Controls

vPinOps deliberately does not invent a control standard. Visual Pinball already has one, the whole community uses it, and it works out of the gate without you changing anything. The job here is to tell you what it is, not to replace it.

In vPinOps (the wheel)

Key
← / →, or either flipper button	move between tables
Enter, or 1 (the start button)	play the selected table
↑ / ↓	move within the tray, once it is open
T	the “needs attention” tray
M	the OpsLink card — the address and password to open on your phone, and whether the service is running
Esc, or Q — held	quit vPinOps. A tap does nothing on purpose: this is the same button you press to leave a table, so it takes about a second’s hold

A cabinet drives all of that from its own buttons — the flippers move the wheel and the start button launches, so you never need a keyboard to browse and play.

A game controller drives the wheel too

The keys above are the defaults. A controller works without turning any of them into keystrokes — the wheel reads the pad directly, so flippers move between tables and the start button launches, whether your cabinet is wired as a keyboard or as a controller.

And none of it is fixed: see changing them below.

In Visual Pinball (while a table is playing)

These are Visual Pinball’s keys, not vPinOps’. This is the standard a cabinet is wired to:

Control	Key
Left flipper	Left Shift
Right flipper	Right Shift
Plunger / launch	Enter
Start game	1
Insert coin / credit	5
Lockbar (magna-save etc.)	Left Alt
Exit table	Esc

How much to trust this table

These are Visual Pinball’s keys, not ours. On a fresh install they are the ones it comes with, and they are what a cabinet is already wired for.

Change them in Visual Pinball’s own settings and yours win — including the Exit Table button in OpsLink, which sends whatever you have set.

One exception worth knowing. If you bind Exit Table to something OpsLink cannot press for you — a gamepad button, a key combination, or a key it does not recognise — the button greys out, and you quit at the cabinet instead.

On macOS, the coin door asks for one permission, once

Working the coin door and Visual Pinball’s volume from your phone means sending key presses, and macOS asks you to allow that. vPinOps never asks at install. The first time you need it, OpsLink shows The coin door cannot send key presses on the Cab page. Press Fix and System Settings opens at Privacy & Security → Device Control and Data Access (called Accessibility before macOS 27). Switch vPinOps on, then restart vPinOps, because it only checks at startup. If it still says it cannot, remove vPinOps from that list with −, add it back with +, and restart again. Everything else works with no permissions at all.

On Linux, the coin door asks for one permission, once

Working the coin door and Visual Pinball’s volume from your phone means sending key presses, and on Linux that needs access to /dev/uinput, which a stock system keeps for root. vPinOps never asks for this at install. The first time you reach for the coin door in OpsLink it shows you the two commands. Run them, then restart the machine once. Logging out is not always enough, because the permission reaches programs only when your desktop session starts. Everything else works with no permissions at all.

Changing them

Every one of the front end’s own controls can be rebound. Open Map my controls from the vPinOps tray icon.

Press Add… next to an action, then press what you want it to be — a key, or a button on your cabinet. Both go through the same path, so there is nothing different to do for a controller. An action can hold several alternatives at once, each removable on its own, so adding one never takes away what already worked.

There is always a way back to the defaults. That is not a nicety: bind quit to something you cannot reach and you are locked out of your own front end.

It knows what your cabinet already does

vPinOps reads Visual Pinball’s own button mapping — it never writes it — so it can see which of your cabinet’s buttons Visual Pinball already uses, and which are free. Those spare ones are the natural home for the vPinOps-only actions like the tray and the OpsLink card.

No mapping tool needed

vPinOps carries its own copy of SDL and reads your controller directly, so you do not need JoyToKey or anything like it for the wheel. If you already use one it keeps working — the wheel sees those keystrokes as ordinary keys.