RigDesk

New in RigDesk 0.91

RigScreen+
Your PC's power, on your phone.

The game runs on your computer — its graphics card, its processor, its memory. RigDesk on your phone is the screen and the controller. Over your home Wi-Fi, with RedFrame on top.

Download for Windows free · ~64 MB Get RigDesk for the phone

Windows 10 or 11, 64-bit. The download includes ffmpeg, which captures and encodes the picture. RigScreen+ on the phone is part of RigDesk 0.91 — in the nine dots.

Four steps, and the first three only once

  1. On the PC, unzip and open rigscreen-host.exe. Leave its window open while you play. If Windows asks about the firewall, allow it for private networks — or run allow-firewall.cmd once.
  2. On the phone, open RigDesk, then the nine dots, then RigScreen+. Your PC shows up by itself, with its graphics card, processor and memory. If it does not, type the address the PC window prints.
  3. The first time, the PC window shows a six-digit code. Type it on the phone. After that the two know each other.
  4. Tap Connect. The window goes full screen and you are on your PC.

What you get

RedFrame on the streamThe PC sends up to 60 frames a second; RedFrame 2X and 3X add frames on the phone, on a fast screen. Part of RD Pass.
Fingers that playTrackpad or direct touch for the mouse, an on-screen stick with buttons (arrows or WASD), and your phone's keyboard.
A real mouse and keyboardPaired to the phone over Bluetooth, they go straight to the PC — as keys games can read.
Made for games, not moviesNothing waits: the controls travel apart from the picture, a lost piece is asked for again in milliseconds, and the phone's Wi-Fi stays awake.

Measured, not promised. On our test bench — an AMD Radeon RX 6650 XT PC and RigDesk on an emulator — the stream held 57–59 frames a second with no loss at 8 Mbps, and a frame took 14–25 ms from the PC's encoder to a decoded picture on the phone. A real phone on 5 GHz Wi-Fi decodes faster than the emulator; your router and your network decide the rest.

Only you, only at home, only while you say so

A program that shows a computer's screen over the network differs from a harmful one in one thing only: whether the person at that computer knows and agreed. So that is not a setting in RigScreen+ — it is how it works:

  • You start it by hand. It does not start with Windows and does not hide.
  • A code, shown only on the PC. A new phone gets nothing until someone at the computer reads the six digits from its window. The code lives two minutes; three wrong tries and it changes.
  • Home network only. Connections from anywhere but your local network are closed before they say a word. There is no server in between and nothing goes to the internet.
  • The window tells you. While a phone is connected, the PC window says so. Close it and everything stops at once — the capture included.
  • To make every phone ask for a new code: rigscreen-host.exe -forget

What it does not do yet

  • Sound stays on the PC for now.
  • No virtual gamepad yet — games get keys and the mouse. Most PC games take both.
  • Windows only. Linux and macOS versions are being made; they are not offered until they are tested on real machines.
  • A game started as administrator only takes keys from a program started the same way. Then start rigscreen-host.exe as administrator too.

What you need

WhereWhat
The PCWindows 10 or 11, 64-bit. A graphics card with a video encoder (AMD, NVIDIA or Intel) is best; without one the processor encodes.
The phoneRigDesk 0.91 or newer.
The networkBoth on the same Wi-Fi. 5 GHz or 6 GHz is best — 2.4 GHz works with a softer picture. A guest network keeps devices apart; use the normal one.

Questions

Can the phone use just my PC's memory?

No — and no program can. Memory answers in about 80 nanoseconds; Wi-Fi in one or two milliseconds, more than ten thousand times slower. A game reading its memory that way would not draw one frame a second. That is why the whole game runs on the PC, where its 16 or 32 GB are actually used, and the phone gets the finished picture.

Why does the picture sometimes get softer?

When the Wi-Fi cannot carry the chosen quality, RigScreen+ steps down on its own instead of letting the picture stutter. You can pick Light, Balanced or Sharp in the bar on top.

The phone does not find my PC.

Check that the PC window is open and both are on the same Wi-Fi. Then type the address the PC window prints under “Not found?” — some routers do not pass the search between devices, and the phone remembers the address after that.