian.
Step 3: uninstall ViGEmBus from Windows Apps
ViGEmBus was installed by MSI, so it removes like a normal program:
- Open Settings → Apps → Installed apps (or the classic Control Panel → Programs and Features).
- Find ViGEmBus (listed as the Nefarius Virtual Gamepad Emulation Bus driver), choose Uninstall, and complete the wizard.
- If you later installed the standalone ViGEmBus 1.22.0 from its author’s GitHub, the same entry removes it.
Note what this does not affect: other programs that use ViGEmBus (DS4Windows and friends) depend on it too. If you keep those, keep the driver — removing BetterJoy does not require removing ViGEmBus, and our ViGEmBus repair guide covers reinstalling it if something else breaks.
Step 4: restart, then clean the leftovers
- Restart Windows. Driver and service removals only fully land after a reboot, and several “still broken” stories are just this step skipped.
- Delete the extracted BetterJoy folder and its
BetterJoyForCemu.exe.config— that file holds all your settings, so if you might return, copy it somewhere first; deleting it is what makes the removal “clean.” - Check for remnants: in Device Manager, enable View → Show hidden devices and look under Human Interface Devices and Game controllers for greyed-out BetterJoy-era entries you no longer use; remove only entries you recognise as the virtual devices.
- If a HidCerberus service entry somehow survived the batch file, the recovery guide’s steps clear it — don’t go deleting service entries from the registry by hand.
Step 5: re-pair your controllers fresh
Windows remembers pairings that were made under the old hiding layer, so give it a clean start: in Settings → Bluetooth & devices, remove the Pro Controller / Joy-Cons, then pair again (hold the sync button on top of the controller until the lights run). From here the controller belongs to Windows and whichever tool you use next — Steam Input, another mapper, or a fresh BetterJoy install from the download page — with no ghost of the old setup.
Verify the cleanup
Before you call it done, run three quick checks. First, connect your controller and open the Windows game controller panel (joy.cpl): you should see only the physical controller (and any virtual devices belonging to tools you kept) — no BetterJoy-era Xbox 360/DS4 entries lingering from the old setup. Second, restart once more and confirm nothing reappears; a virtual controller that resurrects itself means a driver package is still installed and Step 3 needs a second look. Third, open whichever program you actually use the controller with and confirm buttons register — the entire point of the careful order above is that this check passes the first time. If it doesn’t, the failure is almost always a controller still on the affected-devices list, and the recovery guide, not a reinstall, is the fix.
Checklist
| Order | Action | Why the order matters |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Release devices at localhost:26762, close the app | Controllers stay visible to everything else afterwards |
| 2 | Run the HIDGuardian uninstall .bat as admin | Filter driver must leave before other changes |
| 3 | Uninstall ViGEmBus in Apps (only if nothing else needs it) | Shared driver — check your other tools first |
| 4 | Restart | Driver/service removal completes here |
| 5 | Delete folder + config; prune hidden devices | The portable app has no uninstaller of its own |
| 6 | Remove and re-pair controllers | Clears pairings made under the hiding layer |
Frequently asked questions
There is no BetterJoy entry in Installed apps. Is that normal?
Yes. BetterJoy is a portable program — you extracted a ZIP, so there is nothing to “uninstall” for the app itself. The Installed apps entries belong to its drivers (ViGEmBus), which is why this guide is mostly about them.
My controller vanished from everything after I uninstalled. What now?
That’s the skipped Step 1: the controller is still on HIDGuardian’s affected-devices list. Follow the localhost:26762 recovery guide — the fix is releasing it there, not reinstalling drivers at random.
I’m switching to the fork. Is this guide still the right prep?
Yes — run Steps 1–2 and 4–6 (you can keep ViGEmBus, since the fork bundles the same final version), then install the fork per the fork guide.
More in the Versions & Trust hub and the troubleshooting hub.