Sony DualSense Controller Audio Jack Handling Ready For Linux 6.18

Written by Michael Larabel in Linux Gaming on 24 September 2025 at 06:18 AM EDT. 16 Comments

In addition to the patches providing haptic touchpad support for Linux 6.18, another notable HID addition queued into the "hid-next" tree ahead of the imminent Linux 6.18 merge window is proper audio jack handling with the Sony PlayStation DualSense controller.

The past few months there has been work by Cristian Ciocaltea of Collabora for proper audio jack handling on the DualSense controller. Ciocaltea explained with the prior patch series:

"The Sony DualSense wireless controller (PS5) provides an internal mono speaker, in addition to the 3.5mm jack socket for headphone output and headset microphone input. However, the default audio output path is set to headphones, regardless of whether they are actually inserted or not.

This patch series aims to improve the audio support by implementing the following changes:

* Detect when the plugged state of the audio jack changes and toggle audio output between headphones and internal speaker, as required. The latter is achieved by essentially routing the right channel of the audio source to the mono speaker.

* Adjust the speaker volume since its default level is too low and, therefore, cannot generate any audible sound.

* Register a dedicated input device for the audio jack and use it to report all headphone and headset mic insert events."

This handling is being tacked onto the PlayStation HID driver as a useful improvement for Linux gamers using the Sony DualSense controller.

👁 Sony DualSense PS5 controller

The patches were carried by hid.git's for-6.18/playstation branch and since merged to HID's for-next branch ahead of the Linux 6.18 merge window.