Four phones, one couch, zero extra hardware: PC couch co-op done right

I love a couch co-op night. What I do not love is the moment two hours before everyone shows up where I realize I own one Xbox controller, two slightly broken DualShock 4s, and an 8BitDo with a stuck D-pad… and I need four working gamepads in 90 minutes.

After hitting that exact problem one too many times, I built a tool to fix it. Now every guest’s phone is also a gamepad. They walk in, install Dish, pair in a few seconds, and they’re playing.

This post is the recipe.

What you need

• A gaming PC connected to your TV (or streaming to it via Sunshine + Moonlight)
• A Wi-Fi network everyone can join (5 GHz is ideal)
• One Android phone per player
• A four-player local co-op game on the gaming PC (Cuphead, Streets of Rage 4, Overcooked, BroForce, Towerfall, Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime; pick your poison)

Step 1: Install Dish

Have everyone install Dish for Android. It’s a one-tap install from Google Play, or available from GitHub Releases. Either way it takes about 30 seconds.

(Dish for Windows, macOS, and Linux are in development for guests who’d rather use a laptop, but for now, plan on phones in hands.)

Step 2: Install Satellite for Windows on the gaming PC

Grab Satellite from GitHub releases and run it. Look for the dish icon in your system tray when you’re done. It’s now ready to hand each player their own controller. Four is the comfortable couch number, but it won’t blink at more.

Step 3: Get everyone on Wi-Fi

This is the part most people get wrong. Make sure all the phones and the gaming PC are on the same Wi-Fi network. A surprising number of houses have the gaming PC wired and the phones on a separate guest network. Dish will still work, but you’ll feel it.

Pro tip: if you’ve got a newer router, put everything on the 5 GHz or 6 GHz band. The old 2.4 GHz band is crowded with microwaves, baby monitors, and your neighbor’s everything. 5 and 6 GHz are much cleaner.

Step 4: Pair each phone

Open Dish on each phone. Each one finds your gaming PC on its own. Tap the PC, type the 4-digit code Satellite shows, done.

You don’t have to repeat this every time. Dish remembers each PC it’s paired with. Next month when these same friends come over, they can skip straight to step 5.

Step 5: Pick layouts

Dish ships several layouts:

• Classic: Xbox-style ABXY, dual sticks, triggers
• Fight stick: D-pad plus six buttons, built for fighters
• Minimal: D-pad plus two buttons, for retro and 2D
• Custom: long-press anything to drag, resize, or remap

For Cuphead, classic. For Streets of Rage 4, fight stick. For BroForce, minimal. Players can switch layouts mid-session.

If a player would rather use a real Bluetooth gamepad they’ve already paired to their phone, Dish will see it and use it automatically. The touch overlay disappears.

Step 6: Launch the game

Your TV shows the game. The PC sees four controllers, one per phone. Most games recognize all four as soon as a button is pressed on each.

Hit “Local Co-op” or whatever the game calls it. You’re playing.

Pro tips after running this dozens of times

Have everyone open Dish before you launch the game. Some games only scan for controllers at launch and won’t pick up one that joins late. Get everyone connected, then launch.

Designate a player order. Whoever connects first becomes player 1, and so on. If your game cares about player order (some platformers do), have your group connect in a deliberate order.

Mute Dish’s rumble if your phones are loud. A vibrating phone on a glass coffee table is louder than you’d expect, and four of them is unbearable.

Let people use their own gamepads. Whoever brought a real controller can pair it to their phone and Dish will use it instead of the touch overlay. No-compromise for the experienced players in the group.

Plug in. With four phones running for two hours, charging cables are the real limiting factor. Have a multi-port charger on the coffee table.

Why this works so well

The reason four-phone co-op is suddenly easy is that Dish was built for it from the start:

• Everyone’s their own player. Each phone gets its own controller, with its own connection. One phone dropping out doesn’t disturb the others.
• No Bluetooth traffic jam. Bluetooth gets cranky past a couple of controllers. Wi-Fi doesn’t.
• Per-player layouts. Fight stick for the player who knows what they’re doing, classic for the kid.

Where to go next

If you’ve thrown a successful Dish-powered couch co-op night, please:

• Tell another nerd. Word of mouth is the single most helpful thing for this project.
• Leave a tip. Every dollar genuinely helps.
• Share which game your group played. We’re keeping a list of “works great” titles based on feedback.

For more reading:

• Why Wi-Fi beats Bluetooth for gamepad streaming
• Sunshine + Moonlight + Dish, the perfect cloud-gaming-at-home trio
• How it works