Someone has opened a game for you to join.
No controller? Once you are in you can use on-screen buttons, or play on the keyboard — your keys stand in for a pad, inside this page. What reaches the host is only ever a gamepad: this connection cannot type or move a mouse, whatever is pressed here.
Controls
Click a button to make it latch: pressed once to hold it down, pressed again to let go. Marked buttons latch.
Strength
Microphone
Double-tap the middle of a stick to press it in (L3 or R3). It stays pressed while your thumb is down, so you can keep steering.
Sends this device's gyroscope to the game as a DualShock's. Turn the screen and the axes follow it, so tilting away is the same movement in portrait or landscape. Needs the controller set to DualShock 4 above — an Xbox pad has nowhere to put it. Stays on between visits; if this device asks permission again, your first tap anywhere is enough.
Controllers are
One setting for the whole machine, remembered between sessions, and it moves everybody's controller. Only an account trusted with the picture settings can change it.
Screen
You are playing as
Press anything on your controller — nothing here reaches the game. Click a button below to rebind just that one.
No sticks: a key is down or it is not, and a stick is a position. Games that need one need a controller.
A dead zone ignores a stick that will not sit still. Sensitivity above 100% reaches full tilt sooner.
Nothing is playing.
Carries on from where it was left.
Saves where you are and puts the television back to its menu. It carries on from here next time.
Starts the same game again from the beginning. Your save is left where it is.
Closes the game for a moment so everybody chooses a slot again, then carries on exactly where it is.
Repick player slots?
The game closes for a moment and the player picker comes up on the television. Everyone playing chooses their slot again, then the same game carries on from exactly where it is now.
Your place in the game is kept, and so is every save.
This device is remembered, so anything that affects other people will ask for your authenticator code.
Some things are kept for named accounts: starting a Steam game, removing somebody, or changing the link. If you have an account, this is where you use it.
Nobody is thrown out. It takes effect as people leave, and it never goes below the accounts that are here.
Anybody with the link and PIN.
Anybody who no longer qualifies is removed. You are always let back in, whatever this says.
Operate the console itself. Your keyboard and mouse go to the machine until you give them back.
You have chosen a mouse and keyboard. Press Take the keyboard and mouse above to send them to the machine; nothing is remapped, and your keys arrive as keys.
Only affects your own pointer. Applies to a mouse and to dragging on a touchscreen alike.
Raw sends the mouse exactly as the hardware reports it, with none of this machine’s acceleration — the console then applies its own, once, which is what a native client does and what a game aiming expects. Anything else means two acceleration curves composed, one on top of the other.
Raw counts are not screen pixels. They come in whatever units the mouse reports, so a high-DPI one will fly at normal speed. Expect to set the speed above to Slowest or Very slow and work up from there — judging raw at a speed meant for pixels is judging it at five or ten times the sensitivity you want. Safari has no raw mode and falls back on its own.
Removing somebody stops their link working too, so they cannot simply rejoin on it.
These are shares of what this box can already do. Making an account, adding a Steam game and resetting somebody's authenticator all happen at the console.
—
A preset fills in the dials below; nothing changes until you press Apply.
Makes a display in software at the size being sent, so nothing is scaled. Turning it off removes it, and any left over from before.
Holds the capture to the frame rate above, dropping anything that arrives too early. Off sends frames exactly as the screen hands them over.
Frames held back before drawing, when this page is drawing. More rides out a stutter; less is nearer to live.
Desktop Duplication asks the screen what changed, on its own clock. Windows Graphics Capture is handed a frame when the compositor makes one, which is usually the more even of the two for a game.
The screen is grabbed at uneven moments and labelled as though it were even, so motion speeds up and slows down even when every frame arrives. This labels each frame with the moment it was really taken, which is what a native streaming client does. It turns the two settings above off, because they put the labels back on a grid.
Replaces the screen with a moving ball generated at exact times. If that is smooth and the desktop is not, the problem is the capture; if it is not smooth either, the capture was never the problem. Turn it off to get the screen back.
Grabs the screen at twice the frame rate and sends the fresher of each pair, so a frame is never as stale. Costs a second capture per frame sent, and turns the setting above on by itself.
Frame rate is the biggest thing a controller feels: at 30 every press waits up to 33ms for the next frame, at 60 half that.
There is no congestion control here, so a figure the link cannot carry does not soften the picture — it queues packets, which is delay. If it stutters, come down rather than up.
How long your browser holds the picture before drawing it, to absorb packets that arrive late. Straight delay: on a cable 40–60 is plenty, on mobile data 100 or more stops it juddering.
How much encoded video may pile up for a guest whose link is struggling before frames are dropped instead.
Small stops the encoder smoothing bursts by holding frames back, which is exactly what adds delay.
Applying rebuilds the stream: everybody watching loses about a second of picture.