Input overview

DOSBox Staging emulates the standard DOS input trinity: keyboard, mouse, and joystick. For most games, everything works out of the box without any configuration.

The built-in key mapper (Ctrl+F1 on Windows/Linux, Cmd+F1 on macOS) lets you remap any key or joystick control. This is handy when a game uses an awkward key layout or when your controller doesn’t map cleanly to the emulated game port.

The mouse is automatically captured when you click inside the DOSBox window. To release it, press the middle mouse button, or use Ctrl+F10 / Cmd+F10.

For details on each input type, see the dedicated pages:

• Keyboard — keyboard capture settings
• Mouse — built-in mouse driver, sensitivity, capture behaviour
• Joystick — game port emulation, controller mapping, calibration
• Key mapper — remapping keys, creating controller profiles, mapper file format