What do you use the back buttons for?

In first-person games, I always rebind the jump to one of the back buttons. Coming from kbm, it weels weird that looking around and jumping at the same time is not possible.
- Yeah, ideal for any games where you don't want to take your thumb off the right stick to press A/B/X/Y
  
  Or games where you don't want to take your finger off the left stick to hit a direction bound to some action on the D-Pad.

In games that don't have good auto-save (like Skyrim), I'll map one of the back buttons to quick save.

Some games have button layouts that make certain actions a pain. Two examples.
Horizon Zero Dawn - Healing is by default done by hitting dpad up. You generally want to press this button whenever you take damage to essentially trigger health regen, but doing so requires taking your thumb off the left stick, which means you can't simultaneously avoid even more damage. Bind to back button, problem solved.
BallisticNG - Weapons are bound to X, discard weapons is bound to B, and accelerate is on A. So when you pick up a weapon, to discard/use it you either have to drop thrust (bad, never do that) or awkwardly shimmy your thumb to either hit X or B without letting go of A. Bind X and B to back buttons, problems solved.
- BallisticNG
  Hey fellow WipEout junkie 👋
  
  Thanks for connecting these two dots. BallisticNG never crossed my radar.
  
  god I wish omega was on PC
  
  I set up !ballisticng@sopuli.xyz as I've seen the game mentioned all over lemmy now.
  Hoping to eventually organize some online tournaments, but we're gonna need players :D

I pretty much never use them, don't have the right hand shape and grip for it.
- I initially tried pressing the bit that's not flat against the back by squeezing it and it really wasn't comfortable for my hand, but pressing the bit that is flat against the back is way easier
  
  I'll try this.
- Yeah, I turn them off in a lot of games. Otherwise I accidentally hit them and trigger some weird effect.
- I get a lot of joint pain from specific or repetitive movements (especially in my hands) and these are just slightly too stiff and in a hard enough to press place that using them for more than very occasional use will hurt. I bought some rubber things that make them a bit easier to press, but they still are difficult for me.

I use them in place of the bumpers so my fingers can stay on the triggers.

I use them in WoW for tricky keybinds. and in terraria they're pretty useful as well
- I've been thinking about playing WoW with a controller recently. How well do you find it works on the deck? Last time I tried was a decade ago and that was a less-than-good experience but it worked. I know there have been a lot of improvements since then though. Is it fully playable without KB+m?
  
  There's good controller support in the game itself, and the add-on ConsolePort makes it more like FFXIV (a model all controller MMOs should take after). The movement scheme being forced backpedal is less great for controller use, but that can be overcome with muscle memory.
- Yeah, this was the only thing I could think of as well. But I haven't played an MMO since City of Heroes, or SW: Galaxies, whichever was most recent. Don't recall atm.

I use the back buttons in Deep Rock Galactic to mirror the A B X Y functions. This allows me to jump for instance without taking my right thumb off of the stick. I have found this is super useful as I can be steering my POV while jumping. Took a minute to get used to but now I absolutely love it.
Rock and Stone, miners!
- Oh that's a great idea. I'll have to try that. I did notice that I need to use the tall buttons that come with the Jsaux brand clear back shell. I have long fingers so they rest on the back of the deck, past the buttons. Tried the mediums and same issue, couldn't trigger the buttons easily. And the stock ones are really difficult for me to activate at all.

I use the back buttons for all sorts of stuff. But the most common use is remapping ABXY to them. That way, I dont have to lift my thumb off the joysticks as much.
Also some games have easier menu navigation with a mouse, so I'll map left and right click to r1 and l1 and use a track pad to navigate menus.

In games where combat uses the bumpers a lot I bind the back buttons to that. For the rest of the games it depends on the what I find annoying to do repeatedly and end up mapping that to a back paddle.
For example on Breath of the Wild the back paddle was run which allowed me to run with one hand.
- I'm trying that on FO4 right now. Instead of clicking in left stick, I mapped it to R4. Seems more natural than holding down the click on stick that you're also using to move directionally.

I mostly play modded minecraft on my deck, and they're really handy for modifier keys or macros that you need to keep active while pressing something else using the front controls

When I'm going from my desktop to the deck I miss being able to do things like press I for inventory or M for map, things like that. So usually I set them up to replace those little shortcuts to get me though games that need me to flick about a few menus to get to them.
- Yeah I have a game that pause is space, so I mapped one of the back buttons to that and it’s perfect.

My default move is to map the L3 and R3 clicks to two of them. (I even unmap the actual stick clicks sometimes because I click them by accident a lot.)
I also find it useful in games where the situation changes and A B X & Y completely change what they do. Like if a game is mostly exploring but sometimes in a car/plane/spaceship/whatever, I’ll map the back buttons and use them when I’m in the secondary situation. (There’s lots of other examples of games that temporarily switch genres on you here and there and using the back buttons helps me remember the controls.)

Often as a lazier way to press the face buttons for slow games. But also custom turbo patterns for fast games. E.g.:
In Genshin Impact, the back buttons are all face buttons, but with select ones set to turbo for automatic item pickup, or dialog skipping, etc.
Also very comfy to use them while swimming
In Hades II:
L/R4 are the two shoulder buttons for comfier portal/character interaction
L/R5 do autoattack and autospecial on turbo
In Valheim, one lets me Dodge with a single button press instead of the chord the game demands you use
In Balatro
L/R4 switches hand sorting modes, which has no in-game shortcuts, still
L5 restarts a run on long press
R5 quits to main menu and resumes with a multi button sequence, to "soft reset"
In Tabletop Simulator, the most common actions like clicking, selecting, flipping a card, and drawing, are all mapped to the back buttons for ergonomics, freeing face/shoulder buttons for more advanced stuff
In Minecraft, various back buttons are used to enable different overlaid controls when clicked/pressed based on the modpack.
Etc etc!

It varies per game, but my most common use is to replace the thumbstick clicks. I don't like how it feels to click in the thumb sticks, feels like I'm adding extra wear and tear to them.
In first person games, I'll often bind jump, sprint, reload, and melee to the back buttons so I can move and aim while performing those actions.

GTA V. I mapped the top right to hold down the trigger for flying helicopters, or when I don't want to let off the gas in a car. Bottom right releases it. I use this when I am hauling stuff with the cargobob so I don't have to keep my hand on the trigger which can be painful after a while. I use them in Valheim to do things like repair when I am at a crafting table. I really like having them and how programmable they are.
- Does Valheim still cause the fan to go crazy or did they further optimize on the deck? I admittedly haven't tried it since right after buying the thing.
  
  It doesn't seem to make my fan go nuts. I have been playing it for a while on the deck and can't recall that issue.

In WR:SR (a Industrial City-Building Economy and Transport Simulator), there are different placing and overlay modes, like Snap-to-Grid (L4), Elevation (R4) and Underground view (R5), but I still need the first two buttons for zooming/radius(L1,R1), placing(R2)/removal(R2) confirm and the small buttons for placement elevation (for road/rails (and their bridges), pipes/cables) (X,B), mirroring (Y). (I forgot what A was for).
Basically every time you need more than two keys on the keyboard and the mouse simultanously, for the equivalent on the SD, the lower backbuttons come in handy.
I have a game that I was afraid of figuring out the controls yet; it is Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead. In this game I will likely need every available button twice or something.

I've only use them for emulation so far, to load & save states, also for fast forwarding on the psx and 3ds to take the grind out of rpgs

I'm playing through New Vegas right now. I have one of the back buttons assigned to quicksave. I also changed the default camera button to one of the back buttons, because I don't use it often enough to warrant it being on the bumpers. And I have just assigned one to toggle collision, because sometimes you need that when playing something built in the Gamebryo engine.

Not much. On one hand, I don’t want to get too used to something that isn’t available anywhere else (controllers with back buttons are usually just able to be used as double for the face ones) and on the other hand… my main use is, as I found out, better to be avoided on the Deck. American Truck Simulator. Right now I don’t remember what I set them to, but I certainly have some cruise control options there. But the problem is that, if I’m tired at all, using the Deck if I end up doing a delivery at night, I fall asleep lmao. Learned that I am in fact not capable of shrugging off drowsiness while driving, glad I found out with a game…

YMMV, I treat it on demand, but in most cases it's unused.
Civ: End turn
Driving games: Shift paddle
It's like the 4th mouse button. Sometimes you don't realize how much you might enjoy having it mapped.

In a visual novel, as another "advance text" button. In Crosscode, I have the "switch elements" arrow keys on the back buttons (you need to flip it on the fly a lot). In some games, I'll put the B-button action on R4 (particularly when it's a dodge-roll). If a game needs a random keyboard key out of the blue, I'll bind it on a paddle.
- Oh...Crosscode, first game mentioned so far that I actually play. Interesting. I'll have to try that out. Thanks!
  
  Heh, I actually started my replay on the Deck yesterday. Bind guard (b iirc) to a back button so you can do it while shooting without accidentally dashing all the time.

I use the back buttons with Eurotruck simulator/ATS, and for whatever extra functions i want with other games. Also use them with Firefox on the desktop for paging forward or backward.

Going back.

Almost nothing. I don't like how loud they are.

I've been playing a lot of Ziggurat 2 which is a roguelite fantasy-themed FPS with 4 categories of weapons. Instead of spamming Y to cycle through weapons, I can select my weapon directly with the back buttons.
- Ok that game actually looks pretty sick. Never heard of it before.

So far the only games I've ever played on Deck that require them would be Portal 2 alongside the Portal 2 mod Revolution (or something along those lines). I think jump and maybe 1 other function is tied to the back buttons. Otherwise, I haven't messed around with controls enough to find a use for them.

I use the back buttons as alternative shoulder buttons.
My right bumper button broke and I can’t find cheap replacement daughterboards, so bandaid it is. I can’t just solder in a new switch because the leads on the PCB broke. Seems to be a failure common mode for the bumpers if you ever hit the corner or drop it. The way the bumper is designed transfers the full force directly to the PCB instead of to the shell or any actual structural component.

R5 is always dodge, B/circle, mostly so I don't have to claw grip. Rest depend on the game, but usually some mix of face buttons so I can keep thumbs on the sticks while picking up items or changing weapons/items/spells etc, and sometimes with a "hold to use" added in for the same reason.

Nothing yet but this thread is giving me ideas :)
- Same

flappy bappy wise the bottom ones are the joystick clicks, and the top ones are the shoulder buttons (i find my shoulder button pressed to be on the runliable side while using triggers)

I use my deck for ffxiv a lot, so I bound dpad buttons to the back buttons. In any game, if you try to move and use something on the dpad at the same time, it's pretty rough. A claw grip is the typical way to handle this (Monster Hunter fans probably are familiar with this). This binding allows me to move and use dpad skills without hand cramping.

In games where I've have to hold a face button, yet use another I'll use the back buttons.
So I mirror ABXY in Hades II for example, and charge up my B spell while I dash away with A. Much more comfortable to charge with the back B and dash with the face A button.

Fast forward in emulators. Also, the menu toggle in Retro Arch.
In Dungeons of Dredmor, an old mouse and KB roguelike, the community made a good layout where every button is mapped to a keyboard key to open the various inventory and crafting windows, etc. With the track pad right there to act as a mouse, it's honestly just as good as a mouse and KB. Maybe even better.