If you want to game on your iPhone, you’ll probably want to connect a gamepad or controller over the Lightning connector or Bluetooth. There are tons of generic gaming accessories out there that can work on iOS, but many of you are probably interested in using gaming controllers you already own. For example, if you have a Nintendo Switch, you may want to connect the Joy-Con or the Pro controller to your iPhone to play. Unfortunately, Switch controllers do work out-of-the-box with macOS, but not iOS. Apple is finally fixing this on iOS 16.

The reason behind a specific controller incompatibility usually boils down to the missing entries in the Game Controller framework. The first iOS 16 Developer Beta was just released, and looks like it contains all the necessary parameters for the Switch controllers to work. A hands-on of the feature was already posted on Twitter by Riley Testut, the developer known for AltStore and the iOS game emulator named Delta.

Testut confirmed that the controllers appear in iOS 16's Bluetooth connections menu, and you should be able to pair them without a hitch. Nat Brown, an engineering manager at Apple, went one step further and described the handy Joy-Cons switching mechanism on iOS 16. Not only you can dynamically switch between both Joy-Cons as a single controller, you can also utilize them as two separate ones by holding the screenshot and home buttons for a few seconds.

In case you want to use the more traditional looking Nintendo Switch Pro Controller instead of the Joy-Cons, you can pair it via Bluetooth as well. We hope Apple Arcade games and other iOS games that support controllers will be compatible with Nintendo's controller options. iOS 16 is limited to developers at the current time, but Apple will likely have a public beta coming next month, with the stable update set to be released later this year.


Source: @rileytestut and @natbro on Twitter