Free tool
Stick drift test
Find out whether your sticks drift and by how much. The test measures each stick at rest for five seconds and suggests a deadzone that keeps the wobble off your stream.
Runs entirely in your browser. Nothing about your controller leaves your computer.
Connect a controller and press any button.
Browsers only reveal a controller after you press one of its buttons, so the page stays empty until then. Wired and Bluetooth both work.
How it works
A stick at rest should report 0 on both axes. Worn sensors, dust and tired springs make it sit slightly off-center instead, and the value wanders. That is stick drift. In a game it shows up as a camera that slowly turns or a character that creeps forward; on a stream overlay, as a stick that keeps twitching while you are not touching it.
Start the test, put the controller down and keep your hands off it. For five seconds the page records the largest distance from center on each axis. The trail on each circle shows every position the stick visited, so you can see the jitter for yourself.
The suggested deadzone is that largest offset plus a small safety margin, rounded up to a whole percent. Enter it as the stick deadzone in your overlay's Input tab and the overlay ignores movement below it. The shaded square on the circle shows the area it covers.
Questions
Is a little movement at rest normal?
Yes. Almost every controller reports a few hundredths off-center, and older ones more. Games apply their own deadzone and ignore it: Microsoft's recommended default deadzone for Xbox controllers is about a quarter of the stick's travel. Overlays show the raw value, which is why a controller that feels fine in games can still twitch on stream.
What deadzone should I use on my overlay?
The one this test suggests: slightly above the largest resting offset it measured. Go much higher and small, deliberate stick movements disappear from the overlay, so keep it as low as the test allows. Run it again every few months; drift tends to grow.
Does a deadzone fix stick drift?
It hides it, on your overlay and in games that let you set one. It does not repair the stick. If the offset keeps growing or games move on their own, cleaning or replacing the stick module, or a warranty claim, is the real fix.
Why test both sticks?
They wear independently. The stick you move with usually drifts first, but the camera stick is the one viewers see twitching on an overlay. Each stick gets its own result and suggestion; the overlay uses one deadzone for both, so enter the higher of the two.
Want to check every button and trigger too? Open the gamepad tester. More on deadzones and overlays is in the guides.
Steady sticks, clean overlay. Set yours up.
No install, no account. Pick a skin, make it yours, paste one link into OBS.