Streaming and picture

The top bar fades out after a few seconds. Tap an empty spot on the picture to bring it back: the sliders icon opens the quick panel, and Hold to exit ends the stream. A long press on an empty spot also opens the quick panel.

Streaming on your home network at up to 720p and 30 fps with H.264, with no time limit and no ads. The cap is applied every time a session starts. Pad mode is free in full with no cap. Streaming on Android TV needs Pro.

Pick them under Settings, Video quality. You can also pick them under Video quality in the quick panel during a stream, then tap Reconnect to apply. Your phone has to be able to keep up, so the connection doctor is worth a run if the picture stutters at 1080p.

Yes. Open the quick panel, choose under Video quality and tap Reconnect to apply; the picture pauses for a few seconds. A Remote connection cannot switch mid-stream, so your choice applies the next time you connect. Codec, bitrate and decoder are under Settings, Video quality.

Fit the screen keeps the proportions and leaves black bars. Stretch to fill fills the screen and slightly distorts the picture. Zoom to fill fills the screen by cutting off the edges, which is the usual choice on a tall phone. Change it under Settings, Scaling, or under Scaling in the quick panel.

Open the quick panel and set Layout to Split: the picture and the on-screen gamepad are placed apart so neither covers the other. Auto already does this when the screen is upright or a foldable is half open. These options appear only on tablets and foldables, and they are free.

That is Screen dim in the quick panel. It darkens the picture so the on-screen buttons stand out; slide it all the way down to turn it off. It is separate from Overlay opacity, which fades the buttons themselves.

Almost always the wireless link rather than the phone. Join the 5 GHz network of the same router, move closer to it, and wire the console if you can. Run the connection doctor and look at the round trip time and the link speed estimate: above 30 ms or below 15 Mbps the picture will not hold. During a stream, lowering the resolution or frame rate in the quick panel helps right away.

Open the quick panel and tap Fix picture under Actions: it asks the console for a fresh picture. If it keeps happening, lower the resolution and run the connection doctor.

Latency adds up the round trip time and the time this phone spends decoding and drawing a frame, so it is an estimate that leaves out the console and your screen. It shows green under 60 ms and red over 100 ms. If the bitrate is far below what you set, the network is holding it back; if the bitrate is fine but decoding takes long, the phone is. Pick Compact or Detailed in the quick panel.

HEVC needs a decoder for it on this phone, and HDR needs a screen that supports it; the quality page says why an option is unavailable. If the phone cannot decode the format when a stream starts, the stream switches to H.264 or SDR by itself and tells you.

Yes. Leave the app during a stream and the picture shrinks into a small window that keeps playing. Tap it to go back to full screen without reconnecting, or close it to end the stream. It does not start while the picture is on a TV, and you can turn it off under Settings, Picture-in-picture.

It depends on the resolution: up to about 1 GB per hour at 360p, 2.7 GB at 540p, 4.5 GB at 720p and 6.8 GB at 1080p, and more with a manual bitrate. Actual use is often lower. On mobile data the app uses 720p at 30 fps by default, for streaming at home over a VPN and for Remote alike. To keep your own quality, turn off Settings, Mobile data.

Yes. While you are streaming, connect your phone to the TV with a USB-C to HDMI cable, or start screen casting from your system settings. The TV then shows only the game and your phone becomes the controller. Nothing is installed on the TV and you never sign in there, so a hotel or a friend's TV is fine.

Switch the TV to its game mode first. In their normal picture modes most TVs add 60 to 120 ms of delay; game mode brings that down to 10 to 30 ms, and nothing else you can change comes close. After that, a cable beats casting: wireless casting has to encode the picture a second time, which adds another 100 ms or more. Last comes the stream itself, which is faster on a good network and much faster at home than over the internet.

Not every phone can send video out of its USB-C port. Flagships usually can, mid-range phones often cannot, and there is no way to check before you try. Run the connection doctor with the cable plugged in: the external screen line tells you whether the system sees the TV at all. If it does not, the phone or the adapter is the reason, and wireless casting from your system settings is the way around it.

Only with an adapter that has its own power input. The USB-C port is taken by the video signal, and streaming plus decoding drains the battery quickly, so a powered USB-C hub with HDMI and pass-through charging is worth having for long sessions.

Some hotel TVs have their HDMI ports disabled or hidden behind the panel, and the app cannot do anything about that. If the TV has a port you can reach, the cable behaves like any other TV. Otherwise the stream still plays on your phone as usual.

No. What the app decodes is an ordinary video stream, not protected content, so the TV shows it normally over HDMI. You will not get the black screen that some video apps give you on an external display.