Does HDR work with Steam Remote Play?

What you need

• Host: a Windows PC streaming with NVIDIA or AMD hardware acceleration. Those are the two encoders Valve names in the announcement that added full HDR-to-HDR streaming.
• Client: another Windows PC or a Mac with an HDR display. Steam Deck OLED was added as a supported HDR client in the Steam client released 1 September 2026.
• Client setting: Enhanced 1080p or Enhanced 4K must be enabled in the Steam Remote Play advanced client settings on the receiving machine. Valve states this as a requirement, not a recommendation.
• Steam client from 7 May 2024 or later on both machines, which is when full HDR-to-HDR streaming was added.
• The ordinary Remote Play requirements still apply: Valve recommends at least a quad-core CPU on the machine running the game, a client GPU with hardware accelerated H264 decoding, and a wired network.

Supported on

• Windows host to Windows PC client with an HDR display
• Windows host to Mac client with an HDR display
• Windows host to Steam Deck OLED, on the Steam client of 1 September 2026 or later

Limitations

• Valve's Steam Remote Play support article does not mention HDR anywhere — not in the requirements, not in the troubleshooting steps, not in the known-issues list. Everything above comes from three separate client changelogs, dated 7 May 2024, 28 April 2026 and 1 September 2026.
• The host must be a Windows PC. Valve's HDR announcement describes streaming from a Windows PC only, and says nothing either way about a macOS or Linux host.
• HDR is a client-side switch as much as a host one. A correctly configured Windows host will still send SDR if the receiving machine is on a preset below Enhanced 1080p, and nothing in the client tells you that is why.
• Steam Deck OLED could not receive HDR streams until the 1 September 2026 client, despite having shipped with an HDR display.
• Intel hardware encoding is supported for Remote Play in general, but Valve's HDR announcement names only NVIDIA and AMD.

How to set it up

1. Update Steam on both machines. Full HDR-to-HDR streaming needs the 7 May 2024 client or later; using a Steam Deck OLED as the receiving device needs 1 September 2026 or later.
2. On the host, open Steam > Settings > Remote Play > Advanced Host Options and confirm hardware encoding is enabled. HDR streaming is documented for NVIDIA and AMD encoders.
3. Still in Advanced Host Options, set the primary display, resolution and refresh rate to use while streaming, and set whether HDR is enabled. These controls were added in the 28 April 2026 client.
4. On the receiving machine, open Steam > Settings > Remote Play > Advanced Client Options and select Enhanced 1080p or Enhanced 4K. Without this the stream will not carry HDR.
5. Confirm the receiving machine's display actually has HDR turned on at the operating-system level — Valve's requirement is a client "with an HDR display", which the stream cannot supply on its own.
6. Start a game that supports HDR and check the picture on the receiving machine, not on the host.

Known problems

• On a Windows host with a Radeon card, an AMD driver bug could cause stream corruption and lockups. Valve added a workaround in the 28 April 2026 client, and says AMD fixed the bug itself in Adrenalin 26.3.1 — so update the driver as well as the client.
• If HDR reaches the receiving PC but the picture looks grey, flat or washed out, the cause is usually HDR configuration on that machine rather than the stream.