Couchside — Remote

Couchside turns your Android phone into the monitor, remote console, game launcher, controller, and TV remote for your living-room Linux gaming PC — a SteamOS or Bazzite HTPC, a docked Steam Deck, or any systemd Linux box.

When the TV shows a black screen and the box seems dead, Couchside is the screen. See what's actually happening, read the logs, restart the display session, launch a game, or pick up a virtual controller — all from the couch, entirely on your own home network.

LIVE CONSOLE

A real-time dashboard of your box: CPU temperature, load, memory, per-disk usage, uptime, and — on a handheld — battery and power profile, plus the health of the systemd services you care about. A "now playing" card shows what's on the TV, and when the box drops off the network a clear "unreachable" banner tells you when it was last seen. Running more than one box? The Fleet view watches your whole lineup and switches between them in a tap.

FIX IT WITHOUT A KEYBOARD

One-tap runbook actions, grouped by danger level, each confirmed before it runs (twice when it's destructive):

• Restart the display session — the classic fix for a wedged gamescope black screen

• Switch to Desktop / Return to Game Mode — no keyboard needed

• Reboot or power off

Browse recent journald logs for any watched service, right from your phone — no SSH, no laptop.

LAUNCH GAMES FROM THE COUCH

The agent finds the Steam games installed on the box and lays them out as cover art. Tap a cover and it launches on the TV. Add custom launchers — a label and a command — for anything else the box runs. Streaming from a gaming PC elsewhere in the house? Couchside lists your Steam Remote Play hosts and starts the stream on the box.

VIRTUAL GAME CONTROLLER

The agent creates a genuine virtual Xbox 360 controller on the box, so Steam, Big Picture, and your games see real gamepad input. Three modes, one tap apart:

• Gamepad — dual sticks, D-pad, ABXY, bumpers, analog triggers

• Swipe — an Apple-TV-remote-style surface: swipe to move, tap to select. Perfect for Kodi and Big Picture.

• Trackpad — a real relative-mouse pad with tap-to-click, two-finger right-click, and two-finger scroll

Plus an on-screen keyboard that types straight to the box.

LIVING-ROOM REMOTE & TV CONTROL

A proper remote for the whole setup — including the TV itself. Control an LG webOS or Google/Android TV over your network: power, volume, and input, right beside the box's own controls.

EASY PAIRING

Install the open-source agent with one command. Scan the QR code it shows, or type the 6-digit PIN from the box's screen — either way the app connects with nothing to configure. If the box's .local name stops resolving (as it can in Game Mode), the app falls back to its last known IP automatically.

PRIVATE BY DESIGN

Couchside talks only to the agent on your own LAN. No cloud, no relay, no accounts, no analytics. Auth is a bearer token stored securely on your phone; on the box, the agent's privileges are limited to an exact, audited allowlist of commands. The agent that runs on your box is open source (MIT); the app is source-available — read the code or build it yourself.

TRY FREE FOR 7 DAYS, PAY ONCE

Free to download with a full-featured 7-day trial — every screen, no account, no card. After the trial, a single one-time unlock keeps everything forever. No subscription, ever. Prefer to compile the app yourself from the public source? That's allowed and documented.

REQUIREMENTS

• A SteamOS, Bazzite, or other systemd-based Linux machine on your home network

• The free open-source Couchside agent installed on it (one command, no dependencies)

• Android phone and box on the same LAN