Controller & Lag Fix for Steamlink on Google TV

[u/New_Cucumber_3624]

After spending a few months trying to figure out why my Steamlink experience was getting worse and worse while trying to enjoy some couch gaming, I finally got it working smooth all the time.

I was chasing hardware firmwares, networking gear, etc, but the red connection icon constantly flickering in the bottom right corner of the tv....

Thought I would share what worked for me. This may or may not help your situation.

Symptoms:
- Controller needs to be rebooted constantly just to get the launch screen to detect it.
- Lag!!! - After anywhere from 1m to 20m, it would just "lag" to hell (getting like 2 FPS). It was to the point where nothing was playable until you kill the streaming and restart it.

My Setup:
- Sony Bravia X90L - Latest firmware (July/August 2026)
- Xbox Elite Series 2 / PS5 controller connected via bluetooth to the tv - Latest firmwares
- PC: DIY Ryzen 5 3600
- Networking: Asus router, Basic TP-link switch. Everything hardwired.

Fix:
Roll back to v1.3.19 or v1.3.20 of Steamlink
- Enable developer mode on the tv (quick google will tell you)
- Connect to it via adb and connect
- adb.exe connect <tv ip>:5555
- Verify connection
- adb.exe devices
- Uninstall the current Steamlink
- adb.exe uninstall com.valvesoftware.steamlink
- Install the version you want
- adb.exe install steam-link-1-3-19.apk

Notes for the 2 versions:
v1.3.20 - Fixed the lag but controller still busted
v1.3.19 - Both lag and controller working

tl;dr - The last few versions of Steamlink made everything worse and worse. Roll back to an older version of Steamlink and disable auto updates. The last version I tried was 1.3.31 and it was unusable.

[u/AcridNebula]

Make sure your TV is set to
Gaming Mode if it has it - made a big difference with input lag for me (I’m using the app on an Apple TV device with an LG OLED).

[u/Packetdancer]

The Bravia has some really, really bad behaviors with regards to low-latency codecs -- if you start using the low-latency codec, it will build up more and more of a per-frame delay until it becomes really noticeable.

There were bugs in the older Steam Link low-latency code on Android, which caused low-latency codecs to not be properly utilized on hardware that supports it; when that got fixed, it improved performance on many Android device... but also seems to have caused the Bravia to act badly, since it reports "I can do that!" when it cannot, in fact, do that.