r/Steam_Link

Shortly after spending some £400 on a large Samsung TV a couple of years ago - when we moved house - I was dismayed to find that Samsung panned their PC to TV streaming feature entirely. Can’t even remember what it was called, now I try to think back to it.

Anyway, I thought to myself I’d quite like a little RaspberryPi on the LAN to run an internal Jellyfin - that worked a treat. Exercise programmes, home & family photos and eventually a SAN, etc. I then retroactively installed RetroPie inside that, which allowed me to relive some precious childhood moments (I’m looking at you, Hylian Loach…)

Then I found out about SteamLink. As an avid PC gamer and Steam-account-haver, this program is just perfect. I’ve got almost all my home components LAN cabled because WiFi and I can cut, run and fill chases myself.

I digress. If anyone reading this had anything to do with the development of SteamLink, I want to say a huge THANK YOU!!!

It’s freaking awesome. Cheers.

It might be that Steam on your host is unable to hook the game because it's not running as administrator.

Warning: the following steps will reduce the security of your PC in a nonzero way. Do not follow these steps if you don’t understand why you’re doing them and what they’re doing. You can use Moonlight instead (emphasis on “can”).

Warning: Do not follow these steps if lowering the security of your computer is not a safe thing to do.

Use Properties>Compatibility tab>Administrator checkbox to fix that. Personally I pressed start, typed steam, and set the compatibility>administrator on that and it worked after terminating steam, rockstar, and la noire and launching again.

Note: Rockstar seems to lie and give up immediately when:

1. Steam is running as administrator
2. You try to launch LA Noire through Steam's "Play L.A. Noire" non-steam game entry. (It's probably seeing that the steam process is administrator and immediately giving up)

^ To solve the above, you should connect to the host directly instead of trying to make it work cleanly with a pretty LA Noire game library entry (like I did for far too long)

1. On the client: Steam > Settings > Remote Play > Locate your host and click the Connect button on it (right side of the screen)
2. Launch the game normally.
3. If you still lose access on windows that are running as administrator, then steam* is still not administrator at this moment (*the steam process on the host (not the client))

If you need to terminate everything with a script (at your own risk), here's the part of the script that did that for me. I'm not comfortable releasing a executable script so you will need to do the basic steps to make this executable, and you will do so strictly at your own risk. Remember it forcibly instantly closes processes that match the search terms. Use the following code strictly at your own risk. Also don't use bat because batch files cannot accept ps1 commands. It took me way too long to figure that one out.

Stop-Process -Name steam,steamwebhelper -Force -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue Stop-Process -Name launcher,socialclubhelper,lanlauncher,lanoire,rockstarservice -Force -ErrorAction

Hi guys, new to Steam link here.

I am trying to stream games from my PC to my LG TV (LG C1 OLED65C16LA) . I can't use Steam Link on the LG OS, so I am using a Xiaomi Mi Box S (2018) MDZ-22-AB .

I have a high end desktop (Ryzen 7 7800X3D, PC RTX 4090 Ti Super, 32 RAM) , so most of the games run smoothly on it.

My apartment is small, no Ehternet cables, everything wireless. The PC is very close to the router, and the TV/Xiaomi box are closer to it as well (~10m max, no walls in between), but passing an HDMI cable from the PC to the TV is not doable honestly.

Right now I am testing it by running Dead Space, and there is a short delay when playing with the joystick which is a bit annoying. I am aware that there is a delay involved, but I wonder if that can be improved somehow given my setup.

Could it be that the Xiaomi Mi Box S is a bottle neck and I have to use another more powerful device to receive+decode? Are there any settings needed on the Steam link app to improve this? Any tips that can help me on this?

I appreciate any help. Thank you.

https://preview.redd.it/tv889toxdjjh1.jpg?width=1536&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=d9f823def7a932eb298abd9e80db149f51134e4a

Hello Steam fans, I have a question. Do you add third-party games to your Steam Account?

Been using the standalone steam link app for windows awhile and have noticed they have really increased pace on its changes lately

1.3.20 in January, 1.3.22 and 1.3.24 in February, 1.3.28/29/30 in May, 1.3.31 in June, 1.3.32 in July, and then 1.3.33.

and what has really grabbed my eye is the new cli and configurations that got added in may

exact streaming bitrate, exact framerate , exact resolution ,windowed mode ,persistent window position/size, automatic scaling to the client window and they launch options for

--autoconnect

--fullscreen

--windowed

--size WxH

all of this is making me really wonder if steam is heading towards some sort of cloud play launch in the near future, as it feels like alot of this would be focused towards a thin client device operating as console.

anyone got other theories

Edit 1:
https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/features/cloudgaming

dug a bit and found this, and the was looking at the tag line from the steam frame marketing "Steam Frame is a streaming-first, wireless VR headset" im getting excited if a frame is gonna be fully integrated into geforce now or a steam provided infra.

Is streaming a game from the Steam desktop app the same as using Steam Link?

I’ve been trying to game on a mini PC at my living room TV while streaming from my gaming PC in my loft. The streams always have input lag it drives me nuts.

Is Steam link better or is it just the same thing as streaming your game? Is there really any difference between clicking stream in the Steam client and Steam link?

I’m pretty new to the Steam Deck bubble. I tried to use remote play and switched shortly after to the Steam link app. Because of two reasons:

1. When I dock my Steam Deck to the TV, Steam Link will stream in the correct resolution. While remote play just uses the internal Steam Deck Resolution and I can’t find any way to change that

2. With Steam Link I can wake and unlock my PC. With remote play it’s not possible

So why is a standalone app that uses remote play as technology behind the scenes so much better in comparison to the integrated function on the Steam Deck?

Am I just missing something or does anybody experience the same?

I don’t want to use Moonlight, because I’m using different controllers. Steam Link/Remote Play supports all of them, while moonlight just decides between Xbox or DS4 controller

Hello, is anyone able to help please?

Me and my girlfriend are trying to play Split fiction together using steam remote play. Im hosting in desktop and she is playing on the laptop.

She is using ps5 controller. Her camera keeps looking to the ceiling when the controller is perfectly fine, there is no controller drift.

I have looked at in game settings and forced update on steam, using default reccomened controller layout for the game and yet this is still happening.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

So I've recently switched over from Moonlight to Steam Link playing my PC on my living room TV through my docked Steam Deck. I'd heard people say it had massively improved and they were right - it almost felt like playing natively. I have a host PC with a 5080 hard wired and my dock for the Steam Deck is also hard wired.

Then we had some friends stay for the week so I didn't really get a chance to play. Today, I fancy a bit of KCD2 and it's way cooler during this heatwave in my living room than in my study, so I boot up my Steam Deck and see there's an update - I download it then try to stream. Black screen, but sound and inputs are working. I restart everything (host PC, Steam Deck and router) still black screen. I fiddle with all the settings suggested in various forum posts, still black screen. Okay, my fault for updating I guess. I switch from the Beta channel back to Stable and re-update. Try to start up a stream and it works! I get a near flawless experience for about an hour.

Then halfway through some questing, my Steam Deck shits the bed. Just goes completely black screen without warning and shits down. I figure my dock must not have been charging it for some reason, so I just plug it in with the regular cable and it starts up - 98% battery. Okay, weird but not unusual (I love my Steam Deck, but it's by far the most temperamental piece of hardware I've ever owned). I try and start up the stream again and it's choppy as hell. I disconnect and retry - still choppy. I restart everything AGAIN, STILL CHOPPY. NOTHING IN MY SET-UP HAS CHANGED. In the end I gave up and finished the quest sweating in my study.

What could the issue be?? Is there anything else I could've tried? I don't really wanna switch back to Moonlight because I found the performance to be far less consistent on a game by game basis, but I'm sick of not knowing whether Steam Link is going to work AT ALL whenever I try to use it.

When I turn my pc on with steam link via WoL and it boots, logs into Steam and starts streaming to Link, I get bad streaming delay 70-80ms, "Slow network" in statistics overlay, and it states that the connection is through SDR(over the internet) instead of locally(direct), but when I stop the streaming and reconnect to pc, it works locally as it should, until I shutdown the pc and WoL again. Both PC and Steam link have wired connection to the same router. When I disconnect the router from the Internet, PC and Link connect locally after WoL every time. Also, like 1 in 6 times it actually connects locally after WoL with the internet present. How do I make them connect directly all the time when they are in the same local network?
Edit: I just figured that it's not just Wol, but simply trying to start streaming the moment the Steam starts up, even if I turned the PC on with a button - it streams over the internet. But if i just connect 5-10 seconds later after Pc shows up on Link as Ready, it streams locally.
What I already did to troubleshoot (with no effect) is:
Reinstall steam on pc
Re-paired PC and Link after doing most of the changes
Switched network preset to Private
Reset steam link to factory, updated to latest firmware
Reset network settings in WIndows 11
Reinstall Ethernet adapter drivers, tried different versions
Disabled all energy saving and bandwidth limiting features in Ethernet properties in device manager
Changed some router settings, disabed as much as I could regarding LAN, filtering , allowing everything
Created another Windows local user to log into Steam and stream there

Hello!
I bought a Steam Link hardware device on local market because my TV doesn’t have the Steam Link app.
Previously, I used to stream to it with the Apollo + Moonlight setup, but I kept experiencing stutters, which really bothered me.
With the Steam Link, I barely notice any stuttering - it’s connected via an original HDMI cable, and in the settings, I set the maximum bitrate to 100 Mbps (though through the Steam interface; the link itself shows only up to 30 Mbps).
At this setting, the picture quality is very poor, and it’s not about the 1080p resolution. If there’s fog in the game, the image becomes heavily pixelated, and colors are distorted - for example, yellow appears dirtier.
When I stream from Apollo to Moonlight on my TV, the picture looks great, and when I stream to the Steam Deck at 40 Mbps, the picture also looks excellent. And the Steam Deck uses Wi-Fi, while the Steam Link hardware connected via cable.
What could be the issue? My guess is that the Steam Link hardware doesn’t support fine-quality codecs. For instance, it won’t let me enable the NVENC codec - the toggle is grayed out, whereas on the Steam Deck, it works fine. I think that might be the problem.
I couldn’t find much info about the Steam Link hardware.
What do you think?

I haven’t been able to play most pc or console games since 2022 due to my disabilities so I was really excited when I recently learned about steam link, especially since Fields on Mistra just came out! But I tried a test run with Littlewood and it was pretty laggy :( Unfortunately I’m not really computer savvy so I don’t know what any of the settings mean lol

My laptop is an old Macbook Pro from 2017 and it streams to my iPhone 17! If anyone can help the streaming run smoother with what I got I’d be eternally grateful 😭

Hello, as the title says, I have a problem to play some games on TV because when I launch and load the game it doesn't recognize the mouse and keyboard I use on TV. Anyone know how I can set this up?

Let me preface this by saying that I know some are going to tell me to use Moonlight for streaming. Yes, it is better. I've used it for numerous years. I can't use it in my case because I want native support for the Steam Controller and it's extra buttons and functions.

Without going into the full details of all the things I tried and what led to me discovering this, here's what's going on:

PROBLEM:

When streaming a game using Steam Streaming in docked mode, pressing the Steam button / guide button to bring up the steam Overlay doesn't bring it up. You can hear it come up, you can hear your navigation, but it doesn't pop up. If you use the steam button + joystick to move the mouse when you activate the overlay, you can see and navigate it until you let go and try to navigate it normally. Same for onscreen keyboard.

It works just fine in handheld mode. It also worked fine 2 days ago. The only thing I did was bring it out of Beta mode (had it on for troubleshooting a controller issue weeks ago), but if I put it back into beta mode then games won't stream at all. The game will load up on the host and audio gets passed through but you get a black screen.

THINGS IVE TRIED:

-Various settings changes, resolutions, and rebooting both several times

-Turning on hardware decoding sorta lets it work 25% of the time, but it's finicky still, lags like crazy, and it causes issues with the streamed game

-Different controllers, thinking maybe the steam controller was passing through something weird

-Uninstalling Decky-Loader

-Testing steam and non steam games

-Testing the guide in docked mode on games installed on the deck (it works just fine)

So basically, if it's streamed and docked, the steam menu doesn't function properly. Handheld works absolutely fine. Aside from the guide, the stream runs just fine with low latency.

Any help or advice is appreciated. I'm at my wits end with it, especially since it worked just fine two days ago.