Okay folks, buckle up because today was one of those hair-pulling tech days. I finally got some time to fire up Wuthering Waves on my phone – controller in hand, all set for some comfy couch grinding. Imagine my face when absolutely nothing happened. No button response, nada. Total controller ghosting. Felt like shouting into a void, seriously.
So, First Thing First: The Great Controller Freakout
My immediate reaction? Panic followed by furious button mashing. Switched controllers – from my trusty Bluetooth one to the good old wired USB-C controller. Zilch. Zip. Whole lotta nothing on screen. Checked my phone’s Bluetooth settings, yeah the controllers were connected fine. Opened another game? Controller worked perfectly there. Aggravating!
Went straight to the in-game settings menu. Searched high and low under ‘Controls’ for a magic ‘Enable Controller’ switch. No such luck. Just keyboard and touch settings mocking me.
Getting My Hands Dirty: The Trial-and-Error Tango
Alright, time for some real digging. Tried the classic IT move: closed Wuwa completely, force-stopped it, cleared the cache like a digital janitor. Rebooted my phone for good measure. Fired the game back up… still controller-less. Felt like groundhog day.
Next phase: deep phone surgery (well, settings surgery). Went into Developer Options (yeah, I tinker, sue me). Flipped ‘USB Debugging’ on and off like a crazy person. No dice. Even tried toggling some obscure Bluetooth AVRCP settings – just making things worse probably. My ‘Game Controller’ app showed all inputs registering perfectly, so it wasn’t busted hardware.
The “Oh Duh!” Moment (Seriously, Why?!?)
Almost threw my dang controller across the room at this point. Then, purely out of desperation, I thought: could it be some other app hogging control?
Went diving into my phone’s general Accessibility Settings. Scrolled through the list of installed services… and there it was. Big as day and twice as guilty: “Screen Reader XYZ App” was sitting there with its Accessibility permission ON. I must have turned it on weeks ago for some other reason and totally forgot.
- Opened that Accessibility service setting.
- Saw the toggle switched to “On”.
- Flipped that sucker OFF instantly.
The Sweet Sound of Buttons Working
Quickly jumped back into Wuwa. Pushed the X button on my controller… BAM! Character jumped! Almost cried real tears of joy (okay, maybe not tears, but definitely a big sigh of relief). Tried all the buttons, everything registered perfectly smooth. Just like that, the controller was alive.
So yeah, the takeaway hit me hard: if your controller’s playing dead specifically in Wuthering Waves on mobile, DO NOT SKIP THE ACCESSIBILITY SETTINGS CHECK. It seems any app using those permissions can totally block Wuwa from seeing your controller inputs. Dumb? Maybe. The fix? Flipping that permission off. Simple as that. Shut down that background service hogging the inputs.
Hope this saves someone else an hour of furious head-scratching. I’m about to go tackle the actual game now, controller firmly in hand!
