"Enable Hotkeys" bug or just unexpected behavior?

I go to Settings -> Input -> Hotkeys and I map “Enable Hotkeys” to the “comma” key, then I map “Rewind (hold)” to the joystick left analog trigger. (which feature I mapped isn’t important: this is just one example)

Expected behavior: Rewind will only occur when both the comma key AND the joystick left analog trigger are pressed.

Actual behavior: Rewind occurs any time the left analog trigger is pressed, ignoring “Enable hotkeys.”

Q: Why would I be mapping to different devices in such a weird way like this? A: Because I’m on the Steam Deck. The keyboard and the joystick are physically the same device. The Steam Deck has more buttons than an XBox controller so you have to map some “extra” buttons to keys. only some controls still have to be mapped as joystick controls since they’re analog. Hence the phantom “joystick” and “keyboard” when it’s really all just a Steam Deck. It’s a mess.

Seems like “Enable Hotkeys” should be able to present any hotkeys from activating regardless of which device they’re mapped to, right? Is this a bug?

This becomes important on the Steam Deck where sometimes you will want the same control to both be an analog trigger AND a hotkey.

Because “Enable Hotkeys” doesn’t actually do anything with joypads, I’m having to map absolutely every single button and control I can to a keyboard key and forgo any analog inputs. I shouldn’t have to do this, because “Enable Hotkeys” should work with gamepads or joysticks or anything. It just doesn’t.

The more time I waste on this, the more I realize that this is absolutely killing me. I’m not even asking it as a question anymore: this really is a bug in RetroArch.

I ended up filing an issue on this: https://github.com/libretro/RetroArch/issues/15492

I just tested a 360 gamepad with the same configuration and it works fine.

Is this the problem? Hotkey works with retropad, that is the gamepad, not with keyboard.

Edit: I just tried it with the keyboard and it works the same, yes, it looks like a bug with Steam Deck.