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So Steam can now stream in-home. Does this only work with games tied to the Steam account, or can I play games added via the "Add non-Steam game" feature?

Example: If I have Star Wars: The Old Republic on my gaming rig added as a non-steam game, can I play that on a separate machine using the in-home streaming?

4 Answers 4

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Yes. Also, games not added to steam. The basic method is to alt-tab to the desktop:

http://steamcommunity.com/groups/homestream/discussions/0/630802978857564429/

Once you get to the desktop, you can browse, run other programs. watch movies...

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    As ToxicFrog posted in the other answer, to avoid needing to ALT-Tab from Notepad, you can just hit F1 to open the help window -- this will show the desktop.
    – Tullo_x86
    Commented Nov 12, 2015 at 17:48
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Yes, you can stream games added as non-Steam games. There is no guarantee that they will work properly, but I've done it with a number of games successfully.

You can also stream non-game programs, and if you can contrive to get out of the game while leaving it running, you can even stream the entire desktop - adding Notepad as a non-Steam game and then pressing F1 to open the help is a common trick for doing this.

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Yes. As of October 2018, any non-steam shortcuts added to the Steam client on the host machine will also appear in the Library tabs in those clients that can potentially stream games from there. You need to be on the same network and the clients should see each other, otherwise the shortcut will not appear.

All you need to do is open the library on the host machine and click ADD A GAME in the bottom left corner, then click Add a Non-Steam Game... and chose your game. If the game is not in the list, you can click BROWSE... and select the executable file manually.

You can stream any programs this way, not just games. For example, the picture below shows the wordpad.exe entry:

enter image description here

This is what Steam Support articles have to say about the feature:

Streaming non-Steam games in the Steam library may work but is not officially supported.

As for the old (rather hacky) method with alt-tabbing to desktop, the same article states:

If your game loses focus, Steam will start streaming the desktop so that you can get back to it. This is a feature of Steam In-Home Streaming.

So at least we know for sure that this functionality is intentional and thus likely is not going to be removed.

I could not find any information as to when non-Steam entries started showing up across machines, but Steam Client changelog from Mar 21, 2018 mentions this:

Fixed a bug where non-Steam games would use a desktop configuration when streaming if the controller wasn’t opted into Steam Input support.

So you could suggest that it's been supported from at least since then.

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This is no longer true. Steam no longer allows streaming of non-steam games. (Posting this response as an update as GOOGLE still thinks this is the most relevant result. -.-)

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    This is important information, but should probably include a link to official documentation supporting the rule change.
    – Malco
    Commented Oct 5, 2018 at 20:51
  • Not sure why the neg but this is a timely notice as I just started preparing to stream from my desktop today. Will have to search to find where Steam has mentioned this. Was getting my hopes up :(
    – Peter
    Commented Oct 6, 2018 at 6:15
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    Seems like it currently works: screenshot.
    – Batophobia
    Commented Dec 10, 2019 at 21:45
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    Just confirmed, Subnautica from Epic Store, added as a Non-Steam shortcut to Steam just streamed across onto my laptop. Subnautica icon just showed up on the laptop didn't have to do anything.
    – PeterG
    Commented Feb 24, 2020 at 18:35
  • Not sure where you got this info but the notepad trick or just alt-tabbing out still works in 2022. Commented Jan 24, 2022 at 11:24

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