How To Stream Steam Games To Your Android Device With Steam Link

How To Stream Steam Games To Your Android Device With Steam Link

I’ve always been a fan of Valve’s Steam streaming, because it means you don’t have to lug your desktop PC around your house or apartment whenever you feel like gaming somewhere else. Though your laptop might not be able to run The Witcher 3 natively – or at least, not very well – it’s a lot easier to let your gaming desktop do all the heavy lifting and stream its output to another device, such as the three-year-old laptop you’re using from your backyard hammock.

Valve recently released Steam Link for Android (and, briefly, for iOS, until Apple realised it accidentally turned off the App Store’s “Greedy Mode” that week). I’ve been playing around with it, and Steam Link is a great way to play your favourite PC games on an Android smartphone or tablet – within reason. While you can certainly use Steam Link to stream an epic Civilization 6 match to your smartphone, you’re going to drive yourself crazy trying to tap tiny armies on your Galaxy S9.

Setting up Steam Link is simple

To get started with Steam Link, grab the app from Google Play. While it downloads, launch Steam on your desktop or laptop PC. (I’m going to assume you’re already using it to game, or this article probably makes little to no sense.) Pull up Steam’s preferences and click on in-home streaming. Make sure that in-home streaming is enabled.

How To Stream Steam Games To Your Android Device With Steam Link
You’re beautiful. You’re beautiful. You’re beautiful if your network has the bandwidth to support high-quality streaming, it’s true. (Screenshot: David Murphy)

You’re beautiful. You’re beautiful. You’re beautiful if your network has the bandwidth to support high-quality streaming, it’s true. Screenshot: David Murphy

How To Stream Steam Games To Your Android Device With Steam Link
Screenshot: David Murphy

If your system has an Nvidia card, I recommend clicking on Advanced Host Options and checking “Use NVFBC capture on NVIDIA GPU”. You can read this description if you want to learn a little bit more about what NVFBC does on a technical level.

In layman’s terms, NVFBC should give you the best frame rates when you’re streaming full-screen games. That said, this is also something you’ll want to check by enabling the performance indicator on your streamed-to device. In some cases, you might have a better experience if you aren’t using NVFBC, but it’s worth trying out as a starting point.

In the same window, click on the option that asks if you want to prioritise network traffic. This might do absolutely nothing in your particular home networking setup, but it also doesn’t hurt to try. (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-ac.)

While we’re on the topic, make sure the device you’re planning to stream to is located 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 PC and pull up Steam Link on your Android device. (If you have some funky setup where your desktop PC is connected to your primary router, and you’re using a secondary router to extend your wireless network elsewhere, you’re going to need to disable its routing functionality for a connected Android device to see your desktop system.)

As you start tapping your way through the app, Steam Link will ask you if you want to pair a controller with your device. You don’t have to, but I highly recommend doing so at some point for certain kinds of games – if you want to try streaming Doom to your Android smartphone, for example, you aren’t going to want to try to tap-shoot your way through that title.

You’ll need to have Steam running on the computer that will be doing all the heavy lifting. Steam Link will recognise it as part of the setup process. After you tap on your system within the app, you’ll have to head on over to your desktop or laptop and type in a special PIN number to complete the connection process.

How To Stream Steam Games To Your Android Device With Steam Link
Screenshot: David Murphy

Screenshot: David Murphy

Once that’s done, Steam will run a quick network test to see how well your setup is equipped for streaming. Even though it reported so-so results for me (using my house’s 2.4GHz network for reasons that are too complicated to explain right now), I didn’t have any issues streaming from my desktop system to an Android smartphone.

After that, you’re (almost) ready to get started. Before you tap on Start Playing, tap on Steam Link’s Settings menu, found in the lower-left corner, and then tap on Streaming.

How To Stream Steam Games To Your Android Device With Steam Link
Screenshot: David Murphy

Screenshot: David Murphy

Here, you can make a simple adjustment to your stream’s quality settings if you’re having trouble getting a consistent, good frame rate when streaming. You can also kick up the quality of your stream higher if your network can support prettier gameplay. Your choice! Before you back out, tap on Advanced.

How To Stream Steam Games To Your Android Device With Steam Link
Screenshot: David Murphy

Screenshot: David Murphy

In this window, you can enable “Start Streaming Desktop” to turn Steam Link into a Google Remote Desktop-like app. I recommend leaving it disabled if you’re just interested in gaming. You can adjust the app’s bandwidth and resolution limits to try and make your streaming experience better (if you don’t mind sacrificing a little quality), and you can also try turning on the more efficient HEVC video encoding to see if that gives you a smoother, better-looking experience.

The Performance Overlay is like a little real-time benchmark for your connection, but it can be tough to use when playing a game on on small-screen devices (like your smartphone).

How To Stream Steam Games To Your Android Device With Steam Link
Screenshot: David Murphy

Screenshot: David Murphy

When you’re satisfied with your settings, tap back to Steam Link’s primary screen and tap on Start Playing. The app will start connecting to your computer to initiate the stream and you’ll receive a useful interstitial that reminds you how to interact with the service (and game) using your device’s Touch Controls. This is absolutely worth reading and memorising, so don’t tap past it.

How To Stream Steam Games To Your Android Device With Steam Link
Screenshot: David Murphy

Screenshot: David Murphy

When you reach Steam’s Big Picture Mode, you’ll be able to tap around to access the library of games you’ve previously downloaded on your system, all organised the same way you’d find these titles on your laptop or desktop: Recent games you’ve played, favourites you love, and different categories of games you can browse, for example.

How To Stream Steam Games To Your Android Device With Steam Link
Screenshot: David Murphy

Screenshot: David Murphy

Pick what you want to play or go read some handy guides and reviews if you want to familiarise yourself with a game before you dive on in. Steam’s Big Picture Mode does a pretty good job taking its core functionality and presenting it in an easier-to-digest way for mobile streamers.

How To Stream Steam Games To Your Android Device With Steam Link
Screenshot: David Murphy

Screenshot: David Murphy

As for which games offer the best experience on the Steam Link app, we recommend sticking to casual titles that don’t require a lot of precise tapping if you’re on a smartphone. If you’re gaming from a tablet, you might be able to go a little more complex – such as Baldur’s Gate, for example. And if you’ve paired a controller to your Android device, you should be set to play almost anything, assuming you aren’t going blind trying to read details on your device’s screen.


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