now WiiMote As A Mac Gamepad

Do you want a gamepad for your Mac, but don’t want to buy yet another controller? Use your WiiMote as a gamepad with Wjoy. This app doesn’t enable motion controls on your Mac, but it does let you use your WiiMote as a simple gamepad – perfect for games and even emulators if that’s what you like to do.

Not everyone knows it, but the WiiMote connects to the Wii using Bluetooth – and there’s nothing stopping you from using the WiiMote with any computer that uses Bluetooth. The Mac is no exception.

We’ve shown you how to connect your WiiMote to your PC, and while that process is great – you end up with full motion control – it’s also fairly complex. This Mac solution is simple, letting you use any WiiMote with your Mac in a matter of minutes.

Getting Started

Before we begin: you’ll need to turn Bluetooth on before you can use this. If you don’t have Bluetooth you’re out of luck, sorry.

Go ahead and download Wjoy. It’s a typical Mac package, so install by dragging the enclosed application to your Applications folder. Start it up and you’ll see a WiiMote icon in your Menu Bar, along with a notification:

Go ahead and press the 1 and 2 buttons. Your WiiMote should shake, as usual, and then you’re ready to go:

You can click the WiiMote icon in the tray if you want information about your WiiMotes, including the battery life. You can also quit the programming from here, which will also disconnect all of your WiiMotes from your Mac.

The real brilliance of this program is that any and all programs capable of recognizing a joystick will now recognize your WiiMote as one. Sometimes this will require some in-game configuration – here’s me setting up Braid:

I might be short on buttons with just my WiiMote.

Other programs will simply work out of the box, but check the options in your game to learn more. Hold your WiiMote sideways and you’re ready to play. The Classic Controller is also supported, meaning you can potentially use more buttons if you’ve got access to that accessory.

Oh, and if a game you want to play doesn’t support gamepads check out Enjoy, which lets you map gamepad buttons to keyboard buttons. It’s a little work to set up, but worth it if you want to game using your WiiMote.