Zwift Ride, Play and Click in Ride Cave: The Complete Guide

If you already ride with a Zwift Ride, a Zwift Play or a Zwift Click, you should not have to learn a second set of habits to use it in Ride Cave. So we made the buttons do what they do in Zwift. Your left shifters make it easier, your right shifters make it harder, and the buttons Zwift uses for its own game features are kept free for the same jobs here.

This guide covers what each button does today, how to connect each controller, and the quirks we found while testing on real hardware.

What the buttons do

By default the shifters follow Zwift's Sequential shift style: left is easier, right is harder. They only ever change gear. With ERG on, your trainer holds the target by itself and there is no gear to change, so the shifters rest, just like the gear buttons on screen. They also rest with Mechanical gearing, where there are no virtual gears. (Zwift turns them into workout intensity there; we kept one meaning per button.)

Shimano and SRAM shift styles

If your hands expect a road bike, pick a different shift style under Settings, Devices, Shift Controller, Shift style. Front ring shifts need two chainrings, so pick Road, Climbing or Flat/TT gearing under Settings, Trainer. The options use Zwift's own names. Shimano style A puts the rear on your right shifters and the front ring on your left, top button harder and bottom easier. Shimano style B swaps top and bottom. SRAM style keeps left easier and right harder, and pressing a left and a right shifter together changes the front ring. As in Zwift, the Shimano styles need two shift buttons per side, so they apply to the Zwift Ride; a Zwift Play or Click rides Sequential under them.

Ride Cave's virtual gears are one smooth ladder rather than separate rings and cogs, so a front shift jumps up or down the ladder by about a chainring's worth of gears, around 6 on a 50/34 road setup. On a 1x preset or the Zwift Cog there is no front ring, so the front ring buttons rest, just as they do on Zwift's 1x24.

Ride Cave has one control Zwift does not: the plus and minus beside your gears, which nudge your watt target in a workout or trainer difficulty on a route. You often want both at once, for example riding a structured workout with ERG off and virtual shifting on, shifting to hold the target while nudging the target itself. So Z and A always press that plus and minus, whatever mode you are in. We chose Z and A rather than Left and Right so the D pad stays free for steering later.

Why do some buttons do nothing yet? Zwift uses them for its menus, power ups, turns at junctions, the look back camera, steering and braking. Rather than borrow those buttons for something else and break your muscle memory later, we keep them for the same jobs and will switch them on as those features arrive in Ride Cave.

Feel it in your hands

The Zwift Ride and Zwift Play can vibrate, and Ride Cave uses that sparingly. You feel one buzz when a controller connects, when a hold registers (so you know you can let go of Y), and when you send a thumbs up. You feel a double buzz when you shift past your easiest or hardest gear, when your watt target or difficulty is already at its limit, or when you hold Y on the last interval. Normal shifts never buzz: you feel those through the pedals anyway. Turn it off under Settings, Devices, Shift Controller, Controller haptics. The Zwift Click cannot vibrate.

Connecting a Zwift Ride

A Zwift Ride is easy: its two controllers share one Bluetooth connection, so one connection gives you every button on both hands. Tap Shift Controller in the device tray, or Connect shifter under Settings, Devices, press a button to wake the controllers, and pick Zwift Ride from the list. The controller buzzes once when it is connected.

Connecting a Zwift Play

A Zwift Play is two separate Bluetooth devices, one per hand, and both are called Zwift Play. Since the left half shifts easier and the right half shifts harder and carries Z and A, you want both. Connect the first half the same way as above. It buzzes, which tells you which half is live. Then tap Connect other half on the Shift Controller card, or the Other Play half row in the device tray, press a button on the second half to wake it, and pick it. In Chrome and Edge on a computer, once you have pressed a button on the first half, the second list only shows the half you still need.

After that, both halves come back on their own: press a button on a sleeping half and Ride Cave reconnects it. Two exceptions: in the Ride Cave desktop app, reconnect the second half by hand from the device tray, and in the phone app the list shows both halves, so pick the one that did not buzz.

Connecting a Zwift Click

The original Zwift Click has two buttons: plus shifts harder and minus shifts easier. The Zwift Click 2 follows the same layout as the Ride: the minus button on the left pad shifts easier, the plus button on the right pad shifts harder, Z and A press the on screen minus and plus, and holding Y skips. It cannot vibrate.

Quirks worth knowing

Controllers sleep. After a minute or two without a press they go to sleep to save battery. Press any button and Ride Cave reconnects them, during a ride too.

One app at a time. Each controller only talks to one app. If it will not show up, close Zwift and Zwift Companion first, then press a button to wake it.

Zwift Ride V2 and Zwift Click 2 may need Zwift once a day. Zwift has reportedly locked newer controllers (the Click 2, and Zwift Ride firmware 1.3 and later, which ships on the Ride V2) to its own app: unless the controller has connected to Zwift in about the last day, it stops sending button presses about a minute after connecting to anything else. We have not seen this on our own Ride, which is on firmware 1.2.0, the last version for the original Ride. If your buttons stop after a minute, open Zwift, connect the controller there, close Zwift, and connect it to Ride Cave again. Ride Cave reads your Ride's firmware and warns you on the Shift Controller card when it is affected. If you paired your Ride before October 2026, connect it fresh once (Disconnect, then Connect shifter) so Ride Cave can read the firmware.

The paddles are nearly on or off. The big paddles report how far they are pushed, but in our testing even a half push reads close to full. That is worth knowing for when steering and braking arrive.

What is next

The buttons saved for Zwift jobs will come alive as their features land: steering with the paddles, braking, and navigating Ride Cave from your hoods. Questions or a controller we have not covered? Ask Atlas at support.ridecave.com.