The Nintendo Wii Nunchuk has taken on a new life. It’s no longer just for playing games. It's being used as a video editing shortcut device by creator John Dingley. The Nunchuk, with its intuitive layout and shape, has been repurposed as a macropad. That’s a small controller used to assign shortcuts to buttons, bypassing the keyboard.
How it all came together
John Dingley posted a video on their YouTube channel, John's Projects, where they explain the setup. They paired the Nunchuk with a device called the Anavi Handle, an open-source USB adapter. That’s what makes it possible to use the controller with a PC. The Anavi Handle uses a Seeed Studio Xiao RP2040, a low-cost microcontroller. It all adds up to a surprisingly cheap fix for a specific problem.
Dingley noticed that they weren’t using all the buttons on their regular macropad. The Nunchuk, with just a few buttons and a joystick, could offer a lighter alternative. It’s small, it’s comfortable, and it fits in the hand naturally. For a video editor who might spend hours at a computer, wrist pain can become an issue. The Nunchuk, held upright, avoids that strain.
What it actually does
Right now, Dingley has four functions mapped. The bottom button splits a video clip. The top button is unused for now. The joystick left moves through a video with a ripple delete, trimming it. The joystick right undoes the last action. It’s not much, but it’s enough for basic editing tasks like trimming, undoing, and switching tools.
The process wasn’t automatic. The Nunchuk doesn’t work as a macropad out of the box. Dingley had to write some code to get it to do anything useful. But they’ve shared the setup in their video, which helps others try it themselves.
Is this the future of editing, or just a niche fix?
The Nunchuk setup is more of a curiosity than a mainstream solution. Professional editors often use devices like the DaVinci Speed Editor, which have dozens of buttons and dedicated functions. That’s because editing often requires a wide range of tools at hand. The Nunchuk, by contrast, has limited capacity.
But for editors who only need a handful of shortcuts, it’s a neat trick. It’s compact, it’s fun, and it shows what can be done when you think about ergonomics and creativity. As Dingley put it, it’s one of the most ergonomic things ever made. That’s not just marketing. It’s honest feedback from the user.
