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8BitDo announce 'Ultimate Software Online' to update controllers in your browser to help Linux gamers
(www.gamingonlinux.com)
:(
this post was submitted on 28 Aug 2026
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"Browsers" but it's all just Chromium under the hood.
And afaik Firefox and its forks also have the API required for this to work. (Communicate over USB)
Firefox explicitly doesn't support webUSB because they consider it harmful: https://mozilla.github.io/standards-positions/#webusb
Thanks for sharing. Then the news I read might have been them being explicit about it. Or I'm confusing it with WebGPU or something...
Ran into this with online keyboard configurators too.
Just keep Ungoogled Chromium installed for these use cases
I am tired of seeing that icon in my menus and stuff though. Also, each time the flatpak is updated for librewolf it pushes Chromium back as the default browser.
but yes, begrudgingly agree
Just change your useragent to Chrome and it will work
I'd be very surprised if that actually works. To talk to hardware they would have to use Web Bluetooth or Web USB, neither if which Firefox supports.
Unless there is some other API I'm unaware of.
I think it is WebUSB. There is a similar problem with GrapheneOS where the web installer only works with Chromium-based browsers because Firefox does not support it yet.
Just use Brave just for that one single purpose. I do it for my keychron keyboards.
Fuck Brave. Their CEO is a homophobic transphobe asshole who actively donates money to help take away peoples rights, they are shills for a bunch of AI and crypto BS that is inbuilt in the browser, and they at least used to steal affiliate links.
I am aware, only using the browser to update your firmware means they don't get paid was my point.
It still contributes to their user count.
There are so much better alternatives to use, why would you do that one
Ungoogled Chromium works fine too
i really hate these things, because they always require chrome. i can't update or customize the firmware in my keyboard because it's only done with fucking via and that barely even works in chrome as it is. my previous keyboard was just QMK and i wrote the firmware myself, updating was just a quick flash from my terminal.
please just let us flash firmwares the so-called "hard way" too, these browser tools suck shit.
Finally. I had to go to a friends house to update my Ultimate 2
For me, the commend 8bitdo recommends to set it up for the first time (creating a udev rule) was improperly formatted and didn't work. When I created the file it was trying to create manually and then did the other steps, it still didn't detect my 8bitdo receiver.
So here at least, it didn't even work on Chrome. I like you 8BitDo and this is an interesting workflow, but like whose idea was it to present this as a solution.
Good news. Haven't looked into it in ages but is there anyway to map the extra buttons on Linux yet?
Last time I looked it was still Windows only
I've had some success running their windows software via Wine. Haven't tried firmware updates like that though, didn't want to risk bricking it (:
Yeah, for me this is the biggest deal breaker.
Heck yes!
better than nothing. I keep ungoogled chromium just for webusb stuff anyway
One of my favorite company.
Nice. I needed that software on my previous controller when the non-hall effect triggers got busted and needed to adjust sensitivity. I don't tend to use macros, though.
Now if Launchbox can make a Linux friendly version (or I guess browser based version) I'll have literally nothing I miss from Windows left.
I really could've used this when updating my controller to support Switch 2, I had to grab someone's Windows laptop for that lol. Really nice that it exists now.
Nice!
I have a Pro 2, so unfortunately no support through that site yet. It's perfectly possible, but annoying, to passthrough USB to a Windows virtual machine, which is what I've done in the past.