Four phones, one couch, zero extra hardware: PC couch co-op done right
Couch co-op nights tend to stall on controllers. Most people own one or two good pads, maybe a third with a sticky button, and a four-player game needs four that work. Dish solves that with the phones your guests already carry: each phone becomes its own controller for your gaming PC, over your Wi-Fi.
This post is the recipe.
What you need
- A gaming PC connected to your TV, or streaming to it with Sunshine and Moonlight
- A Wi-Fi network everyone can join (5 GHz is ideal)
- One Android phone per player, or a controller they can plug into it
- A local co-op game on the gaming PC (Cuphead, Streets of Rage 4, Overcooked, Broforce, TowerFall, Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime)
Step 1: Install Dish
Have everyone install Dish. It’s a one-tap install from Google Play, or a signed APK from GitHub.
A guest who would rather bring a laptop can install Dish for Windows or Dish for Linux and send the pad plugged into it.
Step 2: Install Satellite on the gaming PC
Grab Satellite and run it. Look for the dish icon in your system tray when it’s done. Satellite gives each player their own controller, up to 16 of them, though four is the usual couch.
Step 3: Get everyone on the same Wi-Fi
This is the step people get wrong. The phones and the gaming PC must be on the same network. Many homes put guests on a separate guest network, and Dish usually can’t reach the PC from there.
If your router has the bands, put everything on 5 GHz or 6 GHz. The 2.4 GHz band is crowded with microwaves, baby monitors, and your neighbors’ networks.
Step 4: Pair each phone
Open Dish on each phone. Each one finds your gaming PC on its own. Tap the PC and type the 4-digit PIN from Satellite’s dashboard.
You don’t repeat this every time. Dish remembers each PC it has paired with, so next month the same friends skip straight to step 5.
Step 5: Pick a controller
Each player chooses how they’ll play:
- The touch screen. The on-screen controller matches the pad the game sees, in an Xbox, PlayStation, or Switch layout. Its triggers are analog, and the eight-way d-pad handles diagonals well.
- A real controller. A guest who brought a pad can plug it into their phone over USB or pair it over Bluetooth, and Dish sends that instead of the touch screen.
Each player also picks what their controller looks like to the game: an Xbox pad, a DualShock 4, a DualSense, or a Switch Pro.
Step 6: Launch the game
Your TV shows the game, and the PC sees one controller per phone. Most games pick up each one as soon as its player presses a button.
Tips for the night
Connect everyone before you launch the game. Some games only look for controllers at startup and ignore one that joins late.
Connect in player order. Whoever connects first is player 1, and so on. If your game cares about player order, connect in the order you want.
Turn rumble off on loud phones. A phone vibrating on a glass coffee table is louder than you’d expect, and four of them is a lot. Each controller has its own rumble switch.
Have chargers ready. Four phones running for two hours is a real battery draw. A multi-port charger on the coffee table helps.
Why it holds up
- Everyone is their own player. Each phone has its own controller and its own connection, so one phone dropping out doesn’t disturb the others.
- No Bluetooth traffic jam. Bluetooth gets unreliable past a couple of controllers on one PC. Wi-Fi doesn’t.
- Nothing to buy. The controllers are already in your friends’ pockets.
Where to go next
If your co-op night worked, tell a friend; word of mouth is the most helpful thing for this project. Tips help too.
For more reading:
Vous aimez ce que vous lisez ?
Dish et Satellite sont gratuits et open source. Les pourboires permettent qu'ils le restent.