Enjoy Everyone. Would love to see lots of these on different machines. Im still finishing up the version with a controller puck holder. It kind of works now but I'm gonna add a brace to hold the bottom of the controller so its doesn't fall off so easily.
Built a universal remote for my gaming PC with Claude — started as a tool for myself
**Body:**
**TL;DR (my words):** Huge amount of work I’ve dumped into using Claude to vibe code my app but the results speak for themselves. Started as a tool I made for myself and decided to market it. Not a fan of subscriptions so it’s a free 7 day trial then a cheap lifetime unlock. Not trying to get rich, just hopefully it’ll offset my Claude subscription a bit.
*(Rest is Claude cleaning up my notes — figured I’d say so up front.)*
Couchside is an iOS app that turns your phone into a remote for a living room gaming PC. Launch Steam games, trackpad + keyboard, power controls, and HDMI-CEC so you can switch TV inputs without hunting down three remotes. Works with SteamOS, Bazzite, Steam Deck, Windows, plus LG webOS, Samsung, and Google TV.
SwiftUI on the phone, Python agent on the PC. LAN-only — no cloud relay, no accounts, no telemetry. Agent is open source so you can read what’s running on your machine.
Claude wrote a lot of the code. I owned the architecture and every integration decision, and burned way more time on pairing edge cases and CEC vendor quirks than I want to admit.
couchside.tv — happy to answer questions about the build.
Front Mount Controller Charging Plate Cover is now available free to print on Makerworld.
I’m at the point in my life where I bought this just to measure and make things for it, doubt it will get much actual gaming use by myself.
Every time something wedged on my living room box the routine was the same: game's frozen or the screen's black, and now I'm fishing a keyboard out from behind the TV stand or grabbing my laptop to SSH in and restart things. Every single time. I just wanted a button on my phone that did that one thing.
So I built the button. Then it kept growing. After many revisions and tons of work it's a whole companion app for basically any Steam machine, and I reach for it before I ever think about getting up.
It's called Couchside. It pairs with a tiny service on the box (SteamOS, Bazzite, Steam Deck, anything systemd). It doesn't mirror the TV, it reads the box directly over the LAN, so vitals, logs, and the "restart display session" button all work even when the screen's a black void. That's exactly when you want it, and that's the case it was built for.
It also turns your phone into a real controller for Big Picture, hands a desktop session off to the TV and back, and manages more than one machine if you've got them.
The thing I refused to budge on: LAN-only, no cloud, no account, no analytics. Your box never phones home, and there's no server of mine in the middle to go down or get breached.
On the iOS App Store and Google Play. Site's couchside.tv with real footage and all the technical detail if you want it (and yes, my box lives behind the TV stand, not the couch, despite the name lol).
Happy to answer anything, especially curious what other self-hosted / Deck / HTPC people think of the LAN-only approach.Couchside
I have a small Linux PC under my TV with no keyboard on it. When a session hangs or the display goes black, my only recovery option was crawling behind the couch with a wireless keyboard and typing blind.
Couchside turns my iPhone into a console for that machine:
• Status dashboard: running processes, session state, GPU load, battery, and a live view of what’s on the display
• Recovery actions: restart the session, switch session types, launch a program, reboot or shut down cleanly
• Input: on-screen trackpad, keyboard, and a virtual input device over LAN, with handoff when a physical peripheral connects
Everything is local. The phone pairs with a small open-source agent on the PC over your own network using a token — no cloud, no account, no analytics. The agent is one dependency-free Python file, MIT licensed, runs on any Linux with systemd. Windows agent available too.
Solo project. Happy to answer anything, and I’d genuinely like the harsh feedback. Links in a comment.
Hey r/Bazzite,
Disclosure up front: I'm the developer, and it's a paid app (one-time unlock after a 7-day trial). I'll lay out the pricing and the license split plainly below — I'd rather you know exactly what it is before deciding whether to bother.
I run Bazzite on my living-room box (Game Mode, docked, into the TV) and got tired of hunting for a controller or a keyboard just to poke around. So I built a thing for myself, and it's become the main way I drive the box from the couch. It all runs on your LAN only — no cloud, no account, no analytics — and the agent installs a scoped, visudo-validated sudoers allowlist (exactly `systemctl restart sddm`, `reboot`, `poweroff`, `suspend`, and a journal reader) instead of blanket root. That's the part I'd want to know as a tester, so it's up top.
It's called Couchside. Your phone pairs by QR scan with a small Python agent on the box and becomes the remote, the navigator, and the game launcher.
## What it does
- Phone-as-gamepad: a wired Xbox 360 pad over `/dev/uinput` (dual sticks, D-pad, ABXY, bumpers, analog triggers, haptics) — Steam recognizes it as a wired 360. Four input modes you swap with one tap: Gamepad, Swipe (Apple-TV-style surface for Kodi/Big Picture), Trackpad (relative mouse for desktop sessions), and Remote (D-pad, media/volume keys, Steam/QAM shortcuts).
- Launch Steam games from a cover-art grid, plus custom launchers (label + command) for whatever else you run.
- On-screen keyboard bar, so you can type into the box without digging out a keyboard.
- OS volume/mute, suspend + Wake-on-LAN, and optional TV power/volume over HDMI-CEC or RS-232 if your box has it.
- The rescue angle, which is honestly why it stuck for me: when gamescope wedges to a black screen, the phone still shows live vitals + journald logs and can restart the display session — no SSH, no hard reboot. Same panel does Desktop/Game Mode toggle, reboot, power off (each confirmed, twice if destructive).
There's more under the hood (MPRIS media transport, an aerial screensaver on gamescope boxes, multi-box switching), but that's the core of what I actually use.
## Install
The agent is a single dependency-free Python 3 file — works on immutable/ostree, no pip. There's a one-line installer, a Decky Loader plugin for one-tap install/pair from Game Mode, and a Windows agent too (a port with a smaller feature surface, not 1:1 with Linux). Rather than paste shell one-liners into a Reddit post, the commands and the full install matrix live in the repo: https://github.com/emerytech/couchside · site: https://couchside.tv
## Pricing and license
- The agent, installer, protocol, and Decky plugin are MIT — genuinely open source; build your own client against it if you want.
- The phone app is source-available (not open source), under PolyForm Noncommercial 1.0.0: you can read it, audit it, modify it, and build it to your own phone for personal use — just no selling or redistribution. Short version: open-source agent, source-available app.
- Free download with a 7-day trial (no account, no card), then a one-time unlock — no subscription. Self-building the app for personal use is treated as unlocked by design.
Android is live on Google Play; iOS is still in App Store review.(Testflight Link on Website though)
## Testers
The 7-day trial is enough to actually put it through its paces, so you don't need anything from me to try it. If you test it for real and want to keep using it past the trial, I'm happy to send a free unlock code — just comment here (keeping it in-thread so it stays public), and I'll sort you out. Android codes I can send now; iOS codes go out the moment it clears review. Or just self-build the app, which is unlocked anyway.
## What I'm asking
Is this useful for how *you* use your box, or am I solving a problem only I have?
What would you want it to do that it doesn't?
What breaks on your setup — weird distro, no CEC, gamescope quirks, pairing issues, whatever you hit.
A couple of honest caveats: it's LAN-only by design (phone + box on the same network, and don't port-forward `8787` — it's plain HTTP; I'm deliberately not building remote-access-over-the-internet). Wake-on-LAN wake-from-sleep needs wired Ethernet on the box. The aerial screensaver needs a recent-enough agent (2.8.4+) on a gamescope box.
Thanks for reading — I'll be in the comments.
Long-time G604 user here—first time posting in this sub.
I’ve got three of these in rotation: one at my work office, one in my workshop, and one that lives in my backpack. They’ve been great mice overall.
I originally set out to design a wrist-rest sled, but quickly realized I wouldn’t actually use the rest—even when it was sitting on my desk. So I pivoted and used a mix of existing models as a starting point to design a more optimized, minimalist sled-style base instead.
The result turned out really well. It’s perfectly form-fitted and holds the mouse securely with a snug pressure fit—no tape or glue needed (though you can add some if you want extra hold). As a bonus, it also helps protect the rubber grips by keeping them off the desk surface.
I added some inexpensive mouse skate dots to the front and back of the sled, which helps it glide smoothly on my desk mat.
I’ve uploaded the file to my MakerWorld page if anyone with a 3D printer wants to try it out:
https://makerworld.com/en/models/2630184-quick-dirty-logitech-g604-ergonomic-sled#profileId-2904211
