Homekit-steam-user-switcher: A way to remotely switch Steam users using HomeKit | Hacker News Reader

Homekit-steam-user-switcher: A way to remotely switch Steam users using HomeKit

github.com

54 pointsrcarmo16 comments

I’m convinced that Smart Home tech is the biggest missed opportunity in tech. For most people, it’s the closest they’ve come to programming (automation) or customizing technology. As seen here, it’s also the closest thing many people have to an at-home server.

It’s coming. GLMs are the best thing to happen to automation.

Interesting, I wrote something similar to switch my computer between the display in the office and the TV, and also switch the audio and disable / enable controllers in the rooms. But just went with a basic API over HTTP, which allowed me to just create shortcuts, and those are available on all my speakers / Apple devices so I can just say "hey siri, tv switcher tv" and it switches over.

It's neat because then everyone with access to your Apple Home can't login to your steam account and run up your credit card with purchases.

You can’t just buy stuff on any Steam PC.

Not sure what you mean? If you log into a Steam account with saved credit card information, you can most likely buy something.

You can’t purchase over Steam Link, for sure. And I just checked I need to confirm login on desktop mode (can’t even get to payment in big picture mode).

That's a good point I hadn't considered, Apple forced Valve to disable the Steam Store on their devices running Steam Link.

What a bizarre tool, I love it.

Can someone outline the kind of headless setup this would be used with?

Best I can figure, a TV with a Moonlight client connected to a basement computer running Sunshine, (or similar client/server system) then a homekit command with open steam with the desired account?

I use a setup like this via moonlight on a appletv when I want to play on the living room tv. The tv of the kids is a Samsung with steam link installed so it's really easy to use for them. I prefer it over classic VMs because you don't have to shuffle around gpus from docker to VMs if you want to play a bit. You can even run multiple headless steam dockers on one gpu for lower requirement games. With a setup like this you can still use the gpus for encoding/decoding tasks in jellyfin while playing.

https://github.com/Steam-Headless/docker-steam-headless

What does this actually look like in use?

This input switcher UI: https://9to5mac.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/2019/01/smart...

I don't have a TV with that feature but I assume you can also tell Siri to do it, or assign it to a "scene" to have quicker access to change to a particular user.

So you could have a TV widget on your phone that lists Alice, Bob, and Charlie, and when you pick Bob, his account is signed in on the gaming PC?

Yes

This is beautiful.

Love the hack.

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