From your couch to the game, in five minutes.
You don't have to read any of this to use Dish. It just works. But if you're curious what playing with Dish actually feels like, here's the whole experience, from installing it to the moment the game responds in your hand.
- 1
Install two free apps
Put Dish on your phone and Satellite on your gaming PC. Both are free, with no ads and nothing to sign up for. The whole thing takes a couple of minutes.
- 2
They find each other on your Wi-Fi
Open Dish and your PC shows up by name within a second or two. No typing in IP addresses, no digging through router settings. As long as your phone and your PC are on the same Wi-Fi, they just see each other.
- 3
Pair once with a 4-digit code
Tap your PC, type the 4-digit code Satellite shows you, and you're connected. That's the only setup step, and you only do it once. From then on your phone reconnects to that PC on its own, every time you open Dish.
- 4
Choose how you want to play
Use the on-screen buttons. There are layouts for everything from a full Xbox-style pad to a stripped-down retro one, and you can drag and resize anything to fit your thumbs. Or, if you already have a real controller paired to your phone, Dish picks it up automatically and uses that instead.
- 5
Press a button, and the game responds right now
This is the part people don't believe until they feel it. Over Wi-Fi, Dish is about as fast as a controller plugged straight into your PC with a cable, and noticeably snappier than Bluetooth. There's no lag to fight, even in fast games.
- 6
Your game sees a normal controller
Satellite shows your game a standard Xbox or PlayStation controller, so every PC game that supports a gamepad, which is nearly all of them, just works. Nothing to set up inside the game itself. You can even choose, per player, whether it shows up as an Xbox or a PlayStation pad.
- 7
Everything comes back to your hand
It's a two-way connection, so the full feel of the controller comes back to you: rumble buzzes when the game shakes, the lightbar shifts color to match what's on screen, motion and gyro aim work, and your controller's battery level shows up. It feels like a real pad, because as far as the game is concerned, it is one.
It remembers your PC
Pairing is a one-time thing. After that first 4-digit code, your phone quietly reconnects whenever you open Dish. No code, no menus, no thinking about it. Bring four friends' phones over for couch co-op and each one only pairs once too; next time they visit, they're straight into the game.
"But what about Sunshine and Moonlight?"
Sunshine and Moonlight are the go-to way to stream the video from your gaming PC to another screen, whether that's your TV, a tablet, or a Steam Deck. They can pass a controller along too, but they assume the controller and the screen are the same device. Dish is for the times that isn't true:
- Controller in your hand, game on the TV. Stream the picture to your TV with Moonlight and hold your phone as the controller. It feels native.
- Couch co-op. Several phones can connect to one PC at once, each its own controller, even when only one screen is showing the game.
- No streaming at all. Plenty of people just play on the same monitor as their PC, using their phone as a wireless gamepad. No video streaming required.
The names nod at the same lineage. See why "Dish" and "Satellite".
Try it for yourself.
Five minutes from install to first input.
Download Dish