enricobuehler
ac5299d4ce
The plugin's settings tab, fullscreen page, host editor and games picker are gone, and the
docs described all four in detail. Sweeps clients/decky/README.md and the docs site.
steam-deck.md gains a **Request access** section — the no-PIN path where the host's operator
approves the Deck, which is the one genuinely new thing a user gets — and says plainly where
the settings went: **Open Punktfunk → Settings**, the same rows over the same store, one tap
from the same panel. A removal that reads as a regression is worth a sentence, not a silence.
The troubleshooting table drops the rows for surfaces that no longer exist and gains the two
questions the new path will actually raise ("request access isn't offered", "the stream just
sits there").
client-settings.md claimed ~18 settings were "offered by … and Decky". None are; the console
home offers them. Its intro now names the console home's real sections (Stream, Video,
Presentation, Audio, Controller, Touchscreen, Interface, Profiles) instead of describing the
deleted sidebar.
Three claims in that file turned out to be wrong ALREADY, independent of this rework, and are
fixed here because verifying against crates/pf-console-ui/src/screens/settings.rs is what
found them:
• "Render scale — offered everywhere except the console home's list". RowId::RenderScale has
been in the console's ROWS since 2026-07-31.
• wake-on-lan.md: "Punktfunk Console has no auto-wake setting of its own". It does —
RowId::AutoWake, "Wake hosts automatically". Its Wake & Connect BUTTON is independent of
the setting, which is the true half that sentence was built on.
• The console home's Library button was documented as gated on the "Show game library"
toggle. It isn't — `library_enabled` appears nowhere in pf-console-ui outside the toggle
row itself; home.rs offers Library on any paired, saved host.
Also updated: support-matrix (Decky's Profiles and Game library go ✅/❌ → ⚠️ — the panel shows
pinned profile cards but creates none, and the library lives in the console home),
wake-on-lan (the plugin no longer fires its own packet or stretches the connect budget — the
CLI runs the real wake-and-wait), pairing, game-library, profiles-and-links, input, clipboard
and install-client.
11 KiB
title, description
| title | description |
|---|---|
| Wake-on-LAN | How Punktfunk clients wake a sleeping host — what has to have happened first, what a click does, the punktfunk wake command, and how to arm the machine so the packet actually lands. |
A host that is asleep answers nothing. Punktfunk works around that by remembering the host's network card address — its MAC address — while the host is awake, and sending it a magic packet, the standard Wake-on-LAN wake-up datagram, when you later ask to connect.
The Linux, Windows, Apple and Android apps do this by default. There is nothing to enable in Punktfunk itself. The work is on the machine: its BIOS/UEFI and its network card have to be armed to wake, and that is where Wake-on-LAN usually fails. Jump to Arming the machine if that is what you are here for.
How it works
While it is running, the host advertises itself on the local network over mDNS. One of the things it
publishes is mac — the MAC address of the network card that carries the IP clients reach it on
first, then any other non-loopback cards as fallbacks, at most four.
Each app stores those addresses on its saved host record. The Linux, Windows and Android apps refresh them whenever they see the host advertise; the Apple app refreshes them when you save the host and on every connect. When the host later sleeps it stops advertising entirely, but the client still has the addresses on disk, so it can still aim a packet at the machine.
That ordering is the whole prerequisite:
The client must have seen the host awake at least once, on a network where the host's mDNS advert reached it. Until then no address is known and there is nothing to wake with — the client says so rather than pretending. On every client but the Linux one you can also type the MAC in by hand; see the table below.
The packet goes to every local interface's subnet broadcast address and to 255.255.255.255, on
UDP ports 9 and 7, repeated three times, plus a unicast to the host's last known address. That
spread is deliberate: a sleeping machine has no ARP entry, so a plain unicast cannot find it.
Neither the advert nor a magic packet is authenticated. That is fine here — a wrong address only makes the wake fail, and the host's certificate fingerprint still gates the actual connection. See Security.
Waking from a client
Auto-wake on connect is a client setting, and it is on by default. You find it in Settings, in the Session group (Client settings covers what sits beside it); the TV and controller layouts list it among the other general settings. It is a property of the device and the network, so it is not part of a settings profile — "Game" and "Work" cannot disagree about it.
With auto-wake on, opening a saved host that is not advertising:
- Fires one magic packet immediately, then dials anyway. Missing from mDNS does not mean unreachable — a host reached over a VPN or another subnet never advertises at all.
- If the dial fails, shows a "Waking…" screen while it re-sends the packet every 6 seconds and watches for the host once a second.
- Gives up after 90 seconds. The Apple and Android apps, and Punktfunk Console (the controller-driven shell), park there with Try Again and a cancel, rather than throwing an error — a cold box that needs another ten seconds is common. The Linux and Windows apps close the wait and tell you the host didn't come online; start the connect again to retry.
- Reconnects when the host answers. In the Linux, Windows and Android apps, a host that came back on a different DHCP address has its saved record re-pointed at the new one.
Turn auto-wake off and a connect goes straight through with no packet and no wait. That is the setting for hosts behind a VPN, which look offline when they are not.
There is also an explicit wake action, and it works whether or not auto-wake is on. It sits on a saved host's own menu, and only appears when that host is offline and an address is known:
| Client | Explicit wake | Type a MAC in by hand |
|---|---|---|
| Linux (GTK) | Wake host — sends the packet and stops there | not offered |
| Windows | Wake host — sends the packet and stops there | MAC (Wake-on-LAN) under Edit… |
| macOS · iOS · iPadOS · tvOS | Wake Host — waits, showing the "Waking…" screen | MAC address in the Edit Host sheet |
| Android · Android TV | Wake host — waits, showing the "Waking…" screen | Wake-on-LAN MAC in Edit host |
| Punktfunk Console (controller shell) | on an offline host with a known address, the confirm button reads Wake & Connect — it waits, then connects | not offered |
Punktfunk Console carries the row too — Wake hosts automatically, in the same settings list the desktop apps write — but its Wake & Connect button is an explicit action and appears whatever that row says. In the Apple apps the same button appears when you drive them with a controller, but there it does follow the auto-wake setting.
The Apple apps also publish a Wake Host action to Shortcuts, so an automation can wake a host without opening the app. On iPhone and iPad it has a ready-made phrase: "Wake ⟨host⟩ with Punktfunk". It fails with a message if that host has no saved address yet.
On Android 17 and later the app needs the local-network permission before it can touch anything on your LAN — discovery, the stream itself and a wake packet alike. It asks for it when you open the host list, and shows an explanation with a link to system settings if you decline.
On the Steam Deck
The Decky plugin has no wake button and no wake setting of its own. It starts every stream through the client, so the wake is the client's, on exactly the terms above: a packet the moment the host doesn't answer, re-sent every 6 seconds while the client watches for it once a second, and the dial only when it really is back. It follows Wake hosts automatically in the client's own settings — Open Punktfunk → Settings from the same panel — and is a no-op until the client has learned that host's MAC address. (The plugin used to fire a packet itself and stretch the connect budget to 75 seconds to cover the resume; a wait that watches for the host beats a fixed budget, so that is gone.)
From the command line
punktfunk, the client-side command, has a wake verb. It ships with the Linux punktfunk-client
packages and the Windows client; inside the Flatpak it is
flatpak run --command=punktfunk io.unom.Punktfunk. See Host CLI for the rest of
it.
punktfunk wake <host-ref> [--wait]
A <host-ref> is a saved host's id, its name, or its address. Without --wait it sends the packet
and returns. With --wait it re-sends every 6 seconds and probes the host every second for up to 90
seconds, returning the moment the host answers.
| Exit code | Meaning |
|---|---|
0 |
The packet was sent; with --wait, the host came back |
2 |
With --wait, the host did not answer within 90 seconds |
5 |
No saved host matches that reference, the name is ambiguous, or no address has been learned for it yet |
6 |
That address is not a saved host — pair it first |
punktfunk launch wakes on its own: if auto-wake is on and it knows an address, it probes the host
first and runs the same wake-and-wait when it doesn't answer. You rarely need to chain the two.
Arming the machine
Two things have to be true on the host machine, and Punktfunk changes neither of them — deciding whether a machine may be woken off the network is yours to make.
- BIOS/UEFI. Turn on the setting called Wake on LAN, Wake on PCIe or similar. Its name and location vary by vendor.
- The network card. It has to be armed to wake on a magic packet.
Check the host log first
This is the fastest diagnosis. On Linux, the host inspects the card carrying the address it advertises, each time it starts advertising, and writes one of two lines:
Wake-on-LAN armed (magic packet) on host NIC
Wake-on-LAN is NOT armed on this host's NIC — clients cannot wake it from sleep.
The warning line goes on to name the interface and the exact command to fix it. The host only
reports; it never changes the card's settings. It stays silent when it cannot tell — ethtool
missing, or not enough privilege — rather than guessing, and it says nothing at all when mDNS
adverts are switched off (PUNKTFUNK_MDNS=0 or --no-mdns), because then no address is published
either.
Read the line on the web console's Logs page, or in the journal with
journalctl --user -u punktfunk-host. See Troubleshooting.
Windows and macOS hosts do not run this check, so there is no log line to look for there.
Linux
Ask the card what it is doing. Supports Wake-on: is the capability; Wake-on: is the current
setting. g means magic packet, d means disabled.
ethtool enp5s0
Arm it:
sudo ethtool -s enp5s0 wol g
On many systems that does not survive a reboot. Re-run ethtool enp5s0 after the next boot to check,
and make it permanent through your distribution's network configuration if it reset.
Windows
Open Device Manager, find the network adapter under Network adapters, and open its properties. On the Power Management tab, allow the device to wake the computer; on the Advanced tab, enable the adapter's magic-packet wake property if it has one. Exact wording depends on the driver.
Limits
- Wired Ethernet is what works. Waking over Wi-Fi is unreliable and depends entirely on the adapter and the platform.
- Connect once while the host is awake, on the same local network, before you rely on waking it. A host you only ever added by address, on a network where mDNS never reached it, has no learned address — the CLI will tell you so, and the apps will not offer the wake action. Typing the MAC in by hand is the way round that everywhere except the Linux app.
- Magic packets are broadcasts. They do not cross subnets, and they do not travel over a VPN or a mesh network. Client and host have to share a LAN segment for this to work at all.
- Punktfunk never puts a host to sleep, and never wakes one on a schedule. A packet goes out because a connect needs it, or because you asked for one.
- There is no host-side switch. The host publishes its MAC address and warns you when its card is not armed. Everything else — whether to wake, when, and how long to wait — is decided on the client.