Input & controllers

Keyboard, mouse, pad and clipboard problems. For everything else, back to Troubleshooting.

My mouse and keyboard are stuck in the stream

Nothing is broken — the stream captures them on purpose so your keys and pointer go to the host. Ctrl+Alt+Shift+Q hands them back (⌃⌥⇧Q on macOS); with a pad, L1+R1+Start+Select does the same on the Linux, Windows and Steam Deck clients. The other in-stream chords are in Getting your input back.

My keyboard types the wrong characters (# comes out as \)

A German keyboard giving \ for #, ' for ä or swapped z/y is a host layout mismatch — the client is fine. Punktfunk sends the physical key you pressed, not the character; what it types is decided by the layout the host session runs.

On Linux, set the layout the normal way and reconnect:

sudo localectl set-x11-keymap de pc105 nodeadkeys   # your layout, model, variant

Punktfunk reads that setting and hands it to the session on the next connect. Two things to know:

• Wayland desktops don't read it by themselves — localectl writes a file only Xorg opens. If your compositor is already set to the right layout in its own settings, nothing changes.
• Game Mode needs a current punktfunk-gamescope. Gamescope publishes no keyboard layout to the apps it runs, so Steam and games saw US whatever the box was set to. Our build fixes that from +pfhdr8 on — check with punktfunk-gamescope --version and update if it's older.

Nothing here changes which physical key does what in a game: WASD stays under the same fingers on every layout.

A controller is detected but games don't see it

• Linux. The host user needs to be in the input group — sudo usermod -aG input $USER, then log out and back in (on Bazzite: ujust add-user-to-input-group). See Bazzite.
• Windows, if this PC ever ran 0.22.0 or 0.22.1. Those releases bound one of Windows' own drivers to the emulated controller instead of Punktfunk's. Update through the installer — the setup .exe, winget upgrade, or the console's Update now button (Updating). Swapping punktfunk-host.exe by hand doesn't fix it: the stale controller device keeps the driver it was already bound to.

The pad works, but arrives as an Xbox 360 controller instead of a Steam Deck

Only the virtual Steam Deck controller (paddles, trackpads, gyro) is missing — ordinary gamepad input is fine. That pad reaches games as a real USB device over usbip, through sysfs files owned by a group called punktfunk (separate from input). Four things have to line up on the Linux host:

getent group punktfunk                         # the group exists at all
id -nG | tr ' ' '\n' | grep -x punktfunk       # ...and you are in it
ls -l /sys/devices/platform/vhci_hcd.0/attach  # owned by punktfunk, mode 0660
lsmod | grep vhci_hcd                          # the transport module is loaded

If the group is missing entirely, the udev rule tried to chgrp to a group nobody created — re-running your package manager's upgrade creates it now, or sudo groupadd --system punktfunk by hand. Then sudo usermod -aG punktfunk "$USER" and log out and back in — group changes only reach the host's systemd --user service on a fresh login.

Joining is optional on purpose: writing that attach file materialises an arbitrary emulated USB device. Skip it on a machine you share — but the same group authorizes the helper behind the managed Gaming Mode takeover, so on an autologin box skipping it also costs you the takeover.

Stream lags, then freezes, with a DualSense pad (Bazzite, SELinux)

On Bazzite (and other SELinux-enforcing Fedora Atomic spins), a DualSense / DualShock 4-type virtual pad can make the stream lag then freeze — gamescope at 0 fps, tx_mbps collapsing. The virtual pad binds the kernel's hid-playstation driver, and Valve's ds_inhibit (inside steamos-manager) walks /proc/*/fd/ on every open/close. SELinux denies steamos_manager_t that walk — hundreds of avc: denied per second — and setroubleshootd amplifies the flood into a box-wide fork storm that starves the stream.

Two traps while diagnosing: the AVC lines read comm="tokio-rt-worker" — that is steamos-manager, not punktfunk (check scontext=…steamos_manager_t…); and the setroubleshootd storm outlives the denials by 15+ minutes, so the box stays starved after the pad is gone.

• Fix: punktfunk ships a dontaudit SELinux drop-in that silences the flood (ds_inhibit then leaves the pad uninhibited — harmless). The sysext installs it on install/update; on an existing install run sudo punktfunk-sysext reapply. On a layered or bootc host: sudo semodule -i /usr/share/punktfunk/selinux/punktfunk-ds-inhibit.cil.
• Hardening, recommended on any streaming host: sudo systemctl mask --now setroubleshootd — a desktop alert daemon nothing depends on. Reversible with unmask.
• Workaround with a feature loss: set the client's controller type to Xbox 360 (uinput, no hid-playstation) — costs adaptive triggers, lightbar and touchpad.

A Steam Controller 2 is captured, but Steam's controller list stays empty

The client shows Steam Controller 2, captured — but Steam's Settings → Controller has nothing, buttons do nothing, the trackpads don't move the pointer.

Unlike every other pad, the Steam Controller 2 has exactly one consumer: Steam. No kernel driver claims it, and its reports ride a vendor collection, so it produces no evdev node for anything else. If Steam can't open its hidraw node, you get no controller at all.

On a Windows host, stop here — the pad is a UMDF device the pf_gamepad driver package serves, so an empty controller list means the driver package is missing or stale:

punktfunk-host.exe driver install --gamepad

On Linux the node is root-only until a udev rule says otherwise, and distro steam-devices rule sets are per-product-id — a copy predating the SC2 (it shipped in 2026) never grants it. Punktfunk ships the rule itself from 0.30.0 on; on an older host:

sudo tee /etc/udev/rules.d/61-punktfunk-sc2.rules >/dev/null <<'EOF'
KERNEL=="hidraw*", KERNELS=="*28DE:1302*", GROUP="input", MODE="0660", TAG+="uaccess"
KERNEL=="hidraw*", KERNELS=="*28DE:1304*", GROUP="input", MODE="0660", TAG+="uaccess"
KERNEL=="hidraw*", ATTRS{idVendor}=="28de", ATTRS{idProduct}=="1302", GROUP="input", MODE="0660", TAG+="uaccess"
KERNEL=="hidraw*", ATTRS{idVendor}=="28de", ATTRS{idProduct}=="1304", GROUP="input", MODE="0660", TAG+="uaccess"
EOF
sudo udevadm control --reload-rules && sudo udevadm trigger

Then end the session and reconnect so the pad re-enumerates under the new rule. 1302 is the wired controller, 1304 the Puck dongle.

To confirm this is what you're hitting, check the host log for attached via usbip without a following answering feature GET — the kernel enumerated the controller and Steam never opened it. If attached via usbip is missing entirely, work through the virtual Steam Deck section first.

Not a bug: with Punktfunk capturing, the trackpads stop working as a mouse whenever Steam isn't running — capture turns the controller's built-in mouse emulation off so it can read the full report stream, exactly as on a Steam Deck in desktop mode.

Copy and paste between host and client does nothing

The shared clipboard needs two switches: the host operator allows it with PUNKTFUNK_CLIPBOARD in host.env (then restart the host), and you turn it on for that host in your client's Edit… sheet. Work through Why the toggle does nothing — it also names the clients and host sessions where nothing crosses no matter what you set.