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I have read through both the MDN Gamepad API page and the W3C Gamepad API page, and I have found nothing about any rumble features with Gamepads. I found one page that referenced rumble support in FireFox with an android phone, but only had one comment that talked about gamepad support. That comment has 2 links: a dead blog, and a Bugzilla thread. The Bugzilla thread never ended up saying that this feature was added. I did find one more page that directly referenced the gamepad rumble control, but it was under the "The Future" section of the post.

Another issue with all these links I gave, is that they are all from between 2010-2013, nothing newer.

Is there a rumble feature for gamepads possible in the current state of web browsers? And is there a company that has directly said that they are working on it?

ZomoXYZ
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  • Thank you for your question, Jaketr00. I too have been looking for an answer and the information seems very scarce on the ground. I've set a bounty to call more attention to your post. – Polyducks May 30 '16 at 16:48

1 Answers1

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There’s the Vibration API (see also Editor’s Draft, MDN). That has support in Firefox and Chrome. It is more generally designed for phone vibration than gamepad haptics though, and only supports a single target.

I imagine that what you’re requesting would be better served by being specified as part of a future iteration of the Gamepad API. This is being written on Github, and there’s an open issue to get it in. Maybe contributing your use cases might help advance its addition?

Robin Whittleton
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  • So for clarification - these documents you've linked are proposals, and not implemented functionality? – Polyducks May 30 '16 at 17:42
  • The Vibration API is a W3 Recommendation: a standard by any other name. That has been implemented in Firefox and Chrome but not in Safari or Edge. In Edge it’s marked as Under Consideration: https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/platform/status/ . Safari doesn’t support it and I can’t find any relevant open issues that says it will. For the Gamepad API vibration support, it’s all still hypothetical. There’s no support, and no proposed method of support. – Robin Whittleton May 30 '16 at 20:02
  • It’s also worth mentioning that the nascent WebUSB / WebBluetooth standards might potentially in the future allow for writing a driver in JS that could drive particular pads’ motors directly, but that’s much further in the future than even getting vibration into the Gamepad API specification. – Robin Whittleton May 31 '16 at 08:27
  • I've commented on a github issue that was linked in this thread regarding these proposed changes. https://github.com/html5rocks/www.html5rocks.com/issues/297#issuecomment-222534168 It provides a very in-depth response to the question. – Polyducks Jun 07 '16 at 09:17
  • Also thank you for your answer, it was very helpful! Please take my offered bounty. – Polyducks Jun 07 '16 at 09:17