The Nintendo Switch has made headlines in the gaming industry over these past few weeks, but did you know that the Nintendo Joy Con controllers can also be a perfect match for your Surface Pro 4? Well, one YouTube user turned the controller into a drawing remote for his Surface Pro 4, and the results are definitely interesting.
The video was first posted to YouTube on March 27th and has since gathered 71 upvotes and a few comments on the Microsoft Surface subreddit. In the video, YouTuber Brad Colbow first questions, “if you can control your games with these why not control your drawing programs?”
Colbow ultimately answers the question by pairing the Joy Con with his Surface Pro 4 via Bluetooth, and then by downloading and installing the JoyToKey application for Windows 10. With this application, he is able to match each of the buttons on the controller to a certain shortcut in an application, in his case Photoshop. For instance, he maps common photoshop tools to the arrow buttons, such as brushes, and the options to zoom in and zoom out. He even is able to map the back trigger button as undo, which due to the comfort of the controller, saves him quite some time when drawing.
According to the video, with the application, you’re able to set different JoyCon profiles for different programs, and even use the controller on MacOS. This use of the Joy Con is still very interesting, though it appears very similar to the Surface Dial, which provides easy access to shortcuts, controls, drawing tools, and more.
