Please be aware that some cores, for example arcade emulator cores and vintage computer emulator cores, can also be configured to directly read the keyboard or controls that use a keyboard interface. Please refer to Default RetroArch keyboard bindings in this doc as a reference. RetroArch provides a remappable set of bindings between a keyboard and the RetroPad abstraction as well as between a keyboard and RetroArch's hotkeys. If that is the case for your gamepad, please refer to the Manual RetroPad binding section below. If the gamepad can be autoconfigured the OSD will inform you of the autoconfiguration event. Many gamepads should work out of the box via the RetroArch autoconfiguration profile database. However, RetroArch also provides the freedom to configure specific cores and even individual games differently if the user wants. RetroArch and libretro provide ability to configure a gamepad once for many cores instead of having to configure each core individually.

RetroArch is intended to be easily controlled with a gamepad.

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