How to play your Sony Playstation 5 (or PS4) games from your Chromebook

Now that more people are starting to get their hands on Sony’s next generation gaming console, the Playstation 5, I can feel a little less guilty about getting one in the first place. between cloud gaming with stadia, geforce now, xbox game pass, etc, steam link beta for remote gaming, and even while we wait for official steam support on chrome os, there are plenty of options to play on chromebooks, but one thing What has always been missing is access to Sony exclusive titles on the go.

One would think that you would just have to launch Sony’s official remote play app from the Google Play Store to fill this gap, but it’s just atrocious. connects briefly, lags a lot and displays a lot of artifacts, then drops the connection almost immediately. The last time I tried to connect my ps4 dualshock 4 controller to my chromebook, it also went haywire which added to my frustrations.

For a long time, I had given up on using my ps4 outside of my living room, but when the ps5 launched, I started my search for a solution all over again. After some searching, I found a third party app that works better than the official offering and I wanted to share it with all of you. then i want to walk you through the process of getting it set up and running properly on your chromebook. It’s called ‘PS Play: Unlimited PS Remote Play (PS5/PS4)’ and it’s being offered on the Play Store for $5.99 USD by a developer called Florian Grill. if you just want to try it, you can find it at the end of this article.

I was hesitant at first to spend the six bucks to test the app; after all, how could this single developer create anything better than a corporation, right? well, that’s it, he did. that’s the world we live in. companies often struggle to meet consumer demands, and then a consumer comes along and creates something they want to bring to life. It’s often better than what the big guys can do, as they don’t have red tape to cut through to make the magic happen. ps play is like this.

configure playstation remote play

okay, after installing it i found that even with wi-fi it worked pretty well but your mileage may vary. I recommend using a chromebook, chromebox, or chromebase with an ethernet connection for best results. When you open the app you are greeted with a screen asking you to choose between connecting a playstation 4 and a playstation 5. I chose the ps5 because that is what I am using but again this app works great for both! /p>

then you will need to turn on your ps4 or 5, visit “settings”, go to “system”, “remote play” and then “link device”. From there, simply memorize the six-digit code on the screen, return to your Chromebook, and type it into PS Play. Please note that your chromebook and playstation will need to be on the same network for remote play to work. Once your code is accepted, you will be taken to a screen where you will need to log in to your playstation account.

great! You should now be connected and you will be presented with a message in front of a remote stream from your playstation titled ‘gamepad support’. this just tells you that you can’t use your dualshock 4 or dualsense controller via usb-otg. Basically, because you’re not playing the games directly on your chromebook, plugging it into your device won’t let you control your game console, naturally. instead, you’ll need to connect your gamepad via bluetooth.

connect your controller to your chromebook

To do that, simply visit your chromebook’s settings app, go to the “bluetooth” section, and then grab your controller. hold down the playstation button and the share button at the same time until your light bar flashes quickly. looking back at your chromebook screen, you should see “wireless controller” under the unpaired devices section. clicking it will jump to the paired devices section after a moment. now your dualshock 4 or dualsense controller should be connected. again i had problems with the ps4 controller but the dualsense connects and works perfectly.

Go back to the ps play app, hover over the top left of the screen and click the back arrow that appears. You will be asked if you want to disconnect from your remote game session. we’re going to go ahead and do that for a bit, but don’t click the option to put your console to sleep, we’ll be right back! click on the hamburger menu at the top left of the screen to slide out the menu and select ‘settings’.

improving your experience

We’re going to toggle a few things here in the app settings so you can get the best experience. you probably noticed that your connection quality was fuzzy a moment ago. That’s because the app gives you a default streaming quality that’s appropriate for your internet bandwidth. if you’re on wifi like me, it’s set to 540p resolution. visit the ‘streaming’ settings and choose ‘resolution’. change this to 1080p.

Next, scroll down to the “streaming gamepad layout” section and uncheck the “show gamepad layout on screen” box. this will make the virtual joystick and all other buttons disappear from the game session. this is important as we are not playing with touch, we have a real playstation controller attached!

Finally, if you notice that all the buttons on your favorite game don’t work exactly as they would if you were playing directly on your living room TV, you can visit the “button mapping” section to create profiles for each game or kind of game! This was a nice surprise I ran into when Final Fantasy XIV’s Back and Confirm buttons were reversed for me. There are plenty of other settings that make Sony’s official remote play app look like a kid’s toy, so I encourage you to check them all out before you start playing!

the result

voila! after clicking ‘local connection’ you will be taken back to your game session where you can choose a title to start. your screen should be clean and free of any app UI elements, and your stream should be of high quality. however, there is one disappointing thing you should know. If you are one of the many people using Playstation now to get access to over 900 games on your console, you cannot use them via remote play. technically that would be you broadcasting a stream, and sony just doesn’t allow it, so you’re restricted to games you have installed on your playstation 4 or 5 locally. however, I recently purchased a best buy 5tb external hard drive for only a hundred bucks, and it has allowed me to dramatically increase the number of games I have ready to play.

above, you can see me playing final fantasy xiv on my pixelbook go. If you want to use PS Play outside your home, you will need to set the “Remote Connection” option which requires additional information from the router. again, apart from my poor wifi connection, the experience is almost perfect. I wouldn’t recommend playing any twitch shooters or taking part in any raids on your chromebook without ethernet, but it’s still great to have access to another library of games on the go while you can check email and do other tasks between kills. creatures and level up.

hopefully one day sony will follow in everyone else’s footsteps and at least provide their ps now service through the web browser, but having access to a version of google play would be nice too. For now, it’s definitely worth taking advantage of your purchased games and getting a little adventurous with this awesome app. let me know in the comments if you’ll set this up or if you’d like me to walk through some chromebook game options step by step.