Steam Link Touch Controller Guide

[slouken]

The mobile version of Steam Link has support for an on-screen touch controller. This is enabled by default if you don't already have a controller connected to your mobile device.

When you connect with the touch controller enabled, a [ ... ] button will appear in the upper left corner of your screen, and you can click this button to change modes.

MODES

The controller has three 'modes' of operation:

MOUSE: This is the mode that Steam Link used to work in, where the touchscreen works like a mouse pointer.

CONTROLLER: This mode is exclusively a controller; touches will only be handled by controller controls laid out on the screen.

CONTROLLER/MOUSE: This is a hybrid mode, where touches that aren't on the controller controls -- e.g., touches on the 'background' -- will still be passed through as mouse input.

The controller can be easily changed on the fly between the three modes by tapping the [ ... ] button and selecting 'Change Mode'. If you have mouse active (in either MOUSE or CONTROLLER/MOUSE modes), the [ ... ] button will have a small icon of a mouse above the dots.

CONTROLS

The controller mode and on-screen controls and are customized individually for each game, and for games that support Steam Input, you can customize each actionset in the game.

The heart of the editing mode is the tray, which will pop up when you pick 'Layout Controls' from the [ ... ] button. From here, you can drag controls out of the tray to place them, select 'Edit Layout' to move/scale/remove existing controls, 'Cancel' to clear all changes since you last saved, or 'Done' to save your changes.

Only the controls which are bound are available. For instance, if there are no macros configured, the macro buttons (M1 through M8) will be grayed out. You can change bindings and add new ones using the standard Steam Big Picture controller configuration UI.

To place a control, simply touch it and begin dragging it. The tray will close, and you can place the control where you want. If you grab the button diamond or the Select/Steam/Start buttons, they will come together as a group for quick placement.

When in edit mode, the screen background will be a transparent blue over the running game, letting you know that you are in edit mode. You can touch a single control to select and drag it, use two fingers to scale, or you can use one finger alone to draw a selection box and select multiple controls to move/scale at once. If you've placed a control before, it will remember the last location and show a gray "ghost" you can drag over to snap into. If you want to remove a control, simply drag it over towards the [ ... ] button, which will turn into a trashcan.

When dragging controls around, they will also snap into default positions relative to other related controls. If you don't like that location, simply keep moving, or lift your finger and drag again to make small adjustments.

STEAM INPUT

The Steam Link touch controller is a first class citizen of the Steam Input ecosystem, which means you can bind controls, create actionsets, use touchpad areas and your device's gyro, and publish configurations just like you would for any other controller. We will also work with developers to create touch layouts for their games and add other advanced features in the future.

Please use this thread for any feedback related to the touch controls!

[Onion]

Hi. Does anyone know of a way you can just apply a default controller layout instead of having to manually create one for each game? I know you can copy layouts, meaning you only have to create one, but I am having trouble creating a good layout. Any suggestions welcome :)

[Tak!]

After launching any game, when using the touch controller, I'm continuously prompted to select the input mode every few seconds. This doesn't affect the Steam BP UI itself.

Host: Ubuntu 16.04, steam client beta 4/12/2019
Client: Nvidia Shield K1 (second edition), Android 7.0, steam link beta 3/14/2019

Games affected: Seems like everything, tried:
* Torment: Tides of Numenara
* Pillars of Eternity II
* Dishonored: Death of the Outsider (via steamplay)

[Chronos]

Edit: Steam Link Build 1.1.33 on May 25 added a trackpad mode to Steam Link, so this has been resolved.

I guess I'll also be throwing in my requests for more mouse control options.

The point-and-click adventure games I've been testing so far use relative mouse movement to move the mouse cursor. So far, it appears that touching the screen will immediately start and hold down a left-click for the mouse, and upon lifting the finger, the left-click is released. This is producing unwanted mouse actions in games where there are many clickable objects in a scene when the user simply wants to move the cursor, and the games can react differently depending on if the clickable object respond to on-press behavior, on-release behavior, or both (short clips of these issues are linked below for three games). Basically, the current method for relative mouse movement appears to be the same as Steam Input's Mouse being applied to the entire screen with a Touch Binding of mouse left click and Trackball set to off (and I'm guessing absolute mouse movement uses Mouse Region with mouse left click as Touch Binding? Haven't tested that yet). My preferred behavior is for it to separate mouse movement and mouse clicking so that it behaves more like a laptop's trackpad, but I'm not sure if Mouse can be made to do that. I've thought up of a couple of potential ways to solve this.

One method is to add to the Steam Link app an option to disable clicking by touch and make available a left click and right click button (similar to how a keyboard toggle button has been made available in the recent Steam Link Android update). The person can then place the mouse buttons anywhere on the screen. The behavior will be like using a laptop's trackpad for movement and the trackpad's buttons for clicking. This should also help out with absolute mouse movement, because touching the screen in this movement style also appears to hold down left click until lifting the finger. The downside is introducing extra buttons onto a potentially crowded screen.

The other is to introduce a new Steam Input style called Trackpad (or add more options to Mouse) that behaves like a laptop's trackpad. The behavior will be like using the trackpad for movement and clicking.

• Moving the cursor shouldn't apply any clicks, just control the cursor.
  
• Single tap for left click
  
• Double-tap without lifting finger after second tap should do left-click and drag
  
• Choose between absolute mouse movement (Mouse Region style movement) and relative mouse movement (Mouse style movement).
  
• etc.

Also, it would be great if there is an option to adjust mouse sensitivity, because in some games the cursor moves slowly.

Tested with Steam Link Android App Build 1.1.31

Game: The Blackwell Legacy [80330]
Steam Link Input Mode: Mouse
Game's mouse behavior: Relative mouse movement
Issues:

• The mouse sensitivity is very low (maybe related to the low resolution of the game), requiring many swipes of the finger to move the cursor across the screen.
  
• The game reacts to on-press behavior for a mouse click. Since this is a point-and-click adventure game, touching the screen will usually trigger an in-game action. https://streamable.com/z5yzw

Reproduction: Launch the game (skip cutscenes by pressing ESC key on keyboard, along with some loading screens).
Mouse sensitivity is very low

• Once the game is launched, move the cursor and it will feel very slow.

Applies and holds down the mouse left click.
On the main menu (reacts to on-release click):

• Using the phone, when over a menu option, touch the screen without lifting finger and nothing will happen.
  
• Using the computer, when over a menu option, hold down the left click on mouse and nothing will happen.
  
• For both, while still on the same menu option and touching the screen/holding left click, lift finger/release left click on mouse and the button will be triggered.

Start a new game and skip cutscenes with ESC key (in-game reacts to on-press click):

• Using the phone, move the cursor around with finger and a left click is immediately registered.
  
• Using the computer, hold down the left click on mouse anywhere and a left click is immediately registered.

Game: Broken Sword: Director's Cut [57640]
Steam Link Input Mode: Mouse
Game's mouse behavior: Relative mouse movement
Issues:

• The game reacts to on-release behavior for a mouse click. Since this is a point-and-click adventure game, pretty much touching the screen each time will trigger an in-game action, and this creates two problems.
  
• Upon lifting finger from the screen over a clickable object, releasing of the left click triggers an action. https://streamable.com/fdugg
  
• Moving a character in the game with the left-click depends on how much time has elapsed between on-press and on-release click. If it's short, the character will move. Quick swipes across the screen to move the cursor around the screen will inevitably lead to a short duration between on-press and on-release click, so the character will move when the user doesn't desire it. https://streamable.com/gb8qf

Reproduction: Start a new game (skip cutscenes by pressing ESC key on keyboard)
Applies and holds down the mouse left click

• Using the phone, touch the screen, move cursor over a clickable object, and lift finger. This will trigger an action.
  
• Using the computer, hold down left-click, move cursor over a clickable object, release. This will trigger an action.

Character movement is dependent on short duration between on-press and on-release click.

• Using the phone, after touching the screen, lift finger in probably 0.3 seconds or less (basically fairly quickly). This will trigger character movement to the on-release position.
  
• Using the computer, hold down left-click and release in less than 0.3 seconds (or less). This will trigger character movement to the on-release position.
  
• Because of this time duration, quick swipes on the touchscreen meant to move the cursor across the screen will also trigger character movement.

Game: Defender's Quest: Valley of the Forgotten (DX edition) [218410]
Steam Link Input Mode: Mouse
Game's mouse behavior: Relative mouse movement and absolute mouse movement
Issues:

• The game can swap between relative mouse movement and absolute mouse movement by going into Options -> Video -> Mouse Cursor -> and choose Default (absolute mouse movement) or Fancy (relative mouse movement). https://streamable.com/bt31i
  
• Even when using Default cursor, absolute mouse movement will be temporarily swapped to relative mouse movement when using a spell in battle, which unfortunately leads to behavior that doesn't allow the user to use spells. https://streamable.com/800qr
  
• In the game, there is a world map where you move the map around by holding left-click and dragging the mouse. If using the Fancy cursor (relative mouse movement), a user will keep dragging the world map around when navigating that scene.

Reproduction: Launch the game and skip cutscenes. Choose Cancel for first battle.
Applies and holds down the mouse left click
On the world map:

• Using the phone, try to move the cursor around and the world map will keep being dragged around.
  
• Using the computer, hold the left-click down and drag the mouse around.

Can't use spells for both absolute mouse movement and relative mouse movement:
Finish the first battle (use 16x and keep boosting SLAKS). Go to Options -> Video -> Mouse Cursor -> Choose Default (absolute mouse movement). Begin the next battle to gain a spell. After following the beginning instructions:

• On the phone, choose the Lightning spell. The cursor immediately snaps to the side of the battlefield and attempting to move the cursor will deselect the spell. This can be circumvented by using the computer mouse to move the cursor into the battlefield right after selecting the spell. But from that point, the mouse behavior switches to relative mouse movement until the spell is deselected, which then switches back to absolute mouse movement.

[Chronos]

I just realized that another method is to make the Mouse input available to choose for the Joysticks's input style (currently only available for the trackpad). Part of the reason behind my above request is to avoid adding too many buttons (or large buttons) that could potentially clutter the screen with their outlines, and with the new dynamic positioning of the joysticks becoming available, having joysticks with Mouse that can fade in and out can help with the issue.

[Chronos]

With the new beta client, the new Steam Remote Play features and grouping of the Steam Link devices into the settings make managing the devices easier. Much appreciated. That beta client update in general was very big. I almost thought I was looking at the change log for the stable client.

Here, I guess I'll be adding some more features requests for the Steam Link's Touch Controller.

• Expand the touchable area of Mouse input (touchpad) to cover a much larger area/square/rectangle, preferably the entire screen or at least the entire height of the display, regardless of the size of the mouse area or its location on the screen. Currently, if I place my finger on the mouse area and move my finger outside of that box, the cursor will continue to move until it hits an invisible wall. More accurately, it hits the boundaries of an invisible box in the shape of the mouse area. Here's a video demonstration with Stardew Valley https://streamable.com/1kqji, with the config I published steam://controllerconfig/413150/1745786314 (this can be done in any game with Mouse input). I didn't show in the video, but my thumb can comfortably reach halfway across of that 5.2 inch screen. I can set a suitable mouse sensitivity, but it feel like I'm hitting the inivisible wall more often than I like. Having a much larger touchable area should also help out with configs for first-person and third-person games, which I'll mention below.
  
• For buttons that can use an activator to toggle, such as games with crouching, sprinting, and aiming, show the button on the display as being held down/depressed when toggled. This is mainly to improve visual feedback so the player can quickly see whether or not a button is still toggled. An example of crouching and what I would like to see in Half-Life https://streamable.com/v1lzj
  
• Let any button be able to enable Mouse input. Not sure if it's a feasible/reasonable request, but I guess I'll start with the potential use case. In Risk of Rain 2 (RoR2), a third-person shooter, a player can actively aim and use about four weapons at the same time with left mouse button, right mouse button, Shift key, and R key. In this game, you don't have to switch between weapons, like in Half-Life, in order to use each one. To shoot a different weapon in RoR2, just aim with the mouse and press a different button. For a game that has camera control and shooting, my initial approach would be to set Steam Link to Controller/Mouse mode. Touching the screen allows me to control the camera and automatically shoot (since the default behavior of Mouse mode is to left-click when touching the screen), and I can use a Mouse input to create a touchpad for just controlling the camera. This is about good enough for a game like Half-Life where the primary way of shooting is just the left mouse click (except for the issue with Mouse input I have that I listed in the first bullet point that makes camera control an issue), but it doesn't work with games that are more like RoR2. At best, I can do the following:
  
  • Mouse mode responsible for camera control and left mouse button.
    
  • One Mouse input for just camera control
    
  • Another Mouse input for camera control and touch bind the right mouse button.
  
  This leaves the Shift key and R key unbound. I can create a button to choose between three action sets that changes one Mouse input between right mouse button, Shift key, and R key, but considering the frenetic pace of the game, swapping like that seems less than ideal.
  
  The idea that I've been tossing about would be allowing any button in Steam Link to have Mouse input. Then it can work as follows:
  
  • Mouse Mode for camera control and left mouse button (since Mouse mode automatically left clicks)
    
  • Mouse input for just camera control
    
  • M1 button for camera control and touch bind right mouse button
    
  • M2 button for camera control and touch bind Shift key
    
  • M3 button for camera control and touch bind R key
  
  Then I can use all of those to control the camera and fire weapons at the same time.
  
  If I can set it so that Mouse mode doesn't automatically left click (my previous wish in post #63). Then it can work as follows:
  
  • Mouse Mode for just camera control
    
  • M1 button for camera control and touch bind left mouse button
    
  • M2 button for camera control and touch bind right mouse button
    
  • M3 button for camera control and touch bind Shift key
    
  • M4 button for camera control and touch bind R key
  
  Demonstration of this in Risk of Rain 2 https://streamable.com/o4het
  
  
• Allow the touchpad area/outline displayed on the screen to be even smaller, like how small a regular button can get when resized. This is somewhat related to the first wish and above wish. Touching the touchpad area with Mouse input will move the cursor, whereupon I ideally can move my finger anywhere on the screen while moving the cursor. In this scenario, the size of the touchpad isn't as important other than getting cursor movement started.
  
• More icons for buttons. Not as important, but it would be nice. For example:
  
  • Camera
    
  • Car from profile view
    
  • Gun that is actively shooting
    
  • Gamepad
    
  • Keyboard

[doctor zero md]

It seems that with the most recent client update, launching non-steam games with the touch controls enabled will crash the steam client, and then the steam link app. I've tested this with 3 different host devices, two different steam accounts, and two different client devices (Android and iOS)., But if anybody has different results I'd love to hear them

[Chronos]

For the longest time I thought there wasn't a right-click drag gesture because it wasn't in the gesture list in the Steam Link app. Then in the past week I found out that there is one. The most demonstrable way to pull it off is by starting with a left-click drag gesture, placing another finger down, then lifting that finger up again, upon which a right-click drag gesture is triggered. It can also be triggered with a two finger press followed by lifting a finger up. I'm not sure how this can be succinctly explained in the gesture list (other than a picture/animation), but it would be great if this information was added to the gesture list.

My second request is to change a part of how the right-click drag gesture works. Currently, when the two fingers are placed on the screen, the order in which the fingers touch the screen determines which finger will perform the right-click drag. For example, in Slime Rancher [433340], it's an FPS-style game where I can shoot out objects with mouse left-click and vacuum in objects with mouse right-click. If I want to vacuum and control my aim with my right thumb, I would touch the screen with both thumbs, making sure that my right thumb contacts first, and then lift my left thumb. I find having to make sure my right thumb touches first a bit not intuitive, and originally I thought the gesture was bugged because I didn't realize the importance of finger contact order (lifting the first finger that touched the screen while holding down with the second finger would only trigger holding right-click without the ability to move the cursor). It's also difficult to tell which finger touches first when I think I press the screen simultaneously with two fingers. How I expected the gesture to work was that it was the finger that remains, after the other has been lifted, that is important. So in my case, when I two finger touch the screen and I lift one finger up, the remaining finger can right-click drag. So my request is to change the gesture so that it's the finger that remains that matters instead of contact order.

As a last note, a bug I spotted is that the touch controller input can interrupt the click-drag gestures for some games. For example, in Slime Rancher, after performing a right-click drag gesture in order to vacuum, if I press up on the directional pad for the touch controller, the gesture is interrupted and the vacuum stops. The same applies to Amnesia: The Dark Descent [57300] for holding up objects with left-click and then moving and Human: Fall Flat [477160] for grabbing objects by holding left/right-click and then moving.

[Chronos]

Another quality of life feature that I think would be nice to have. When playing first person/third person games, I would often have to adjust the mouse sensitivity since it's too slow during play. The Trackpad's default cursor speed is fine when navigating menus but it's not quite speedy enough for turning the player camera around in-game (in Left 4 Dead 2, the game's default mouse setting which I play at on my computer is too low for playing through the Steam Link app). The current, straightforward solution is to change the sensitivity through the game's settings, but the downside of this is that after adjusting it to a suitable level when playing through the Steam Link app, I would have to readjust it again when playing on the computer. So basically it feels a bit inconvenient to have to keep in mind the different sensitivity settings I use for the Steam Link app and my computer when playing different games, and it would be great if there was some way for the mouse sensitivity setting to be saved with the config or be adjustable through the app. That way any changes I make to the sensitivity associated with the app/config is independent of the mouse sensitivity that I play at when on the computer, making it simpler to switch playing between the two.

[slouken]

A much more detailed guide has been created by Chronos, and is available here:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1888830141

[skyczy]

if you want your touch controller or Xbox controller to work on your Android phone for non-steam games, make sure to run Steam as an administrator on the host PC. If you don't run Steam as administrator on the host PC, your buttons will not work in game when streaming over steam link on Android. Weird weird problem ?

[RedCanadian1]

So I was trying the remote play together function with a friend on their phone. I wanted to play the game with my controller, while my friend would play it on their phone. We found out, over several games, that you can only use one or the other. The steam touch controls on the phone would not work in game if a controller (ps4, xbox, steam controller) was active. The same would apply if the touch controls were active first, the console controller would not function. Keyboard and mouse would work alongside the touch control.

Is this a bug with the steam link android app, or is there something I am missing? Would it also be possible to have several devices/controllers, like 2 phones/tablets playing, while another person would play locally with a controller? There are issues with just one phone steam playing. I haven't attempted it with a second android device.

[anto4516]

As of today, is there anu setting to reset to default touch settings? Need heeelp

[trinhtuanvy1988]

Messaggio originale di Abra:

iOS support is my feedback. ಠ_ಠ

[You-Key]

I want to disable a tap as mouse button to avoid miss touching.
The virtual right stick is too sensitive to control a mouse cursor.
So it's good that I can adjust mouse sensitivity on the right stick.
Please consider this issue, thanks.