for the past month or so, the stream freezes if I alt-tab out.

[bauerbach]

The initial launch runs fine.

However, as soon as I alt tab out and back in, the image is frozen, it shows 1 static frame.

However, the cursor will move around, and I can see that happen.

the host is still running and it is still receiving input, for instance, because I can see the mouse move, I could click on options in a game menu. nothing would happen on the screen

But if I look on the host machine, it would show the options screen. or if I alt-tab out and in again, it will pull up a new static image which will show the options screen.

I am lost without in home streaming :( I have hardware encoding enabled, but Ive tried it every possible way.

[sMiley]

I have the exact same issue since today, right after updating the steam client on my laptop for thie first time in quite a while (I kept the client on my main computer up to date)

[Zero dB]

I think I'm having the same problem, except I don't even have to alt-tab away from the game I'm streaming to make it freeze. I get a frozen screen the moment I begin streaming a game to my laptop from my Tower O' Games.

Often, it's just a black screen. I'll hear the game's title-screen music, and I can move the mouse on the client machine and see the cursor move on the client's monitor...but no image.

I found that if I alt-Tab away from the game and back, I'll have a new frozen screen -- the title screen. I can click a button on that screen -- Continue Game, for instance -- and I'll hear the in-game sounds that tell me the host machine has gone from the title screen to the game...but the client machine's monitor remains frozen on the main screen. If I alt-tab out and back again, I get a new frozen image -- now I can see the in-game screen, but nothing's moving but the mouse. I can click the mouse to make an on-screen character move, but nothing appears to happen on the client machine. Then I alt-tab out and back, and I can see that the character moved where I told him to...but that new image is frozen. Etc.

(Alt-Enter seems to work with some games -- switching to windowed mode and back to full-screen -- but the result is the same as with alt-tab, just a new frozen screen.)

I guess if I could hit alt-tab 120 times per second, the game would display 60 new, frozen frames per second and look like it's working. But I can't afford cyborg hand implants right now.

Streaming worked fine until very recently. I've tried obvious things like making sure Steam is up to date on both the host and client machines; exiting Steam and running it again on both machines; rebooting both machines. Nothing has worked so far. I've tried various combinations of In-Home Streaming settings on both computers. No luck. I hope Valve will have a solution to this problem soon. Anybody know how to roll Steam back to an earlier version?

[Roamel]

Hello,
After ALT+TAB Steam client tries to return focus on running game/app. For some reason it stop streaming it, but you can press ALT+F4 (sometimes once , sometimes twice) and start translation again. ALT+F4 should closes streaming client, but game still running on host machine. Not the best, but works for me.

[WhereTheBufftingsAtTho]

I have an issue where alt+tab (or any application popping up on top of the game stream) would essentially 'crash' it, where I see the desktop but the game music continues playing in the background and the mouse input still moves the cursor in-game (can be seen looking on the main rig monitor) but the stream video itself essentially is crashed.

I resolved this by turning off 'enable hardware encoding' on the advanced client settings (do this on the pc/laptop that you are streaming on, not your main rig). Tested it a couple times and I'm pretty sure it's that. Can freely alt-tab in/out of games without the stream crashing anymore.

If it helps, my lappy specs are: win7, i5-3230M, 16gb, igpu. Main rig: win10-1511, i5-4430s, 8gb, 1060 3gb