Author: sparta

Steam Deck running low on battery? That’s when using your phone to play Steam games becomes useful, and a free application makes it possible: Moonlight Game Streaming.

Moonlight is a free app that allows you to enjoy your PC games on your phone, along with various other compatible client devices. Since your experience with the app will mainly hinge on the quality of your internet connection, it’s wise to confirm that your network can effectively support remote play. We suggest connecting your internet through a high-quality Cat6 Ethernet cable to achieve optimal data transfer rates — and consequently, the least amount of latency — that you can manage. If your chosen hardware is capable, Moonlight even enables streaming in 4K at 120fps and HDR using an open-source tool known as Sunshine.

Initially, Moonlight relied on Nvidia GeForce Experience as a stream host, but GeForce has now been retired and replaced by the new Nvidia App, which does not support GameStream. GameStream was Nvidia’s exclusive protocol made for streaming high-performance PC games from a PC. It utilized Nvidia GPUs to facilitate this task and was built for the Nvidia Shield streaming device. Eventually, Nvidia discontinued this streaming technology, prompting the community to develop Sunshine as an alternate stream host. Meanwhile, Moonlight is the streaming software that runs on receiving client devices — such as smartphones — to present games streamed via Sunshine. With these resources, you can utilize specific applications intended for streaming, such as Steam’s Big Picture Mode.