I’ve been using Shadow for almost a month now and I’ve found the service to be quite nice (when it works correctly, which is most of the time, and the games I want to run run). Up until now, I’ve been using a Turtle Beach Xbox Recon Controller, which served me pretty well in gaming sessions when I’m not doing work. However, because it requires a wire to function, at least one port on my laptop (besides power) needs to be available for connection. I wanted to get a wireless controller, to eliminate wires, and so I recently purchased an Xbox Series X|S Carbon Black official controller and tried to use it wirelessly.
On the host Linux distro (Zorin OS 16.1 Core), the controller is perfectly functional, both wired and wireless; all of the buttons work as intended. No problems. It is when I try to connect to my Shadow PC wirelessly, however, that issues start to occur. To make a long story short, the controller is completely misconfigured and I’m not sure if its a driver issue or something on Shadow’s end that has to be remediated at the kernel level.
I have taken the time to compile a list of what buttons do what (or not):
Face buttons | A: A B: B Y: Left Bumper X: Y 4-way direction pad: works |
---|---|
Shoulder Buttons | Right Bumper: Start Left Bumper: Select Left Trigger: Right Trigger Right Trigger: Unpressed, right joystick all the way up Pressed, right joystick all the way down |
Problem Buttons | Select: Right joystick click Start: doesn't register No button is registered for "X" |
I hope this list makes sense, because it’s really hard to show this without an in-person side-by-side.

It could be that it’s being recognized as an Xbox 360 Controller, but I can’t find any drivers specifically for “Xbox Series X Controller”. Also, there are no duplicate entries found in Device Manager, that would cause redundant inputs, when it is first initialized into the system; I already looked.