Wake your PC for Steam Link, Moonlight or Parsec, from anywhere

Why the client cannot find a sleeping host

Every streaming client works the same way: host software on the PC — Steam, Sunshine, the Parsec host — advertises itself, and the client finds it and connects. Asleep, the PC is not running that software, so there is nothing to find. Where a client offers a wake of its own, it is a magic packet sent on the network the client is on: useful from the sofa, useless from anywhere else, because a broadcast does not cross the internet.

So the wake has to come from something inside the house that is awake and reachable from outside, and the streaming client's job starts only once the host is up. That is the whole of this page: put a sender on the network, make the rig wakeable, and keep the order — wake, confirm, connect. How to wake a PC remotely is the any-machine version; waking a gaming PC remotely goes deeper on the rig's own settings.

Make the rig wakeable first

Four settings account for almost every failure, in this order because each can hide the next. With the free agent on the PC, the Wake readiness section in the machine's settings on the dashboard reads the adapter and fast-startup settings for you and offers to fix both — on a Linux PC, the adapter setting alone, there being no fast startup to turn off; the compatibility check gives the click-path for doing it by hand.

1. BIOS or UEFI: turn on Wake on LAN. Boards call it Wake on LAN, Power On By PCI-E, Resume by LAN or Wake on PCI-E, usually under Power. If the board has ErP Ready, EuP 2013 or a deep-sleep option, turn it off: it cuts standby power to the network card and undoes everything else here.
2. Device Manager: let the adapter wake the machine. On the Ethernet adapter's Power Management tab, tick Allow this device to wake the computer and Only allow a magic packet to wake the computer. On the Advanced tab set Wake on Magic Packet to Enabled.
3. Power Options: turn fast startup off. Control Panel, Power Options, Choose what the power buttons do, Change settings that are currently unavailable, then untick Turn on fast startup. With it on, Shut down is a partial hibernation that parks the network card un-armed. Set Hibernate after to Never under Change advanced power settings as well, or a rig slept at midnight is hibernated by morning and deaf to the packet.
4. Use the cable. Ethernet wakes reliably and streams better. Wi-Fi wakes rarely, from sleep only, and never on a laptop — the Wi-Fi rig has its own section below.

Choose what sends the wake

The packet has to leave from inside the rig's own network, so the choice is which always-on thing in the house does the sending. Four things can, the first two you may already own, and any one is enough — and none of them is the rig itself. How to wake a PC remotely walks each one for any machine.

• The Echo. Enable the skill, link your Rooster Wake account, and give it the rig's name and network address; your own Echo then puts the packet on your own network, which is why it is free on every plan.
• The free agent on a box that stays on. Install it on a NAS, a Raspberry Pi, a Home Assistant box or a second PC — or as a container on the NAS — and that box sends for every other machine in the house. It cannot wake the machine it is installed on.
• A certified smart plug. For the rig that is genuinely off, frozen, or will not wake from sleep: it cuts and restores the mains, and a board set to start when power returns boots from cold, on the paid plans.
• A dongle you build. A Raspberry Pi Pico W in a printed case, for the household where nothing stays on: half a watt, and everything the agent carries.

Wake, confirm, connect — in that order

With a sender in place the rig is a row on your dashboard with a green Wake button. The order is always the same three steps, and the annoying part of remote play is the second — the fifteen seconds after the wake where you do not know whether to open the client yet.

Wake: press Wake from any browser or the phone app, and the packet goes out on your network a second or two later. Confirm: with the free agent on the rig, the row turns green — up now — agent connected — the moment the machine is up, on every plan, usually within twenty seconds; that is the machine saying it is genuinely up, not the packet being sent. On Plus and Pro, wake confirmation watches your own network for the machine answering and tells you it came up, or that it did not and why, pushed to your phone. Connect: open the client, and the host is there.

Store the client's own link against the machine — moonlight:// or parsec:// — and the row carries a Remote Desktop button that does all three as one press: pressed while the rig is asleep it sends the wake, waits for the agent to say the machine is up, and opens the link; on Plus and Pro it also holds the rig awake for ten minutes while the client connects. Steam Link has no link to store, so for Steam it is press Wake, wait for the green row, open the app.

The Wi-Fi rig, and the rig that will not wake from sleep

A desktop on Wi-Fi is a maybe. Waking over Wi-Fi means the adapter holding its place on the network through sleep and listening for the packet, which depends on the adapter, its driver and the router's key rotation; Modern Standby complicates it further. A laptop on Wi-Fi cannot be woken by packet at all. If a cable can reach the rig, run it — the stream wanted it anyway — and the maybe becomes a yes. If it cannot, test from the sofa: sleep the rig, send the wake, and if nothing happens the packet route is closed on this machine.

For that rig, and for the one that refuses to wake from sleep whatever you set, there is a second route that never uses the packet. A certified smart plug cuts and restores the mains, and a board whose power-loss option — Restore AC Power Loss, AC BACK, Power On After Power Failure — is set to power on boots from cold when power returns. The dashboard drives it through an agent or dongle on the same network, on the paid plans, with the same green Wake; the machine comes back by cold boot rather than resume, with nothing open. When you finish, the keep-awake timer's end on the paid plans shuts it down cleanly and the switch stays on, so the next Wake boots it again. The same plug power-cycles a rig that has frozen mid-game.

Sleeping it again when you stop playing

Waking needs nothing on the rig; sleeping does, because something has to ask Windows to suspend. That is the free agent on the rig, and with it there the row carries Sleep: press it from the phone when you put the controller down and the machine suspends in seconds. The free plan includes ten sleeps a calendar month; Plus and Pro are unmetered and add Restart… and Shut down… beside it.

Keep awake…, on Plus and Pro, is the other half: hold the rig up for a download or a long session, and the row shows the deadline. When the timer ends the machine goes back to sleep by itself unless somebody is using it, on Windows, macOS and Linux. A rig on a certified plug shuts down cleanly instead, because it comes back by cold boot rather than resume, and the switch stays on for the next Wake to cycle it.

The agent on the rig cannot wake the machine it runs on — asleep, it is asleep along with it — so it does not replace the sender above.

If the host is a Mac, or a laptop

A Mac wakes by packet over Ethernet only, from sleep only, and never from full power-off. Turn on Wake for network access, keep it on mains and on a cable, and every sender above brings it back from sleep as it would a PC; the free agent runs on it too, from its installer package, so the row reads the sleep when it happens, offers Wake, and offers to turn that setting on for you — Prepare for wake, in the row's Wake readiness section. An Apple-silicon Mac mini or Mac Studio used as a streaming host starts when power is applied, so a certified plug on the paid plans is its route from off.

A MacBook, or a gaming laptop on Wi-Fi, cannot be woken by packet at all. A laptop on a dock with a cable is a desktop for these purposes; off the dock, nothing on this page reaches it. Only the host has to be wakeable — the handheld you stream to is awake in your hands.

When the wake does nothing

Nearly every "it does not wake" is one of these seven, each with a check you can run at the desk before you are back on the sofa. The top ones are the most common, and each can mask the next.

1. The adapter setting is off. Check Device Manager, the Ethernet adapter: Allow this device to wake the computer ticked under Power Management, Wake on Magic Packet Enabled under Advanced. A driver update can silently reset both; with the free agent on the machine, the dashboard's Wake readiness section catches it and offers the fix.
2. Fast startup is on, and you shut down. The machine is hibernated, not off, and the card is parked un-armed. Check Choose what the power buttons do: Turn on fast startup unticked. Or sleep the machine instead — sleep is the state the packet is best at.
3. The machine was off, not asleep. From full power-off a PC listens only if the BIOS keeps the card fed and the driver's after-shutdown wake is on; a Mac never listens. Check: sleep it, send the wake, and if that works the missing setting is the BIOS one.
4. It is on Wi-Fi. Check whether the cable is in. Waking over Wi-Fi works from sleep only when it works at all, and never on a laptop.
5. Wrong network. A broadcast does not cross a VLAN, a guest Wi-Fi, a client-isolated network or, on some mesh systems, a different node. Check that the sender and the machine share a segment — same switch, off the guest network.
6. A BIOS power setting. ErP Ready, EuP 2013, deep sleep, or a mode that cuts the standby rail. Check the BIOS's power page with all of those off and Wake on LAN on — and take the right address: getmac /v, the Ethernet row, never a virtual adapter's.
7. It will not wake from sleep whatever you set, or it woke and the host software was not running. Some boards and adapters never arm for the packet. Check by sleeping the rig and sending the wake from the sofa, twice; if it never comes up, the plug route above is the answer — a certified plug on the paid plans boots it from cold, and a keep-awake timer's end on the paid plans shuts it down cleanly, switch on. If it comes up and the client still finds nothing, the host software did not start: set Steam, Sunshine or the Parsec host to run at sign-in, with automatic sign-in on for the account, or the rig wakes to a lock screen with no host behind it.

What the rig costs awake, and what you already own

A gaming desktop idling with the monitors off is commonly 60 to 120 watts. Asleep, it is two to five. Left on so the client can find it, the difference over a year is several hundred kilowatt-hours — multiply by your own tariff, the only figure that matters. The other half is not money: a rig that sleeps between sessions is quieter, cooler, and not running its fans at three in the morning.

On hardware, most households already own the sender: an Echo, a NAS, a Raspberry Pi or a Home Assistant box carries the wake at no cost; the dongle exists for the house with nothing always-on, and the plug for the rig the packet cannot reach. If the rig is at home and you are away in term time, waking your home PC from university is this page for that reader; other shapes of the problem are mapped in who uses Wake-on-LAN.