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Gamepad: axes property

Baseline Widely available

This feature is well established and works across many devices and browser versions. It’s been available across browsers since ⁨March 2017⁩.

Secure context: This feature is available only in secure contexts (HTTPS), in some or all supporting browsers.

The Gamepad.axes property of the Gamepad interface returns an array representing the controls with axes present on the device (e.g., analog thumb sticks).

Each entry in the array is a floating point value in the range -1.0 – 1.0, representing the axis position from the lowest value (-1.0) to the highest value (1.0).

Value

An array of numbers.

Examples

function gameLoop() {
  const [gp] = navigator.getGamepads();

  let a = 0;
  let b = 0;
  if (gp.axes[0] !== 0) {
    b -= gp.axes[0];
  } else if (gp.axes[1] !== 0) {
    a += gp.axes[1];
  } else if (gp.axes[2] !== 0) {
    b += gp.axes[2];
  } else if (gp.axes[3] !== 0) {
    a -= gp.axes[3];
  }

  ball.style.left = `${a * 2}px`;
  ball.style.top = `${b * 2}px`;

  const start = requestAnimationFrame(gameLoop);
}

Specifications

Browser compatibility

Desktop Mobile
Chrome Edge Firefox Opera Safari Chrome Android Firefox for Android Opera Android Safari on IOS Samsung Internet WebView Android WebView on iOS
axes 21 12 29 15 10.1 25 32 14 10.3 1.5 4.4 10.3

See also

Using the Gamepad API

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https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Gamepad/axes