When it does not work

In roughly the order things actually go wrong.

My PC does not appear in the app

Three things, in the order worth checking:

1. Is the companion running on the PC? It has to be open. It is not a service and does not start with Windows.
2. Are both devices on the same network? Not the same building — the same network. A phone on a 5 GHz guest network and a PC on a 2.4 GHz main network cannot see each other, and neither can a phone that has quietly fallen back to mobile data. The phone's own hotspot or USB tethering counts: see below.
3. Is Windows blocking it? If it is, the companion window says so under Windows is blocking PhonePad, names the network, and offers the fix. Advanced → Network lists every network the PC is on, whether PhonePad is open on it, and how many search probes from phones it has heard: none means the phone's search never reaches the PC.

Still nothing? Some routers have AP isolation or "client isolation" turned on, which stops devices on the network from talking to each other at all. It is often on by default on guest networks. Turn it off, or use your main network.

Using the phone's hotspot or USB tethering

It works: connect the PC to the phone's hotspot, or turn on USB tethering, and open PhonePad. The phone searches every network it is part of, including the ones it is providing.

What gets in the way is Windows. It files every network it has not seen before as public, and blocks phones from reaching PhonePad there. The companion shows the network under Windows is blocking PhonePad; if it is your own phone, click Make private and accept the administrator prompt. That trusts that one network, the way Windows' own Network profile type setting does, and nothing else.

A Wi-Fi hotspot is remembered by its name. With USB tethering, many phones present a new network identity each time tethering starts, so Windows may treat it as new and the companion will ask again.

Do not mark café, hotel or airport Wi-Fi private. PhonePad never opens its ports on public networks in general, for the same reason.

Windows sees the pad but the game ignores it

The single most common report, and the most confusing, because the controller demonstrably works — the Xbox app's own menus respond, the Guide button opens the overlay, joy.cpl shows every axis moving. Only the game ignores you.

Hold the XBOX button on the phone for a second.

A cloud gaming client binds a controller to a streaming session at the moment it observes one arrive. A pad that already existed when the stream started never produces an arrival event, so the session ends up with no controller bound. Holding XBOX unplugs the virtual pad and plugs it back in, which produces a real arrival event without disturbing your connection.

The companion can do this for you — tick "Do this automatically when a cloud game starts".

"No controller driver"

ViGEmBus is not installed, or the install did not finish. Install ViGEmBus 1.22.0, then restart the companion. If it still fails, reboot — the driver has to load, and occasionally an upgrade over an old version needs one.

The pairing code is not accepted

Each code is good for one attempt. After a wrong one the PC shows a new code; type that one. The pairing window is open for 120 seconds and closes the moment a phone pairs, or after five attempts. Click Pair a phone on the PC for a fresh window.

"This PC has an older PhonePad" or, on the PC, "has an older PhonePad that pairs insecurely": pairing needs 1.1 or newer on both sides. Update whichever one is named. A phone that was already paired keeps working.

If the phone says the PC is not in pairing mode, that is the PC answering honestly rather than a stale screen — open the window and try again.

The controls feel laggy

Open Diagnostics on the phone and look at the round trip.

• Under 10 ms — normal, and not your problem.
• 10–30 ms — usually a busy 2.4 GHz network. Move to 5 GHz if you can.
• Above 30 ms, or spiky — the phone may have roamed to a distant access point, or something is saturating the network.

If loss is above zero, that is the network, not PhonePad. The protocol re-sends unconditionally, so a few dropped packets are invisible, but sustained loss is worth chasing.

Everything drops when a second finger lands

Look at the connection status. If it is flickering between connected and reconnecting, the network is dropping packets and the symptom is the link, not the touchscreen. Fix the link.

A stick drifts, or does not centre

Rest a thumb still on the stick and watch the axis in Diagnostics. If it flutters, raise Deadzone for that control in the layout editor — it is set to reject digitiser noise, and some screens are noisier than others.

Steering is twitchy, or numb

PhonePad starts its output just past the deadzone the game applies, and games differ in how large that is. If a game feels twitchy, lower Anti-deadzone for that stick; if it feels numb near centre, raise it. The layout editor has both, per control.

None of this helped

Open an issue. Include what the Diagnostics screen says and what the companion's Advanced section shows, especially the rejection breakdown if anything is being rejected — that line is usually the whole diagnosis.