Add support for joypad button echo events

[Nintorch]

• Closes Make gamepads send echo events for UI navigation purposes godot-proposals#11199

This PR adds the code in Input class to send joypad echo events for buttons
This PR adds 3 new project settings:

• input_devices/joypads/joypad_echo_events/send: If true, the engine will send joypad echo events after the user has pressed the joypad buttons or moved the joypad axes for long enough, false by default for existing projects and true by default for newly created projects;
• input_devices/joypads/joypad_echo_events/wait_time: The amount of time of pressing the joypad buttons or keeping the joypad axes over the deadzone required for the engine to start sending echo events, in seconds, 0.5 by default;
• input_devices/joypads/joypad_echo_events/count_per_second: The number of times per second joypad echo events should be sent by the engine after the user has pressed the buttons or kept the axes over the deadzone for long enough, 20 by default;

2026-04-14.22-17-37.mp4

This PR also works with high numbers of echo events per second that are set via input_devices/joypads/joypad_echo_events/count_per_second. Here I set it to 1000, you can see that the counter increases by 1000 every second:

2026-04-14.22-18-08.mp4

TODO:

• InputEventJoypadButton.is_echo() + ProjectSettings.input_devices/joypads/send_joypad_echo_events
• ProjectSettings.input_devices/joypads/joypad_echo_events_wait_time
• ProjectSettings.input_devices/joypads/joypad_echo_events_count_per_second
• Run Input::_process() in the main/rendering step instead of the physics step
• Try to add echo events for axes
• Godot Docs PR ( Clarify the usage of controller echo events godot-docs#11950 )
• Enable ProjectSettings.input_devices/joypads/send_joypad_echo_events by default for new projects?

[Calinou]

I'm currently not entirely sure how to add echo events for axes in a way that makes sense, but I was also thinking of creating another project setting that would be a deadzone for echo events. If the axis value is higher than the deadzone, the echo events will be sent.

I would just reuse the same deadzone as the regular action. If you hold an axis at a position where the input would be sent, it should also echo eventually.

[Nintorch]

I'm currently not entirely sure how to add echo events for axes in a way that makes sense, but I was also thinking of creating another project setting that would be a deadzone for echo events. If the axis value is higher than the deadzone, the echo events will be sent.

I would just reuse the same deadzone as the regular action. If you hold an axis at a position where the input would be sent, it should also echo eventually.

But the thing is, InputEvents don't depend on actions, it's the actions that depend on InputEvents, as far as I know. 😅
And different input actions can contain similar axis events, which will create some ambiguity (what action should we choose for the deadzone?).

[Calinou]

Tested locally, it mostly works as expected.

Some feedback:

• Echo events don't work for focus navigation, or Tree/ItemList navigation. I would expect echo events to be followed in both cases to match other games/engines.

  • In contrast, it works with keyboard-based navigation (try holding down Tab).

• The repeat timer should ignore Engine.time_scale, as currently, using a higher time scale will speed up the rate at which echo events are sent (as well as reduce the initial delay before the first echo event). You can test this by using --time-scale 5 in the Main Run Args project setting.

[Nintorch]

Although now that I think about it, should we really have axis echo events? I mean, they have to share the same deadzone for all actions, otherwise we have to introduce a different type of echo events (most likely InputEventAction, and we will have to modify its documentation to say that it is sent by the engine in case of echo events). If neither approach is good enough, I'm not sure how we can make axis echo events :(

[Nintorch]

I decided to remove joypad axis echo events for now, I think we need to discuss this part more since there are several approaches to do it.

Tested locally, it mostly works as expected.

Some feedback:

• Echo events don't work for focus navigation, or Tree/ItemList navigation. I would expect echo events to be followed in both cases to match other games/engines.

  • In contrast, it works with keyboard-based navigation (try holding down Tab).

That's strange, because button echo events for just fine for me. Did you try to use the sticks for navigation? In that case, yes, they weren't supposed to work at the moment, and now they're removed, so I think it's hopefully not a problem for now. :D

2026-06-24.16-08-14.mp4

• The repeat timer should ignore Engine.time_scale, as currently, using a higher time scale will speed up the rate at which echo events are sent (as well as reduce the initial delay before the first echo event). You can test this by using --time-scale 5 in the Main Run Args project setting.

Fixed!