Play
Playing with a controller
Use Agora from the couch with a gamepad, and add controller support to Minecraft itself.
Two versions of this page follow. Step by step walks through the task in order. In depth explains the underlying behavior. They describe the same product, at different levels of detail.
Step by step
Follow the steps in order. No prior modding knowledge assumed.
Press a button on a connected controller and Agora becomes controller-driven throughout: the same pages you already use, sized for reading at a distance and navigable with the stick. There is nothing to turn on first. Minecraft itself still needs a mod for controller input, and Agora offers to install it when you launch.
After this you will be able to
- Drive Agora with a gamepad, without a keyboard or mouse.
- Know every button and what it does.
- Understand why Agora offers to add Controlify.
Pick the controller up
Connect a controller and press any button on it while Agora is focused. Text and hit targets grow, spacing opens up, and a highlight appears around whatever is selected. Nothing else changes — these are the same pages, not a separate mode with its own set of screens. There is no setting to enable first, because picking the controller up is the request.
Move around
The highlight moves by where things actually are on screen rather than by the order they appear in the markup, so pressing down goes to what is below. When you reach the edge of a list, the page scrolls to bring more into view. The right stick scrolls whatever panel you are in without moving the highlight.
- D-pad or left stick: move the highlight.
- A: activate what is highlighted.
- B: go back.
- LB / RB: move between sections.
- Start: open the command palette to jump anywhere.
- Right stick: scroll.
Dropdowns, sliders and typing
A dropdown changes in place when you press up or down on it rather than opening a system menu a controller cannot get inside, and a slider moves with left and right. Selecting a text box raises an on-screen keyboard you can drive with the stick; B closes it and puts you back on the field.
Add controller support to Minecraft
Minecraft has no built-in gamepad support, so a controller that drives Agora will do nothing in the game itself. When you launch with a controller in use, Agora offers to install Controlify, the mod that adds it. Accepting opens the normal install flow, so you see and confirm exactly what is being added before anything changes.
In depth
How the system actually behaves, and why, for readers who prefer the model to a recipe.
Controller support is the whole app resized for a pad, not a separate screen with its own set of destinations. Knowing what it deliberately does not cover, and when the Controlify offer stays silent, explains most of its behaviour.
After this you will be able to
- Know how far controller support reaches, and where it does not.
- Predict when the Controlify offer appears and when it does not.
- Understand what the mode costs when you never use a controller.
The whole app, not a separate mode
A controller drives Agora itself rather than a cut-down copy of it. Focus moves by geometry, so the stick and D-pad go where you are looking; A activates, B goes back, the shoulder buttons move between sections, and Start opens the command palette to jump anywhere. Dropdowns and sliders change in place instead of opening a system menu a controller cannot enter, and selecting a text box raises an on-screen keyboard. An earlier version had a separate handheld screen that could only list and launch instances; it has been replaced by this, so every page a mouse can reach, a controller can too.
Where coverage still stops
Text entry is a basic-Latin keyboard: enough for a search term or a folder name, not for languages that need an input method or accented text, so a physical keyboard is still the better tool there. Colour pickers and file pickers open system windows that no controller can reach. The living background is mouse-and-keyboard only by design.
Launching behaves identically
Pressing Play with a controller is the same Play button, so it resolves direct or delegated launch the same way for that instance and runs the same pre-launch health checks. A controller is a different way to reach the same action, not a different action.
When the Controlify offer stays quiet
The offer only appears when there is something to accept. Agora stays silent when Controlify is already installed, when the instance is locked, when you have declined for that instance before, or when the loader has no Controlify build.
- Already installed, including installed but disabled — disabling it was deliberate, and installing again would not enable it.
- A locked instance, which accepts no new mods until you unlock it.
- Previously declined for that instance.
- Loaders without a Controlify build. Fabric, Quilt, and NeoForge are supported.
Cost when you have no controller
Reading gamepad input requires polling every animation frame, so Agora only starts polling once a controller is actually present. Connection is reported by the browser rather than discovered by searching. If you never touch a gamepad, none of this runs.
This guide is the same text Agora shows in its built-in Help & Guide, which is searchable and links directly to the screens it describes.