ds4

ds4 [device]

ds4 is a small command-line monitor for Sony DualShock 4 (PS4) controllers connected to a Linux machine over USB or Bluetooth. It opens the controller's hidraw node, parses incoming HID input reports, and continuously prints the decoded state of every analog stick, trigger, button, touchpad point, gyroscope axis, accelerometer axis and battery indicator.Unlike ds4drv, which creates virtual gamepad and mouse devices via uinput, ds4 does not emulate any input devices — it only reads and prints. This makes it useful for verifying that a controller is detected, debugging button mappings before configuring a wrapper such as antimicrox or AntiMicroX, reverse-engineering vendor-specific HID reports, or characterising sensor drift on the IMU.The tool is written in Go and distributed in source form via the Go module path github.com/kenshaw/ds4. The first positional argument can override the auto-detected hidraw device path.

Reading from /dev/hidraw\* typically requires root privileges or a udev rule granting access to the input group; otherwise the program will fail with a permission error on open. The decoder targets the first-generation DS4 (CUH-ZCT1U) and the revised CUH-ZCT2U; DualShock 3 and DualSense (PS5) controllers use different report layouts and are not supported. Bluetooth-connected controllers send larger reports than USB ones — both are handled, but the byte offsets differ between transports.

ds4 was written by Kenneth Shaw (kenshaw) and published on GitHub as a small Go utility for inspecting the DualShock 4 protocol on Linux. It complements the broader Linux PS4-controller ecosystem (ds4drv, hid-playstation kernel driver, DualSense Tools) by providing a minimal, dependency-free monitor.

evtest(1), jstest(1), hid-recorder(1)