How to Stream Steam Games to Your Android Device Using Steam Link
I’ve always been a fan of Valve’s Steam streaming because it means you don’t have to lug your desktop around your home or apartment whenever you feel like playing somewhere else. While your laptop may not support The Witcher 3 natively – or at least not very well – it’s much easier to let your gaming desktop do all the hard work and transfer its results to another device, like a three-year-old laptop you’re using. in a hammock in the backyard.
Valve recently released the Steam Link for Android (and, in short , iOS, until Apple realizes that it accidentally disabled “Greedy Mode” in the App Store this week). I’ve experimented with it, and Steam Link is a great way to play your favorite PC games on your Android smartphone or tablet – within reason. While you can certainly use the Steam Link to stream the epic Civilization VI match to your smartphone, you’ll drive yourself crazy trying to recruit tiny armies on your Galaxy S9 .
Setting up Steam Link is easy
To get started with Steam Link, download the app from Google Play . While it’s loading, launch Steam on your desktop or laptop. (I’m going to assume you’re already using it in-game, or this article probably doesn’t make much sense.) Open your Steam preferences and click on Home Streaming. Make sure home streaming is turned on.
If you have an Nvidia card on your system, I recommend clicking on Advanced Host Options and checking the box next to Use NVFBC Capture on NVIDIA GPU. You can read this description if you want to know a little more about what NVFBC does on a technical level.
In layman’s terms, NVFBC should deliver the best frame rates when streaming full screen games. However, this is also something you’ll want to check by enabling the performance indicator on your streaming device. In some cases, you may have a better experience if you are not using NVFBC, but it is worth trying as a starting point.
In the same window, click on the option that asks if you want to prioritize network traffic. It might do absolutely nothing on your particular home network setup, but it doesn’t hurt to try it either. (You’ll get a much better streaming experience if you take Valve’s advice and use your router’s 5GHz signal – ideally if both your router and device support wireless.)
While we are discussing this topic, make sure that the device you plan to stream to is within reasonable reach of your router. If you’re struggling to watch YouTube from your backyard comfort zone, you probably won’t have a great gaming experience either.
Getting Started with the Steam Link App
Make sure your Android device is connected to the same network as your desktop or laptop and open Steam Link on your Android device. (If you have some fun setup where your desktop is connected to your primary router and you are using the secondary router to extend your wireless network elsewhere, you will need to disable its routing feature for the connected Android device to see your desktop system.)
When you start scrolling through the app, Steam Link will ask you if you want to pair the controller with your device. You don’t have to, but I highly recommend doing it at some point for certain kinds of games – for example, if you want to try streaming Doom to your Android smartphone, you won’t want to try to shoot your way through that title.
You will need to run Steam on a computer that will do all the hard work. Steam Link recognizes this as part of the installation process. Once you click on your system in the app, you will have to go to your desktop or laptop and enter a special PIN to complete the connection process.
Once that’s done, Steam will do a quick network test to see how well your setup is suited for streaming. Even though he reported mediocre results to me (using a 2.4 GHz home network for reasons that are too difficult to explain right now), I had no problem streaming from my desktop system to my Android smartphone.
After that, you are (almost) ready to get started. Before clicking Start Game, click on the Steam Link Settings menu located in the lower left corner and then click Streaming.
Here you can do a simple tweak to your stream’s quality settings if you’re having trouble getting a consistent good frame rate when streaming. You can also improve the quality of your stream if your network can support more beautiful gameplay. Your choice! Before you step back, click on Advanced.
From this window, you can enable “Start Streaming From Desktop” to turn Steam Link into an application similar to Google Remote Desktop. I recommend leaving it disabled if you’re just interested in games. You can tweak the app’s bandwidth and resolution limits to try to improve streaming (if you don’t mind sacrificing a little quality), and you can also try enabling more efficient HEVC video encoding to see if that gives you a smoother, more beautiful experience. Performance overlay is like a little real-time test for your connection, but it can be tricky to use when playing on small screen devices (like your smartphone).
When you aresatisfied with your settings, return to the main Steam Link screen and click Start Game. The app will start connecting to your computer to initiate a stream, and you’ll receive a helpful interstitial ad reminding you how to interact with the service (and game) using your device’s touch controls. This is definitely worth reading and remembering, so don’t click past it.
When you enter Steam’s Big Picture Mode, you can tap the screen to access the library of games you previously downloaded to your system, all organized just like you would find these games on your laptop or desktop: the latest games such as games you have played, favorites and different categories of games.
Choose what you want to play, or read helpful guides and reviews if you want to familiarize yourself with the game before diving into it. Steam’s Big Picture mode does a pretty good job of its core functionality and presents it in a more user-friendly way. -digest for mobile streamers.
As far as which games offer the best experience on the Steam Link app, we recommend sticking with random titles that don’t require a lot of hard tapping if you’re using a smartphone. If you are playing from a tablet, you can go a little harder – Baldur’s Gate , for example. And if you’ve connected a controller to your Android device, you should be set to play almost anything, provided you don’t go blind trying to read the details on your device’s screen.