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 Wi-Fi? 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.
3. Is the firewall blocking it? Open Advanced → Network in the companion. If the firewall rule is missing, click Add firewall rule and accept the elevation prompt.

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.

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

The pairing window is open for 120 seconds and closes the moment a phone pairs successfully. If it has expired, click Pair a phone on the PC for a fresh code.

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.