It’s not secret I’m a big fan of streaming your games. There is nothing better than having your PC or games console in a fixed location, but being able to play anywhere in the house via a phone, tablet or even another PC. Go even further an multiple people can play on the same single machine via VM’s and you only have to maintain a single PC that can be hidden, let’s say in a loft, and all you need is a cheap Chromebook that you can throw in a backpack for out and about.
Steam Link is probably the single best in home streaming experience in my opinion, to the point it’s my daily driver for everything including competitive fps.
This leaves a big hole though. On any PC, tablet or phone Steam link allows you to stream your PC games, even remotely, in great quality for some of the best in home streaming. Of course we recommend a decently beefy PC for this, maybe even some hardware encoding for the best experience. But of course, there is a more budget friendly option… the Xbox consoles.
If you have even a budget PC, laptop, phone, tablet etc etc, you can stream your Xbox console to your device, unless you are unfortunate to own a Macbook or iMac (which we all know are TERRIBLE for gaming).
Now you do have options, you could use OneCast (OneCast – Xbox One game streaming for Android, Mac, iOS and Apple TV). I tried OneCast and to their credit, the experience was very good. Gameplay was smooth, crisp and well presented, but it comes with a cost (£20.48 at the time of writing).
There is another way however, and this one is free.
This is where I’m glad I found Greenlight, a project by tech enthusiast unknownSKL. This super slick app provides all the benefits of OneCast completely for free. One quick .dmg download and a login to Xbox and I was connected to my console and streaming in seconds over WiFi.
The framerate is a little lower than experienced on Steam link, however I fired up grounded and found it perfectly acceptable to explore the Koi pond, find a BURG.L chip and build myself a small outpost for some stinkbug hunting. I even managed to fight a wolf spider without incident!
Greenlight might be a passion project, but it feels professional!
Now this is in no way good for reaction heavy games like Forza, or COD MW2, but for the casual poo time gamer? Absolutely perfect! I would 100% recommend both Xbox and Mac are on a gigabit ethernet connection, however I run through a Unifi AP on the Mac, and the Xbox on ethernet via a Unifi switch flex and performance was spot on. Your mileage on an ISP provided WiFi router will probably be less than perfect so grab those patch cables!
Grab yourself V2.0.0 beta at Releases · unknownskl/xbox-xcloud-client · GitHub to your Mac, (Steam Deck, Windows and Linux are supported as well!) and enjoy streaming your Xbox to your Mac device as well!
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