What it does
One app, the whole box.
Vitals, rescue, and input for a living-room gaming PC: the parts you actually reach for from the couch.
Live dashboard
CPU temperature, load, memory, per-disk usage, uptime, and the health of every background service you watch (systemd on Linux, Windows services), refreshed in real time.
Rescue actions
Restart the frozen display (a wedged gamescope black screen), reboot, or power off. One tap each, grouped by danger, with a double confirm on the destructive ones.
Desktop ⇄ Game Mode
Drop the box into the SteamOS desktop and flip back to Game Mode with a single tap, no keyboard or mouse involved. Or just hold the Guide button on a controller to trigger the handoff, no phone needed (opt-in per box). Make the quick tweak from the couch, then get back to playing.
Virtual controller
The service presents a standard Xbox controller to the box, so Steam and your games see genuine input: sticks, D-pad, ABXY, triggers, haptics. Handy when the real controller is dead or across the room.
Swipe mode
An Apple-TV-remote-style surface: swipe to move, tap to select. The fastest way through Kodi and Big Picture menus from the couch.
Log viewer
Browse recent error logs (journald / Windows Event Log) for any watched service straight from your phone, without an SSH session or squinting at the TV.
PIN pairing
Tap Scan for boxes, then type the PIN the box shows on its screen. No IP addresses and no tokens to copy — the QR the installer prints still works too.
TV & power control
Your TV, over Wi-Fi — no HDMI-CEC required. Point Couchside at a smart TV on your network and you get a real remote: D-pad, OK/Back/Home, power, volume, and the input/SOURCE key, plus an on-screen keyboard for those miserable TV search boxes. Couchside can even find the TVs on your network so you don't hunt for an IP. Works with LG webOS, Roku, Android / Google TV and Hisense; Samsung is in beta. (Smart-TV backends need a Linux box — on Windows, Roku is supported today.)
Your phone's own volume buttons work too, on every control screen. And the box side: volume (a real drag slider on SteamOS) and mute, sleep it and wake it back over the network — one awake box can even wake a sleeping one. HDMI-CEC still works where your box has it, as do commercial RS-232 panels like Newline; no CEC and no smart TV? A spare Raspberry Pi adds it via the one-line Pi CEC bridge installer.
Real footage · nothing staged
See it actually drive a TV.
A phone controlling Steam Big Picture on the TV over the local network: the menus, the input modes, the game library, all from the couch. Recorded on a real box.
