Using a DualShock 4 controller on Ubuntu?
If so, you may find the following GNOME Shell extension a handy thing to have to hand.
It’s called ‘Dual Shock 4 battery percentage’ and in an unexpected and not at all predictable twist, it lets you see PS4 controller battery level on the GNOME desktop.
Nothing more, and nothing less.
‘you don’t have to open a separate app window to see the battery level’
The “point” of this extension is that you don’t have to open a separate app window or click on a menu to see the battery level as It’s there, on screen, in the GNOME top bar whenever the controller is connected.
A perfect, passive approach that doesn’t encroach on any windowed gaming.
Not owning a PS4 I can’t test this particular extension out first hand, nor can I attest to how well the PS4 controller works on Linux in general. That said, reports from Reddit and YouTube (see below) do suggest that the PS4 controller works decently “out of the box” on Linux as a standard HID controller.
DualShock 4 is the latest version in a series of gamepads developed by Sony for use with the PlayStation console. As a wireless bluetooth device it’s possible to pair the PS4 controller with Linux (including Ubuntu, natch) and many apps like Steam support it pretty much out of the box.
Just “pair” the controller like a regular Bluetooth device and, all going well, you’re done!
Install DualShock 4 Battery GNOME Extension
There are a couple of different ways to nab this add-on. You could grab the source code from GitHub then, to install, download the branch as a .zip and then unpack to your GNOME Extensions folder.
But that’s effort.
A much easier way to go the GNOME Extensions website and install the DualShock/DualSense Battery Percentage extensions from there via your browser, or using the neat Extensions Manager app available from the repo in Ubuntu 22.04 LTS and up.