Steam Link

Steam Link

Touch Controller is a zombie, won't turn off when disabled
Recently this annoying behavior has been cropping up with remote play that's breaking some games I try to play. Usually, I connect over remote play using my iPad and Steam Controller, with touch disabled, and have no issues. In the past few days, something changed and now the app won't disable touch controls. (To clarify I specifically mean the touch overlay. Using the touch settings I can disable/enable the controller buttons, but not disable touch entirely)

I gathered the log from a short test run and I noticed that the app keeps transferring touch control packets,

[2021-02-06 09:50:51] CLIENT: Got control packet k_EStreamControlTouchActionSetActive [2021-02-06 09:50:51] CLIENT: Got control packet k_EStreamControlTouchConfigActive

and registers a touch controller as being present at all times. Ordinarily I wouldn't imagine this being a big issue, however when playing a game (Sleeping Dogs) the presence of the touch controller seems to set the game into KB+M mode when it should be set for a controller, locking up all the controller inputs entirely.
The other side effect of this is that the overlay for the touch controller is now omnipresent, never disappearing as it should. I've considered the possibility of something constantly triggering the touchscreen, however after testing I couldn't find any evidence of that.

I did following to try and disable touch controls but didn't have much luck:
  • Disabled touch under the app's "Controller Settings"
  • Selected a controller under the same settings
  • Disabled touch under "Advanced client settings" on host PC
  • Changed the controller order with my controller on top, and touch controller on bottom

I did note an update to the iOS app recently (and my tablet's software), so perhaps something in the latest update is what's causing the bug? The current workaround I'm going with is using the controller wired into the host PC directly, and disabling all input on the iPad :steamsad:

I'm curious if anyone else has encountered this issue, since my research hasn't turned up anything.