If you have been wanting to play some of your favourite PC games on your phone instead of your PC, you are not the only one. Some people do not like to be tied to their desk when they are playing games and luckily, you can stream games directly to your phone without any additional investment. This guide does not refer to game streaming over 5G/4G, since that often relies on network conditions and quality. However, if you have a gaming PC/Laptop and a relatively recent smartphone, you can stream games locally on your phone for free.
In order to start playing PC games on your smartphone, you will first have to install either Moonlight (NVIDIA GPUs), Steam Link or Parsec. If the majority of your library is on Steam, you will be required to install the Steam Link app on your smartphone. Steam Link is perhaps the smoothest experience you will have for most games, but you can also give Moonlight or AMD link a chance. If you want to make the streaming work, your phone has to be on the same network as your PC/Gaming laptop.
When you will launch the Steam Link app on your phone, it scans your network for computers that are using Steam. Choose your computer and enter the 4-digit code that appears either on your phone in Steam on your PC. The steam link app will run a short test to see your network quality, and if it is fine, you are ready to go. You can even choose the setting of the video quality between “Fast” or “Beautiful” based on what your bandwidth is.
Moonlight also works in a very similar way. However, it is exclusive only to NVIDIA graphic cards users and requires you to install the Nvidia GeForce Experience on your PC. Then, you will need to open the app on your PC and navigate to settings. Following this, toggle the GameStream switch in the Shield Tab menu.
The next step will need you to install Moonlight on your smartphone. After opening the app, it will show you a list of PCs that have GameStream enabled. Identify and choose your PC. However, instead of this, you can also tap on “Add Host” and enter your PC’s IP address if you are unsure about the previous process. Much like Steam Link, Moonlight will send you a PIN which you will need to enter in the pop-up window that will appear on your PC automatically. Once the PIN has been entered by you, you can start to play games on your smartphone.
