By If you are anything like me, your Steam Deck has essentially become an extension of your hands. It is an incredible piece of hardware, but there is always that lingering desire to push it just a little bit further. For a while, one of my absolute favorite use cases was streaming PlayStation 5 games directly to my Deck. But thankfully, the open-source community never sleeps. If you have been looking for a way to remote play or stream PlayStation games from the cloud on your Steam Deck, I have some fantastic news. We finally have a brilliant alternative, and it goes by the name of Pylux .
Essentially, Pylux is the spiritual successor to the PSStream app we lost, rebuilt from the ground up as an open-source project. I have spent a good amount of time tinkering with it, testing the limits, and figuring out the quirks so you don’t have to. Here is my honest breakdown of how it performs, the best settings to use, and how to get it running on your own Steam Deck.
Getting Pylux on Your Steam Deck
Depending on when you are reading this, getting Pylux installed might be as simple as a few screen taps, or it might require a tiny bit of desktop mode tinkering.
Ideally, you will be able to find Pylux directly in the Discover store. Just boot your Steam Deck into Desktop Mode, open the Discover store, and search for “Pylux” (P-Y-L-U-X). If you see it there, just hit install, and you are golden. You can skip the command-line stuff completely.
However, when I first started testing this alongside the developer, it was still awaiting official approval on the Discover store. If you find yourself in the same boat, don’t panic. It is still incredibly easy to install. You just need to head over to the Forward Technologies GitHub page for Pylux and copy the provided install curl command.
From there, open the Konsole app on your Steam Deck, paste that curl command in, bring up your virtual keyboard, and hit Enter. You don’t even need the “run” command. Just let it go through the motions until it says “Installing” and eventually finishes. Once that is done, you can close everything out and jump back into Gaming Mode. The script handles all the heavy lifting, including adding the artwork and integrating it directly into your Steam library.
The Setup and Login Dance
When you are back in Gaming Mode, Pylux might not pop up on your home screen immediately. I had to go into my full game library and search for it manually. But sure enough, it was there, complete with all the proper artwork looking incredibly slick.
Booting it up requires no special compatibility layers—just hit Play. Now comes the login process, which has a specific quirk you need to watch out for.
When you get to the login screen, make absolutely sure that the “Check Status” button is visible to you under the Code section. If you don’t see it, you won’t be able to finish the setup. Grab your smartphone, scan the QR code displayed on your Steam Deck’s screen, and follow the prompts to log into the PlayStation Network. Once you are logged in on your phone, you will be given a token. Paste that token back into the designated area on your Steam Deck and click that crucial “Check Status” button.
If the tech gods are smiling upon you, it will log you in, granting you full access to your PlayStation library.
Cloud Streaming: Performance and Best Settings
Let’s talk about cloud streaming first. Keep in mind, you will need an active PlayStation Plus Premium subscription to stream games directly from the cloud.
Out of the box, the performance is decent, but I highly recommend making a few tweaks to get the smoothest experience possible. After a lot of trial and error, here are the settings that worked best for me:
* Hardware Decoder: Set this to VAAPI. This forces the Steam Deck to use its hardware for decoding, which is much more efficient.
* Windows Type: Full Screen.
* Codec: Change this to H264. I found this provided a noticeably smoother, more consistent frame rate compared to the default.
* Resolution: Drop the cloud game library and catalog resolution down to 720p. It looks perfectly sharp on the Steam Deck’s screen and saves a ton of bandwidth.
I decided to take these settings for a spin with God of War Ragnarök. For the most part, it looked beautiful and played well, but I did encounter a known bug that you should be aware of.
Right now, the app struggles to respect bandwidth limits. Even though I manually capped my stream at 10 megabits per second, Pylux decided it wanted to eat up as much bandwidth as it possibly could. Because it was pushing so hard, I experienced some dropped packets here and there, resulting in occasional stutters.
The developer is already looking into this, and because it is an open-source project on GitHub, I am very confident this will be patched soon. If you run into any weird bugs yourself, I highly encourage you to report them on the GitHub page so the community can squash them.
Local Remote Play: Smooth as Butter
If you prefer to stream games directly from your own PS5 console over your local network, Pylux handles Remote Play brilliantly.
When setting this up, I have one major piece of advice: do not use the automatic registration feature. Every time I tried it, the app crashed on me. Instead, select “No” and opt for the manual setup.
To do this, you will need to grab your PS5 controller and head to your console. Go to Settings > System > Remote Play, and ensure “Enable Remote Play” is toggled on. Then, click “Pair Device.” Your PS5 will give you an 8-digit PIN.
Take that PIN, jump back to your Steam Deck, and enter it into the Remote Play PIN section in Pylux . Make sure you are using the exact same PSN account on both devices. Hit “Register Console,” and you are good to go. If you get an error during this step, just restart your PlayStation and try again—that usually clears up any handshake issues.
Once connected, the local remote play experience is phenomenal. It is incredibly smooth, and unlike cloud streaming, you can comfortably push the resolution up to 1080p without breaking a sweat, assuming your local Wi-Fi router is up to the task.
Controls and Final Thoughts
One of the best surprises about Pylux is the control scheme. By default, it uses mappings derived from Chiaki4Deck, complete with the microphone addition. This means you have full access to all the PlayStation-specific buttons, and the Steam Deck’s trackpads are intelligently mapped to mimic the DualSense touchpad. It feels incredibly natural, though you can always dive into the Steam Controller input settings if you want to customize things further.
Losing the official PSStream app was definitely a blow to the Steam Deck community, but Pylux is shaping up to be an incredible replacement. While it has a few early-days bugs, the foundation is incredibly solid, and the local remote play is already top-tier. Because it is open-source, it is only going to get better, faster, and more feature-rich over time.
If you have a PS5 and a Steam Deck, taking 15 minutes to set this up is an absolute no-brainer. Having my entire PlayStation library resting comfortably in the palms of my hands is a feeling I will never get tired of.