The Xbox One is a great gaming console with an excellent controller, and if you have a Mac with a few games you’d like to use a controller for, you can use a third party tool to gain Xbox One controller support for gaming in OS X.



The free utility is appropriately called “Xbox One Controller Enabler” and it allows the controller to function with a USB connection on any Mac with OS X Mavericks or OS X Yosemite, though the latter requires a slightly more technical implementation to get working. With any OS X version, getting the Xbox One controller to work on the Mac is slightly more complex than using a Playstation 3 controller, and as the support is unofficial, there may be a few quirks encountered along the way. Nonetheless, it’s certainly worth a try if you have an Xbox One and a Mac and you’d like to use the controller with.

The tool works by simulating a virtual joystick, which is why there may be some quirks with certain application compatibility.

You’ll probably want to download the precompiled binary, unless you feel like building the source yourself. As already mentioned, this utility is a bit more complex which makes it better aimed at advanced Mac users who don’t mind running experimental software. If you have a Playstation 3 or PS4 controller, it’s much easier to immediately get one of those working on a Mac.

Launching the app is probably sufficient to get it working with prior releases of OS X, but according to the developer, OS X Yosemite users will need to enable kernel extension developer mode for the XboxOneControllerEnabler tool to work. This is possible through the Terminal by entering the following command string:

sudo nvram boot-args=kext-dev-mode=1

Typically modifying boot arguments requires a reboot, so you’d probably ant to do that and then relaunch the enabler app before attempting to use it within modern versions of OS X.

On a quick side note, to turn off kext-dev-mode later, you can use the following command string:

sudo nvram boot-args=kext-dev-mode=0

Not having an Xbox One myself (I’m still cruising with a lowly Xbox 360, woe is me), I’m not able to test this out, though it seems to work based on reports from around the web. Try it out with your favorite game(s) on OS X, as long as they have gamepad controller support it should be good to go.

Heads up to CultOfMac for finding this nifty utility, it should be a nice touch for Mac gamers who prefer a gamepad to the keyboard and mouse.

If you have an Xbox One and try this out, let us know in the comments how it works for you.