The real repository, by the numbers

Open the official BetterJoy repository on GitHub

Why the numbers matter: a fake “official” page can copy a logo and a description, but it cannot copy a six-year-old public repository with its issue history, its 596-issue backlog, and its download counters. If the page you’re on can’t take you to this repo, it isn’t a source — it’s a funnel.

Reading the Releases tab like a regular

The Releases tab is the only download shelf. Each release has a version tag, a date, the author’s notes, and one asset: for v7.1, the single file BetterJoy_v7.1.zip. Everything you need follows from that shape:

• One asset per release. If a “release” offers installers, multiple EXEs, or architecture choices for v7.1, you’re not looking at the real thing — v7.1 ships one combined ZIP.
• Trust the notes, all one line of them. v7.1’s entire changelog is the comma-decimal config fix; our version history reproduces the real milestones. Feature lists longer than the author’s own are marketing fiction.
• Dates are load-bearing. A “BetterJoy release” dated after November 2021 cannot be from this repository’s author line. Which brings us to the fork.

“But there’s no hash on the release page” — correct, and here’s the workaround

GitHub displays a SHA-256 digest next to release assets, but Davidobot’s older releases predate that being filled in — the v7.1 page shows no digest. Absence of a published hash is not a reason to skip verification; it’s a reason to use a measured one. We downloaded the asset from the official release and hashed it: BetterJoy_v7.1.zip, 4,438,028 bytes, SHA-256 a9ffe5bb14b05e775f34f9eeff41fca89a350d49252eedae1e330e88952e7f36. Our safety guide has the two-minute PowerShell check. Alternatively, skip third-party files entirely and pull the asset through our direct link to the official v7.1 release file — the bytes come from GitHub itself.

The v8 puzzle: the fork is real, the label is what lies

Here’s the confusing part, stated plainly: a genuine, maintained community fork — d3xMachina/BetterJoy — legitimately uses v8.x version numbers (currently v8.5.0a). It is a real open-source project, on GitHub, under a different owner’s name. So “BetterJoy v8” is not automatically a scam — but any page that attributes v8.x to Davidobot, or presents it as the official continuation without naming the fork’s owner, is lying about provenance, and a site careless with provenance is careless with files. The tell is always the repository owner in the URL: Davidobot = original (ends at v7.1); d3xMachina = the community fork (v8.x). Anyone else’s name = neither.

Using Issues and the Wiki without drowning

Two parts of the real repository are worth knowing beyond Releases. The Wiki carries the project’s own FAQ and Problems page, its settings descriptions, and its notes on coexisting with Steam — written for the v7 era, and still the first place our troubleshooting guides check against. The Issues tab holds the project’s full support history: 596 open issues as of October 2026, including the famous ones (the Duplicate timestamp enqueued flood, controllers not detected, PowerA recognition threads running from 2019 to 2025). A dormant repo’s issue tracker is read-only in practice — new reports rarely get maintainer replies — but as an archive of real error strings and real fixes it is unmatched, and its age is itself a provenance signal no fake site can reproduce.

Red flags of fake BetterJoy sites

• An installer. Real BetterJoy is a ZIP with an EXE inside. “Setup wizards,” downloader stubs, and browser extensions are wrappers monetising your click.
• “Official v8/v9 by the original author.” Disproven above — check the repo owner, always.
• Invented changelogs and ratings: feature bullets for v7.1 beyond the comma fix, star ratings with no source, “VirusTotal 0/70” badges that link nowhere.
• Requests to disable antivirus, pay, or “unlock.” The real software is free, MIT-licensed, and its occasional antivirus warnings are a known category effect (explained in the safety guide) — nobody legitimate asks you to switch protection off.
• Switch 2 editions. No BetterJoy, from either line, supports Switch 2 controllers; see the honest answer before downloading anything with that label.

Frequently asked questions

Is this site the official BetterJoy page?

No — and we say so on our About page. We are an unofficial resource that links to the official repository and measures its files; the only official presence is Davidobot’s GitHub. A site claiming to be official while not being that repo is the reddest flag on this page.

Why does GitHub show the license as “Other”?

The repository’s LICENSE file bundles the MIT text with third-party license sections (HIDAPI and others), which GitHub’s automatic classifier labels “Other.” The license text itself is MIT; read the file, not the classifier.

Where should I actually download from?

The repo’s Releases tab — or, identically, our download page, whose primary button is the official GitHub asset and whose mirror is labelled as a mirror. Verify with the hash, and you’re done.

More in the Versions & Trust hub.

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:

1. Open BetterJoy one last time, with your controllers connected.
2. In your browser, go to http://localhost:26762/ — the HidCerberus page served locally by the HIDGuardian setup.
3. Under Currently affected devices, remove every entry.
4. 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:

1. Open Settings → Apps → Installed apps (or the classic Control Panel → Programs and Features).
2. Find ViGEmBus (listed as the Nefarius Virtual Gamepad Emulation Bus driver), choose Uninstall, and complete the wizard.
3. 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

1. Restart Windows. Driver and service removals only fully land after a reboot, and several “still broken” stories are just this step skipped.
2. 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.”
3. 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.
4. 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

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.

Why it can’t work: a different protocol, not a new model number

The original Joy-Cons and Pro Controller present themselves to Windows as standard Bluetooth HID gamepads — unusual in places, but readable, which is the entire foundation BetterJoy (and Steam Input, and every other mapper) is built on. The Switch 2 controllers are not standard HID devices. Reporting from the driver-development community has established that they use a custom BLE (Bluetooth Low Energy) GATT protocol, and the Switch 2 Pro Controller stays silent until it receives a proprietary activation sequence from the host. A PC that doesn’t send that sequence gets nothing — no buttons, no sticks, no gyro.

Even the identifiers are all new: Joy-Con 2 (R) is 057e:2066, Joy-Con 2 (L) is 057e:2067, and the Switch 2 Pro Controller is 057e:2069 — none of which appear in BetterJoy’s device handling, because none of them existed when it was written. There is no “add the PID and it works” fix; the gap is the protocol underneath.

The symptom everyone Googles

If you’ve tried, you already know the pattern: Windows Bluetooth settings may discover the controller, pairing may even appear to succeed — and then nothing. No input anywhere, BetterJoy shows no device, games see nothing. That is the activation problem above, not a broken controller and not a BetterJoy bug. One more warning from the community guides: repeatedly forcing pairing attempts can trigger a cooldown in which the controller refuses connections for several minutes. If yours went quiet after many retries, leave it alone for a while rather than concluding it’s bricked.

What Switch 2 owners can actually do on PC today

Steam, wired, in beta

The one relatively official path: Valve added Switch 2 Pro Controller support over USB to the Steam Client Beta (late November 2025). The feature was at one point disabled and, per Steam’s January 2026 update notes, re-enabled — beta-channel software behaving like beta-channel software. Two limits to keep in view: it is wired only (Bluetooth is still not an official path for these controllers on PC), and Valve’s wording covers “Switch 2 controllers” without itemising Joy-Con 2 support — Pro Controller over USB is the verified case, Joy-Con 2’s full status in Steam is not officially confirmed feature by feature. If you go this route, our guide to BetterJoy and Steam coexisting explains the one-translator-per-game rule that keeps Steam Input setups clean.

Community projects: experimental, labelled as such

Developers are reverse-engineering the protocol in the open. Names you will encounter include connectyourpro (a Windows community tool focused on the Pro controllers, with Bluetooth support its own author describes as experimental) and Procon2Tool (a web-based workaround discussed in the Steam community). A Valve-commissioned driver has also landed in the Linux kernel line — USB only, no Bluetooth yet. All of this is promising, none of it is BetterJoy, and none of it comes with guarantees: no promise of gyro, rumble, or stability, and quality will vary month to month. We label these experimental deliberately, and we don’t offer downloads for them.

The option nobody likes: wait

Protocol reverse-engineering takes time, and official wireless support may or may not arrive. Anyone selling you a “BetterJoy Switch 2 Edition” download today is selling a fiction — see the red flags in our safety guide.

A note on the Switch 2 GameCube controller

The same November 2025 Steam beta that added wired Pro 2 support also improved the GameCube side of the family — Valve’s notes covered the GameCube adapter in Wii U mode with rumble on Windows — and the Switch 2 GameCube controller carries its own new device ID (057e:2073). We flag it separately because its PC status is even less itemised than the Pro 2’s: treat it as “mentioned in the same beta wave, not individually verified here,” and don’t buy one for PC use on the strength of a headline. The pattern of this whole page applies: with Switch 2 hardware, only believe a PC feature when a primary source names the exact controller and the exact connection.

What still works perfectly

Everything BetterJoy ever supported still works: the original Switch Pro Controller, Joy-Cons and Switch SNES controller pair with a PC and map through BetterJoy exactly as documented in our tutorials, and the community fork covers the same original family (plus NES/N64 pads). If you own both console generations, your Switch 1 pads remain your PC pads; the Switch 2 pads are, for now, console-only except for the wired Steam beta above. And if you’re deciding what your setup actually needs in 2026, the decision guide walks the scenarios without the nostalgia.

Frequently asked questions

Will a future BetterJoy update add Switch 2 support?

The official line has been dormant since 2021 and shows no sign of a Switch 2 release; the community fork hasn’t announced one either, and the protocol work is being done by separate projects. Treat any date or promise you read elsewhere as speculation.

Can Joy-Con 2 work over USB instead?

Joy-Con 2 has no wired data mode for PC play in the verified sources — the wired Steam path applies to the Switch 2 Pro Controller. Don’t buy cables expecting otherwise.

My Switch 2 Pro Controller pairs but sends no input. Is it faulty?

Almost certainly not: pairing without the proprietary activation sequence produces exactly that symptom. Test the controller on the Switch 2 itself; if it works there, it’s the PC protocol gap described above.

More version and trust answers live in the Versions & Trust hub.

What we verified (October 2026)

Two of these rows matter more than the rest. The original v7.1 ZIP bundles a 1.16.x-era ViGEmBus MSI and HIDGuardian, a hiding layer its own author discontinued years ago; the fork brings both components to their final, modern forms. And unlike Davidobot’s older releases, GitHub publishes a SHA-256 digest for the fork’s asset, so the file is checkable against the value above — the same verification habit we recommend in Is BetterJoy Safe?

What the fork actually changed

Beyond swapping the bundled drivers, the fork’s own changelog describes a maintenance pass over the original code: a long list of crash and disconnect fixes, stick calibration controls, and deadzone/range adjustments that can be set per stick — things v7.1 users otherwise handle inside each emulator. The runtime move matters for longevity as much as features: v7.1 is a .NET Framework-era binary from 2021, while the fork builds on .NET 10, which is the generation Microsoft currently services. None of this makes the fork “BetterJoy 2” — it is the same mapper idea, carried forward by a different maintainer with a modern toolchain — but it explains why the fork exists at all: the original’s components (HIDGuardian discontinued, ViGEmBus retired at 1.22.0, .NET Framework frozen) each reached end-of-life while the controllers people use did not.

One boundary is worth repeating in this section because fork coverage elsewhere blurs it: the fork’s controller support is the original Switch family plus the retro pads. Its README’s testing notes centre on official Pro Controllers and Joy-Cons. It does not add Switch 2 support, and it does not promise broader third-party pad support than the original — by the maintainer’s own account, less testing has happened there, not more.

Download the fork

Download the community fork on GitHub (d3xMachina, v8.5.0a)

The button goes to the fork’s own GitHub release asset — no mirror, no wrapper. Prefer the known quantity instead? The conservative choice remains the official v7.1 download, Davidobot’s own release, and nothing on this page should be read as talking you out of it.

Who should try the fork

• You hit the original’s age. If v7.1’s legacy driver stack gives you trouble — especially anything involving HIDGuardian, which also conflicts with HidHide if both end up installed — the fork starts from the modern components (our double-input guide explains the HidHide approach).
• You want the extra controllers. NES and N64 pad support exists only in the fork line.
• You value current maintenance. The fork shipped releases in mid-2026; the original’s last push was July 2024. If a Windows update breaks something tomorrow, the fork is the line that can plausibly answer.
• You’re willing to test newer builds. The “a” in v8.5.0a is a fix-up release four days after v8.5.0 — normal for an active project, and a reminder that this line moves.

Who should stay on v7.1

• Your setup already works. v7.1 has been the stable reference for five years and about 1.75 million downloads of its ZIP. Don’t migrate a working rig on curiosity alone.
• You follow guides literally. Most tutorials, forum answers and our own tutorials hub describe v7.1’s menus and config file; the fork’s newer build may differ in details.
• You use third-party controllers. The fork’s maintainer notes testing focused on official Pro Controllers and Joy-Cons; third-party pads are the original line’s documented feature (v7’s Add Controllers), and even there, results vary by model.
• You don’t want a moving target. A dormant program never surprises you; an LTS fork occasionally will.

Before you switch

Don’t run both lines into the same driver stack. If you move to the fork, first remove the original cleanly — our uninstall guide covers the ViGEmBus MSI and the HIDGuardian remnants — then install the fork’s bundled components. Above all, never leave HIDGuardian and HidHide on the same system: Nefarius’ own guidance says the two must not coexist, and the fork shipping HidHide is a reason to make sure the old layer is really gone. And keep the fork’s identity straight when you read about it elsewhere: v8.x = d3xMachina’s community fork; v7.1 and below = Davidobot. The version history keeps the two lines visually separate for exactly this reason.

Frequently asked questions

Is the fork official?

No. It is an independent community fork by d3xMachina, built from Davidobot’s MIT-licensed source. It is legitimate to use and link — MIT allows forking — but it is not endorsed by, or a release of, the original author.

Does the fork support Switch 2 controllers?

No. Its controller list is the original Switch family plus NES/N64 pads. Switch 2 controllers use a different protocol entirely — see the Switch 2 answer.

Can I keep v7.1 and the fork side by side?

The programs themselves are just folders, but their driver and hiding layers overlap (ViGEmBus, HIDGuardian vs HidHide). Treat it as one installation or the other, and uninstall cleanly when switching.

More context in the Versions & Trust hub.

Why the real BetterJoy is auditable

BetterJoy is open-source software under the MIT License (copyright David Khachaturov, the developer known as Davidobot). Anyone can read the complete source code in the official repository, and the program’s design matches what the code suggests: it is a local mapper. You run it on your machine, it reads your controller, it exposes virtual XInput or DualShock 4 devices through the ViGEmBus driver, and it serves motion data through a UDP server that binds to localhost (127.0.0.1:26760) by default — your own machine talking to your own emulators. There is no account, no sign-in, nothing to register. We phrase the network point carefully, because honesty cuts both ways: what we can verify is that it is a local utility whose motion server listens on the loopback address; we won’t dress that up as a forensic audit, and you don’t need one — the hash check below is stronger than any promise.

Check 1: the source is GitHub, full stop

The only official distribution channel for BetterJoy is the Releases tab of github.com/Davidobot/BetterJoy. Our download page links straight to that release asset, and our GitHub guide shows how to recognise the real repository and why lookalike sites are a red flag. If a page offers you BetterJoy through a custom “installer,” a downloader stub, or a setup wizard with bundled offers, close it: the genuine article is a single ZIP with the executable inside, no installer at all.

Check 2: verify the SHA-256 hash (2 minutes)

GitHub’s older BetterJoy releases predate published per-asset digests, so we measured the genuine file ourselves by downloading it from the official release. For BetterJoy_v7.1.zip (the only asset of the v7.1 release, 4,438,028 bytes):

SHA-256: a9ffe5bb14b05e775f34f9eeff41fca89a350d49252eedae1e330e88952e7f36

To check your copy in Windows PowerShell:

1. Download the ZIP, but don’t extract it yet.
2. Open the folder in File Explorer, click the address bar, type powershell and press Enter.
3. Run: Get-FileHash .\BetterJoy_v7.1.zip -Algorithm SHA256
4. Compare the output, character for character, with the value above. Also right-click the file → Properties and confirm the size is 4,438,028 bytes.

A matching hash proves your file is bit-for-bit the file the author published — no wrapper, no additions, no “enhancements.” A mismatch means delete it and re-download from the official release. This single habit makes almost every other scare story about BetterJoy irrelevant.

Why antivirus sometimes complains anyway

BetterJoy installs and talks to kernel-level driver components: ViGEmBus creates virtual gamepads, and the bundled legacy HIDGuardian can hide your physical controller from other programs so only the virtual one is seen. To a heuristic antivirus engine, “a small unsigned-looking utility that installs a bus driver and hides HID devices” resembles the shape of genuinely bad software, even when every byte is accounted for. Add the fact that the executable is a 2021 build that SmartScreen has limited reputation data for, and an occasional warning is expected behaviour — not proof of infection, and not something a legitimate site should tell you to “just disable your antivirus” over. The correct response to a warning is the hash check above, not blind trust in either direction. If the hash matches the official release, the warning is about the category of tool, not about your file.

The real risks: everything around the program

• Fake installer sites. Pages advertising “BetterJoy v8” or “v9” as Davidobot’s new official release are mislabelling the community fork or inventing a product; the official line ends at v7.1 (see the version history).
• Repacks and “portable” bundles from file-hosting forums: unhashable by definition. If it doesn’t match the SHA-256, it isn’t BetterJoy as published.
• Driver download scams. ViGEmBus and HidHide have their own official sources (Nefarius on GitHub). “Driver updater” sites that bundle them are a classic malware channel — our download page links the official driver release directly.
• Switch 2 bait. Any page offering a “BetterJoy for Switch 2 controllers” download is selling something that does not exist; we explain why in the Switch 2 answer.

And what about this site?

Fair question, answered the same way we’d want it answered: we are an unofficial resource, not the author. Our download page’s primary button is the official GitHub release asset itself, the alternative mirror is labelled as a mirror in plain text, and the SHA-256 printed there is the one in this guide, measured from the official file. You don’t have to trust any of that — that’s the point of a hash. Verify it once and every claim on this page becomes checkable rather than rhetorical.

Frequently asked questions

Is BetterJoy a virus?

No. The genuine release is open-source (MIT), publicly auditable, and verifiable with the SHA-256 above. Antivirus warnings target its driver-level behaviour — virtual gamepads and device hiding — which resembles malicious tooling in shape, not in fact.

Is it safe to install the bundled drivers?

ViGEmBus is a widely used, signed virtual-gamepad driver; the copy inside the v7.1 ZIP is an older build, which is why our download page also links the final ViGEmBus 1.22.0 from its author’s GitHub. The legacy HIDGuardian is discontinued in favour of HidHide — they must never coexist; our double-input guide covers the modern setup, and the uninstall guide removes everything cleanly if you change your mind.

Does BetterJoy collect my data?

It has no accounts and no sign-in, and it is a local mapping utility whose source anyone can read. Beyond that verifiable description we make no claims we can’t back — and neither should anyone else.

For the full trust picture — history, fork, and source-checking — start at the Versions & Trust hub.

The official line at a glance

As of October 2026, the repository shows 4,799 stars and 392 forks, and the v7.1 ZIP alone has been downloaded about 1.75 million times — figures from GitHub’s own counters, dated here because they keep moving.

2018: from gyro hack to system-wide mapper

v1 — 27 February 2018

The first release (then called BetterJoyForCemu) did one thing: feed a Switch Pro Controller’s motion data to Cemu through Cemuhook, so gyro aiming worked in Wii U games. It was 64-bit only, and the author cheerfully described the gyro as “shaky.” USB support and a recompiled hidapi followed days later in v1.5.

v2 — Joy-Cons arrive

Version 2 (the shipping build was v2c) added Joy-Con support, exposing two Cemuhook controllers — one per Joy-Con — with the choice of which hand supplied the motion data. This is the feature the program is still known for.

v3 — XInput changes everything

v3 added XInput support through the ViGEm driver, plus rumble and key rebinding. From here, a Pro Controller or Joy-Cons could pose as an Xbox controller for the whole system — Steam included — not just for Cemu. A/B and X/Y swap options arrived in the v3a/v3b point builds.

v4 — a GUI, and HidGuardian

v4 (May 2018) replaced the console with a graphical interface and added HidGuardian support to stop Windows and Steam from glitching over the hidden physical controller. It came with a warning that still echoes through our troubleshooting hub: uninstall the old driver before installing the new one, and don’t move the program folder afterwards.

v5 — quality of life

v5 (August 2018) added progressive scanning (leave BetterJoy running; it picks up controllers as you connect them), the first single-Joy-Con mode, a UI rework with battery indication via icon colour, and the option to turn off HidGuardian and XInput emulation — letting BetterJoy serve purely as a gyro source alongside other tools.

2020: the big rebuild

v6 — 3 April 2020

After a gap of a year and a half, v6 was the “huge update”: Switch SNES controller support, full button remapping, gyro-as-mouse, start-minimised-to-tray, multi-pair Joy-Con support, gyro drift fixes, and an option to remove affected devices at shutdown — the ancestor of the cleanup step in our uninstall guide.

v6.1 — DS4 emulation, and a shorter name

v6.1 added DualShock 4 emulation alongside XInput, simplified driver installation, fixed rumble lag, and renamed the project from BetterJoyForCemu to simply BetterJoy (the executable kept the old name, which is why both names still circulate). v6.2 followed with input-lag fixes and power-off options (hold Home for two seconds), v6.3 with gyro-to-trigger mapping and a multiple-instance guard, and the v6.4 alpha/beta pair with mappable shake input, accelerometer fixes and — in v6.4b — a low-battery notification.

2021: third-party controllers, then the hotfix

v7 — 18 November 2021

Version 7’s headline was third-party controller support through an “Add Controllers” button, with calibration values editable in the config file for pads whose gyro or sticks misbehave (see our third-party guide). It also added gyro-to-joystick, a much steadier gyro-to-mouse using a DCM filter, double-click-stick Joy-Con orientation switching, a DoNotRejoinJoycons option, updated ViGEm drivers and DS4 mapping fixes.

v7.1 — 22 November 2021: one fix, honestly

The official v7.1 release notes contain exactly one fix: config reading failed when the Windows locale used a comma as the decimal separator instead of a dot. That is the whole changelog. Any site that lists “Windows 11 memory optimisations,” “calibration enhancements” or other new features for v7.1 invented them — we know, because our own download page used to print such a list, and we removed it. v7.1 remains the latest official release; the repository is not archived, but its last push was in July 2024, so the honest description is “stable and dormant,” not “actively developed” and not “abandoned and deleted.” To install it, follow the update guide or go straight to the download page, where the ZIP is linked from the official release and printed with its measured SHA-256.

Not part of this history: the community fork line

Since 2021 a separate project — d3xMachina’s fork of BetterJoy — has continued development under v8.x version numbers, currently the v8.5 LTS line. It is a community fork by a different maintainer, built on a newer .NET generation, with HidHide replacing the legacy HIDGuardian; Davidobot did not release it and it does not continue the official changelog above. We cover it on its own page, labelled as a fork everywhere: the BetterJoy LTS fork guide. The practical rule: v1–v7.1 = Davidobot; v8.x = the d3xMachina fork. A site offering “BetterJoy v8/v9 official by Davidobot” is mislabelling one or inventing the other — see how to verify a download.

Frequently asked questions

What is the latest official BetterJoy version?

v7.1, released 22 November 2021 as a hotfix to v7. There has been no newer official release. The v8.x builds you may see belong to the d3xMachina community fork, a separate project.

Is BetterJoy still maintained?

The original repository is dormant (last push July 2024) but not archived or deleted, and v7.1 still works for its original purpose. Active development continues only in the community fork.

Which version should I install?

For the classic, most-tested behaviour, v7.1 from the official release. If you want current maintenance, newer runtimes and HidHide, read the fork guide and decide with the trade-offs in front of you.

More trust and safety context lives in the Versions & Trust hub.