If you regularly wear an Apple Watch, you’ve probably discovered the apps most useful to your daily life, like responding to emails and texts, checking the weather and using Apple Pay for contactless payments. But there are host of health apps and features that might not currently be on your radar, and they have the potential to be life-saving.

I spoke with Dr. Lauren Cheung, a doctor at Apple, who reviewed the hidden health features on the Apple Watch and why they were created.

1. The Vitals app for sleep and more

Using overnight health metrics, the Vitals app can reveal much about your health and how it changes day to day. From heart rate and wrist temperature (available on Apple Watch Series 8 or later and any Apple Watch Ultra model) to respiratory rate and sleep duration, you can get a thorough picture of your health from just one glance at your watch.

“When two or more of your metrics are out of range, we will notify you with information about why that might be,” Cheung explained. “How it works is just after you wake up, you might see a notification from the Vitals app. For example, maybe your heart rate and wrist temperature were high — this could be due to illness or alcohol consumption.”

With the health information from the Vitals app, you can make informed decisions about your health. If specific metrics are outside your normal range, you can choose to get extra rest that day or visit your doctor if you have particular symptoms. 

How to set up the Vitals app

To set up your typical range, you must wear your Apple Watch for at least seven days. Ensure your watch is not loose on your wrist; otherwise, it might not capture accurate readings. 

To set up notifications, go to Settings on your Apple Watch, tap Vitals and turn on notifications. 

For sleep specifically, make sure Track Sleep with Apple Watch is set up and Sleep Focus is enabled. To do so, open your iPhone’s Health app, tap Get Started under Set Up Sleep, tap Next and then follow the on-screen prompts. You can also use your Apple Watch’s Sleep app and follow the on-screen instructions. 

2. Noise notifications 

You can use the Noise app on your Apple Watch to measure the sound levels in your environment. You can also enable noise notifications, so your watch can tell you when you’re exposed to dangerously loud sounds. 

When asked why noise notifications were added to the Apple Watch, Cheung said, “The world can be loud, and we believe it’s important for you to be educated and empowered about how your environment, and the noise around you, can impact your hearing health over time. That way, you can take action; whether that’s moving to a quieter space or popping in AirPods Pro 2 with Hearing Protection.”

With the AirPods Pro 2 or 3, Apple also offers a Hearing Test that can give you a baseline for your hearing health and help you adjust accordingly. Or you can even use your AirPods Pro 2 as a hearing aid. 

How to set up Noise notifications

Simply go to the Watch app on your iPhone, tap My Watch, tap Noise, tap Noise Threshold and then pick a decibel level. Different limits are listed based on World Health Organization recommendations. 

3. Ovulation estimates 

“The technology is pretty remarkable,” Cheung said. “We created new temperature-sensing capabilities on Apple Watch that help you understand nightly changes from your baseline temperature, which can be caused by exercise, jet lag or even illness. The unique two-sensor design improves accuracy by reducing bias from the outside environment, detecting changes as small as 0.1 degrees Celsius.”

With the Apple Watch Series 8 or later and all Apple Watch Ultra models, this technology allows the Cycle Tracking app to estimate when ovulation occurs. “The reason we can do that is because after you ovulate, there is a biphasic shift, or in other words, an increase in temperature in response to changing hormones,” Cheung said. This can also help improve the Cycle Tracking app’s period predictions.

How to set up ovulation estimates

First, set up Cycle Tracking with fertility predictions enabled and no ongoing cycle factors logged. To do so, open your iPhone or iPad’s Health app, tap Browse on the iPhone or open the iPad’s sidebar, tap Cycle Tracking, tap Get Started and follow the on-screen instructions. 

You will also want to ensure you set up Track Sleep with your Apple Watch and have Sleep Focus enabled for at least 4 hours per night for five nights. To set up Sleep, follow the instructions in your Apple Watch’s Sleep app. 

4. Fall detection 

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Many Apple Watch users have reported the benefits of fall detection, said Cheung. “For those who have an active lifestyle, they can choose to enable it during workouts — the feature is able to recognize the unique motion and impact of falls from a bike and other workout types,” she said.

If your watch detects a hard fall, it will sound an alarm, display an alert and tap you on the wrist. With the alert, you can either dismiss it by tapping “I’m OK” or contact emergency services. The watch automatically calls if you’ve been immobile for around a minute. After, it will message your emergency contacts with your location. If you don’t have cellular or Wi-Fi coverage, Fall Detection may reach emergency services via the Emergency SOS via satellite system (if available). 

Note that Apple Watch can’t detect all falls and may mistake a high-impact activity as a fall. 

How to set up fall detection 

To enable it, on your iPhone, open the Watch app, tap My Watch, tap Emergency SOS and turn Fall Detection on or off. If enabled, you can choose whether you want it to always be on or only during workouts. This works for Apple Watch SE, Apple Watch Series 4 or later and Apple Watch Ultra or later, and if you inputted your age when you set up your Apple Watch or in the Health app, the Fall Detection feature turns on automatically if you’re 55 or older.

5. Heart health notifications for atrial fibrillation

For those with Apple Watch Series 1 or later and people aged 13 and over, you can have your Apple Watch alert you if your heart rate is high or low, or if it has an irregular rhythm.

“For the most part, you don’t have to do anything besides turn them on,” Cheung said. “They work passively in the background as you live your day. If your heart rate is unusually high or low, you can get a notification, so you can take action. And if your heart rhythm shows signs of atrial fibrillation — an irregular heart rhythm — you’ll receive a notification.”

Cheung said atrial fibrillation as the most common type of arrhythmia among adults, which can have serious side effects on your health if not treated. “For instance, it’s the leading cause of stroke,” she said. “And some people with AFib can have little to no symptoms, so they may not even realize they’re experiencing episodes and ultimately may not seek attention.”

If you get an irregular rhythm notification, you can speak with your doctor and even share a PDF that includes information about your heart health notifications and, if you take one, your electrocardiogram. Available on Apple Watch Series 4 or later and all Apple Watch Ultra models, the ECG app allows you to take a test that records the timing and strength of the electrical signals that make your heartbeat.

How to set up heart health notifications

To set up heart rate notifications, go to the Apple Watch app on your iPhone, tap My Watch, tap Heart, tap High Heart Rate and choose Beats Per Minute, tap Low Heart Rate and choose a BPM. For irregular rhythm notifications, open your iPhone’s Health app, tap Browse, tap Heart, tap Irregular Rhythm Notifications and enable them. 

6. Time in daylight

Your Apple Watch’s ambient light sensor can automatically estimate your time in daylight. If you manage a family member’s Apple Watch, you can also see how much time they spend in daylight. 

“There are a few reasons it’s important to be aware of how much time in daylight you’re getting,” Cheung said. “For adults, research shows that spending around 20 minutes outdoors every day has both physical and mental health benefits, including providing essential vitamin D and even boosting your mood.”

Time in daylight is crucial for kids’ vision health. “The International Myopia Institute recommends children spend 80-120 minutes outside each day to help lower their risk of myopia, or nearsightedness,” she said. 

How to set up time in daylight

Start by making sure that Motion Calibration & Distance is turned on. You can do so in the iPhone’s Settings app. Tap Privacy & Security, tap Location Services, turn on Location Services, tap System Services and ensure that Motion Calibration & Distance is on. 

To view your time in daylight, go to your iPhone’s Health app, tap Browse, tap Other Data and then tap Time in Daylight. 

7. State of mind to log your mood

You can log your emotions and daily moods in the Mindfulness app on your Apple Watch, which can help you identify your feelings and notice patterns in your mental health. From the app, you can also take time for a Reflect or Breathe session, which can tell you more about your heart rate once complete. 

“Emotional awareness and regulation is an important element of mental health and we’re happy to be introducing tools and resources for our users across the world,” Cheung said. “One of the tools we introduced is State of Mind, which can help tremendously in a few ways. First, the act of using it can create benefits for your mental well-being in and of itself. Second, it can help you identify important insights and trends on what might be contributing to your state of mind so you can take action. And third, it can encourage you to check in with yourself using depression or anxiety assessments in the Health app.”

Cheung added that taking the time to identify our feelings can help us control how we respond to our moods and emotions. This can positively affect our health and, over time, allow us to build resilience. 

How to set up State of Mind

In your Apple Watch’s Mindfulness app, tap State of Mind and then tap Get Started if it’s your first time using it. From here, you can log how you feel in the moment or how you’ve felt overall that day. To see your history and patterns over time, open your iPhone’s Health app, tap Browse, tap Mental Wellbeing, tap State of Mind and tap Show in Charts. From there, you can also view how your State of Mind relates to your sleep, exercise, time spent in daylight and mindful minutes.

8. Sleep apnea notifications 

“Sleep apnea is a prevalent disorder where breathing momentarily stops during sleep, preventing the body from getting enough oxygen,” Cheung said. “It’s estimated that sleep apnea impacts more than 1 billion people worldwide and, in most cases, goes undiagnosed. If left untreated, it can have important health consequences over time, including increased risk of hypertension, type 2 diabetes and cardiac issues.”

If your Apple Watch detects elevated breathing disturbances while you sleep for over 30 days, you will receive a sleep apnea notification. From there, you can create a PDF that shows when sleep apnea may have occurred, along with three months of breathing disturbance data and more, which you can then share with your doctor to discuss the next steps. 

This feature is available on the Apple Watch Series 9 or later or Apple Watch Ultra 2 or later. Just make sure you have the latest version of WatchOS and iOS. Note that this feature is intended for people aged 18 or older who have not already been diagnosed with sleep apnea. 

How to set up sleep apnea notifications

Make sure Sleep is set up. On your iPhone, open the Health app, tap Get Started under Set Up Sleep, tap Next and follow the on-screen steps. Then, wear your Apple Watch to bed for at least 10 nights over 30 days. 

To turn on sleep apnea notifications, open the Health app on your iPhone, tap Browse, tap Respiratory, tap Set Up under Sleep Apnea Notifications, tap Next and then follow the on-screen instructions. Under Respiratory, you can also view your sleep apnea notifications and breathing disturbances.

9. Handwashing 

With Handwashing, the Apple Watch Series 4 and later can detect when you begin washing your hands and time you until you reach the recommended 20-second duration. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also recommends this as the minimum amount of time. If you stop washing your hands before 20 seconds, your watch will encourage you to keep going. It can even remind you to wash your hands whenever you return home. 

“We wanted to find a way to help our users of all ages track their time spent washing their hands, especially during a time when it was particularly important early in the pandemic, so we introduced the feature in 2020,” Cheung said. “The approach uses machine learning models to determine motion which appears to be handwashing, and then uses audio to confirm the sound of running water or squishing soap on your hands.”

How to set up handwashing

On your Apple Watch, open Settings, tap Handwashing and turn on the Handwashing Timer. You can do the same on a managed Apple Watch and set up handwashing reminders. 

I won’t pretend I’m above it — I watch Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts like everyone else, and it usually starts small. A notification pops up, I unlock my phone, and I tell myself I’ll just check one thing. The next moment, I’m deep into a stream of random videos, with no idea how I got there or how much time has quietly slipped away. I’ve genuinely tried to fix it — I set app timers and convinced myself I’d follow them. I even removed Shorts from my YouTube feed, thinking that would finally solve it. I tried apps that promise to limit usage and keep you in check. For a day or two, it felt like I had things under control. Then slowly, almost without noticing, I’d fall right back into the same loop. This habit creeps in during moments of boredom, and suddenly I’m scrolling again.

At some point, I had to admit it — doomscrolling was no longer something I occasionally did; it was something I kept returning to without even thinking about it. Then, almost by accident, I found an app that actually made a difference. It didn’t completely fix everything overnight, but it did something more important. It made me pause and be aware of what I was doing in that moment. And that small interruption was enough to help me pull back before I went too far. It just gave me a bit of control, which was exactly what I needed.

This tiny drawing habit is my new escape route

I’ve been using Dudel Draw on my iPhone for the past few days, and it’s been a surprisingly refreshing change from how I usually spend time on my phone. The idea is simple, but it works — every day, the app gives you a new abstract shape to start with. It could be a random blob, a few odd lines, or something that makes no sense at first glance. And then it’s up to you to turn that into literally anything.

The closest way to describe it is that it feels like a drawing version of Wordle. You show up, you get your daily prompt, and you just go with it. Some days I turn those shapes into objects, other days into characters, and sometimes it’s just chaotic lines that somehow make sense by the end. It usually takes me five minutes, maybe a little more if I get carried away, but that short burst feels oddly satisfying.

What I like most is how effortless it is. There’s no pressure to be good at drawing, no right or wrong outcome. You can either pick the “shape of the day” challenge or just play around with random shapes whenever you feel like it. It doesn’t feel like a task or something you need to be consistent with. It just quietly fits into your day.

For me, it’s become a small ritual, especially when I hit a creative block while writing. Instead of staring at a blank screen, I open the app and start doodling whatever comes to mind. Half the time, I’m just sketching nonsense and humming songs in the background, but it helps clear the noise in my head. Somewhere in that process, ideas start to come back. And almost without trying, it’s also helped me cut down on doomscrolling. I still reach for my phone out of habit, but now there’s an alternative that doesn’t leave me feeling drained. If anything, I come out of it feeling a little more creative, a little more present, and, surprisingly, a lot less stuck.

My daily scroll finally has an exit door

I’m not going to claim that I’ve completely quit Instagram Reels or YouTube Shorts — that would be unrealistic. The habit is still there, and I still fall into it sometimes. But what’s changed is this — I now have something that gently interrupts that loop before it goes too far. Dudel Draw doesn’t demand discipline or punish me for slipping. It simply gives me an alternative that feels much lighter.

And that’s really the difference. I’m not replacing one rigid rule with another. I’m just choosing, more often than before, to spend those few idle minutes creating something. Because for the first time in a while, reaching for my phone doesn’t always end with me feeling like I lost time. 

Cole Tomas Allen of Torrance, California, appeared Monday in the US District Court for the District of Columbia to face federal charges stemming from Saturday night’s armed assault on a security checkpoint at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner.

Magistrate Judge Matthew Sharbaugh ordered Allen held pending a detention hearing Thursday. The suspect, who appeared on a criminal complaint rather than an indictment, was not asked to enter a plea. He faces three federal counts: attempting to assassinate the president, transportation of a firearm in interstate commerce, and discharge of a firearm during a crime of violence.

Allen, 31, is a Caltech-trained mechanical engineer with a recent master’s degree in computer science from California State University, Dominguez Hills who tutored part-time at a Torrance test-prep company and built indie video games on the side, according to a WIRED review of public databases, which revealed a minimal online presence.

The Metropolitan Police Department claims that the suspect approached a Secret Service checkpoint at the Hilton on Saturday night armed with a shotgun, a handgun, and multiple knives. Agents intercepted the suspect before he could reach the ballroom, where President Donald Trump was preparing to speak.

Witnesses reported hearing several shots outside the room, and agents quickly moved Trump and Vice President JD Vance off the stage. One agent was hit but was protected by his bulletproof vest. Trump later told reporters the agent was unharmed.

MPD interim chief Jeffery Carroll characterized the suspect as a “lone actor” and said he was taken to a hospital for evaluation following his arrest.

Roughly 10 minutes before the shooting, the suspect allegedly emailed his family a “manifesto,” according to the New York Post, which cited two US officials and a copy of the document. In it, the author states they are “no longer willing to permit a pedophile, rapist, and traitor to coat my hands with his crimes”—language the Post read as a reference to Trump.

The writer reportedly said he planned to use buckshot rather than slugs to “minimize casualties” but would “go through most everyone here to get to the targets if it were absolutely necessary,” reasoning that guests who chose to attend were “complicit.” The document also mocks the Hilton hotel’s security: “I walk in with multiple weapons and not a single person there considers the possibility that I could be a threat.”

Within hours of the attack, Trump and a chorus of administration officials, GOP lawmakers, and right-wing influencers seized on the shooting to demand construction proceed unimpeded on a $400-million, 90,000-square-foot White House ballroom Trump is building on the demolished East Wing—a project mired in litigation from the National Trust for Historic Preservation, which argues he sidestepped Congress.

“This event would never have happened with the Militarily Top Secret Ballroom currently under construction at the White House,” Trump posted to Truth Social Sunday morning.

The White House Correspondents’ Association, which hosts the dinner, is not a White House organization—it is an independent nonprofit of journalists who cover the administration—and there’s no indication it would agree to hold the event, which is billed as a celebration of press freedom, inside the executive mansion.

Americans lost $2.1 billion to social media scams in 2025, an eightfold increase since 2020, according to a report released Monday by the Federal Trade Commission. 

Nearly 30% of Americans who reported being a victim of a scam last year said the scam originated on social media, with Facebook most frequently being identified as the social media platform where the scam originated, according to the report. Fellow Meta-owned platforms WhatsApp and Instagram were ranked a distant second and third, the FTC said.

“In 2025, people reported losing far more money to scams on Facebook alone than they reported losing to text or email scams,” the commission said.

Scams originating on Facebook cost users $794 million in 2025, while WhatsApp and Instagram combined for $659 million in losses.

Representatives for Meta didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Read more: Crypto Scams and Senior Fraud Drive $21 Billion in 2025 Cyber Theft, FBI Reports

The FTC said social media scams largely fall into three categories: investment, shopping and romance. The greatest amount of money — $1.1 billion — was lost to investment scams often rooted in ads or posts offering a program to teach investment techniques. 

Shopping scams were the most reported social media scam in 2025, with more than 40% of social media scam victims reporting they got ripped off by ordering something they saw in a social media ad — “everything from clothes and makeup to car parts and even puppies,” the agency said.

Romance scams are also popular on social media. Nearly 60% of people who were victimized by a romance scam in 2025 said it originated on a social media platform. “Scammers often tailored their pitch based on people’s profiles, later inventing a crisis requiring money or casually offering investment advice to draw them onto a fake investment platform,” the FTC said.  

All age groups, except those 80 or older, reported losing more money to scams that began on social media than to any other method of contact.

To avoid being a victim of social media scams, the FTC advises consumers to limit who can see their posts and contacts on social media. Also, never let someone you have met only on social media make your investment decisions. 

And before buying something you’ve seen advertised on social media, do research on the company at the FTC.

If you suspect you have been a victim of a scam attempt, report it to authorities, such as the FTC’s website.

Don’t mistake the Steam Controller for a PC controller. Even though its main function is to play PC games, Valve’s new gamepad communicates with Steam, and only Steam. This is not a general controller for your PC, Android or iOS devices, and it’s certainly not compatible with any console on the market today, unless you count the handheld Steam Deck. In order to play a game with the Steam Controller, you have to boot it up through Steam. (More on this later).

Valve’s end goal for the Steam Controller is compatibility with the Steam Machine, a console that doesn’t yet have a public release date or price point. The Steam Machine will support 4K gaming at 60 fps with FSR, it’ll come with 512GB or 2TB of SSD storage, and it’ll work with the Steam Frame VR headset, as will the Controller. The new Steam Machine was supposed to drop early this year, fulfilling a long-promised dream of PC gaming by moving your entire Steam library to the couch in a compact but powerful box. Due to the memory shortages plaguing the tech industry, the Machine and Frame aren’t here yet, so the Steam Controller is the first step in Valve’s hardware takeover of living room territory. It’s due to come out on May 4, priced at $99.

The Steam Controller represents roughly 13 years of R&D, from its first iteration announced in 2013 to the debut of the Steam Deck in 2022, and the refinement period clearly paid off.

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The Steam Controller is a sturdy and sleek gamepad that stands up to the competition. It’s for Valve diehards, trackpad fanatics and anyone whose main gaming hub is Steam.

Pros

• Well-balanced and solidly built
• Precise TMR thumbsticks
• Trackpads and Gyros add flexibility
• Long battery life

Cons

• It’s built for Steam, for better or worse
• Some features won’t be useful until the Steam Frame is out

The Steam Controller is a tidy chonker of a gamepad with a broad, Duke-like face holding two square trackpads beneath the standard analog sticks and face buttons. Despite its extra girth, the Steam Controller feels light, slim and balanced, even in my smaller-than-average hands. The grips are slender and have four circular rear buttons, two per side, that are super satisfying to click even when they don’t do anything in-game. The bumpers, triggers, D-pad and face buttons are shiny black plastic, and all of the controller’s edges are rounded, allowing for a smooth glide between the bumpers and triggers especially. The trackpads don’t get in the way when you don’t need them, but in-use, they’re incredibly sensitive and kind of mesmerizing. They look and feel just like the trackpads on the Steam Deck, following the trails of your thumbs with miniature popping bubbles.

The Steam Controller uses tunnel magnetoresistance (TMR) joysticks, which are a leveled-up version of Hall effect sticks, offering ultimate precision and long-term stability with no chance of drift. After a few days of use across a range of game genres, including competitive first-person shooters, they’ve proven to be reliable and accurate. In terms of stick precision and feel, I find the Steam Controller is comparable to the Razer Wolverine V3 Pro, my PC gamepad of choice. I otherwise much prefer the swappability, rubberized microswitches and crisp clickiness of Razer’s gamepad — but the Wolverine also costs about $100 more and doesn’t come with trackpad capabilities, so we’ll call it a wash.

One of the neatest aspects of the Steam Controller is its charging and connection puck, which plugs into your PC or Steam Deck through a USB cable and enables stable wireless play. The puck snaps onto the belly of the controller for charging, and when you hover the gamepad’s connection point over it, it jumps up and latches on like a cute little sucker fish. I don’t know if this behavior is an intentional selling point, but it certainly is for me. The Steam Controller also connects to devices via Bluetooth or with a cable, and in all configurations it’s performed without issue for me. Of course, Bluetooth mode has the highest latency, so that’s mainly for phones and Steam Link play. The puck can support two Steam Controllers at once. Swapping between Puck and Bluetooth mode is a simple matter of holding the right bumper and A or B, respectively, when you turn the controller on.

Pressing the power button with the Steam logo wakes up the gamepad, and pressing it twice when you’re connected to a PC launches Steam in Big Picture mode. The Steam Controller feels like a natural extension of Valve’s storefront, and with its matte black finish and bubbled edges, it’ll be familiar to anyone who’s fallen in love with a Steam Deck these past few years.

I tested out the controller on my PC with Steam games and non-Steam games (added to my Steam library first, of course — seriously, more on that later), and in my living room with my Steam Deck acting as a makeshift, low-powered Steam Machine. On PC I played The Seance of Blake Manor, Creature Kitchen and Overwatch, and on Steam Deck I played Blake Manor, Demonschool and Balatro. Whether connected with Bluetooth, the puck or USB, the Steam Controller provided seamless play and no noticeable latency. The distance from my couch to the puck nestled behind my Steam Deck is about eight feet, and I didn’t feel a frame drop while cosplaying as a Steam Machine owner. I also never ran into battery issues, but that’s not shocking considering Valve’s claim that the gamepad has more than 35 hours on a single charge. In my testing, the battery barely registered a drop after multiple hours of playtime, and I was happy to snap on the charging puck whenever I wanted to set the controller down.

Valve notes the battery life may be lower if playing with the Steam Frame. The Steam Controller has infrared LEDs for tracking, which will obviously drain the battery a little faster. Some VR games may have you waving your controller, as there are gyroscopic sensors in there as well. As the Steam Frame isn’t out, I wasn’t able to test some of the controller’s more interesting features.

Even against players using a keyboard and mouse in competitive Overwatch matches, I won games and earned awards, passing my personal ultimate test of a controller’s capabilities. When it comes to Overwatch, I’m mostly comparing the Steam Controller to Sony’s DualSense, and it feels surprisingly similar. I enjoy the Steam Controller’s smooth slide between the bumpers and triggers, though its haptic feedback is more subtle than the DualSense’s, lacking in the analog sticks particularly. Much like with the Steam Deck, I haven’t found a consistent use case for the trackpads on the Steam Controller, but I appreciate their inclusion, the accessibility factor, and the fact that they aren’t otherwise intrusive. Now, just add a Playdate crank and I’m really sold.

The Steam Controller is a clear and unmistakable signal that Valve is joining the console wars, and perhaps by patient and diligent design, it’s appearing at a vulnerable time. Xbox is fumbling the current generation and attempting to redefine its place in the console market amid a significant leadership shakeup, while Sony and Nintendo are carrying on with standard hardware upgrade cycles in a landscape that’s based less on platform exclusivity every day. Right now there’s room for a robust PC-based storefront to stake its claim on couch gaming, and voila, here’s Valve with the Steam Machine and Steam Controller.

Similarly to the way Valve used Half-Life 2 to get people to download Steam in 2004, the Steam Controller pushes players to fully consolidate their PC libraries in its own ecosystem. You’ll have to add games with their own launchers like Overwatch, Valorant, Minecraft and Fortnite to your Steam library before you can play them using Valve’s controller. This is a small inconvenience, since it takes just a few clicks to add a non-Steam game to your profile.

(Welcome to later). However, I don’t enjoy doing it. As I was browsing through files to add Overwatch to my Steam library, I couldn’t help thinking that it would have been pretty easy for Valve to add a switch that would let the Steam Controller communicate with any PC game. Maybe it’s a touch of oppositional defiant disorder, but I despise being coerced into behaviors that are designed to serve a corporation’s market control over my own workflow, especially in my personal spaces.

Now more than ever, I value my ability to choose — which businesses I work with, where I store my software, how I play — and the Steam launcher requirement is another small expansion of Valve’s incredible power in the PC games industry. It’s too easy to say, most of my games are already on Steam, no big deal, and use the Controller as an excuse to consolidate them all on Valve’s launcher. Suddenly, Steam is where you begin and end every gaming session, rather than just most. Obviously and especially with the coming rollout of the Steam Machine, this is the reality that Valve wants: a rich industry utterly reliant on its platform of DRM, shitty revenue splits and random opaque censorship. It’s the situation that Microsoft, Apple or Epic also want for themselves, but the main difference is that this future is actually in reach for Valve, and the Steam Controller is a tiny part of the plan. If willing and unforced support of a monopoly makes you bristle as well, feel free to stick with 8BitDo.

Truly though, I get it. The Steam Controller doesn’t come with a PC switch because it’s not a PC controller. It’s for controlling Steam, a service that’s become synonymous with PC and handheld gaming, and is now creeping onto the living-room scene. The Steam Controller is designed to follow you everywhere Steam is, for all your gaming needs across every screen forever and always — and there is something soothing about that idea in a Brave New World Soma kind of way. A PC controller? That’s far too limited, from Valve’s perspective.

Encroaching corporate dystopia aside, the Steam Controller is a sturdy and sleek gamepad that stands up to the competition. It’s for Valve diehards, trackpad fanatics and anyone whose main gaming hub is Steam. Which, to be clear, is a massive market that’s only poised to grow.

Valve’s Steam Controller will hit the market on Monday, May 4, for a going price of $99 in the United States. The Steam Controller does precisely what it says: It communicates with anything running Steam or the Steam Link app, so this includes PCs, Macs, mobile devices and the Steam Deck.

Eventually, the Steam Controller will connect to the new Steam Machine console and Steam Frame VR headset, but neither of these products have solid release dates just yet. They were originally slated to come out in early 2026 alongside the Steam Controller, but we’re nearly five months into the year and only a third of that promise is poised to be fulfilled. Valve in March said it hopes to ship in 2026, dropping the “early” bit.

As noted in our review, the Steam Controller is a solid gamepad, especially for the price. It feels and looks a lot like a Steam Deck, complete with two trackpads beneath a pair of TMR thumbsticks and a standard face array. It’s reactive, ergonomic, and comes with a cute little charging and connection puck that snaps onto the bottom of the gamepad. Just note that the Steam Controller is not a PC controller: It works with Steam, and only Steam. You’ll have to add games with their own launchers like Overwatch, Valorant, Minecraft or Fortnite to your Steam library before playing them with Valve’s proprietary controller. How convenient — for Valve, at least.

Worldwide, Steam Controller prices are as follows: