NVIDIA GeForce NOW

Related articles
Gaming#Remote gaming
Chromium
GeForce NOW
is a
cloud gaming
services that lets users play video games in the browser (including on Arch Linux) and on dedicated apps available on other platforms.
Unlike other cloud gaming platforms, GeForce NOW connects to video game digital distribution services such as
Steam
and the Epic game store, where  games have to be bought separately from the GeForce NOW subscription. Given the nature of Cloud Gaming, you will not need to install the client from these services on your computer.
It is available either as an official
Flatpak
package from NVIDIA, or can be used without installation in a Chromium-based web browser.
Flatpak version
To install the
Flatpak
package, start by adding NVIDIA remote to your system:
# flatpak remote-add --if-not-exists GeForceNOW https://international.download.nvidia.com/GFNLinux/flatpak/geforcenow.flatpakrepo
Then proceed to install the package:
# flatpak install GeForceNOW com.nvidia.geforcenow
Note
The
official NVIDIA instructions
involve a binary graphical installer (
GeForceNOWSetup.bin
) that roughly does the equivalent of above upon its execution, preceded by a check for Ubuntu-based system for whether
Flatpak
is installed, and installing it otherwise.
Browser version
Usage
GeForce NOW
supports
Chromium-based browsers out of the box, it should work for most people on
Chromium
.
Note
While it is possible to change the User-Agent string to have your favorite
browser
appear as Chromium, it may not work correctly (some user have reported that the mouse cursor would not appear in games when running Firefox).
Non-qwerty keyboard layout
As of October 2021, the setting to change keyboard layout may not be visible when accessing GeForce NOW on Linux.
In some cases, the following steps allow to access this setting by making Chromium appear to run on Windows.
Edit indexDB
The values for the keyboard layout are saved in the indexDB, in the database "gfnclient" in the objectstore "sharedStore". You can use a webextension like
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/indexeddbedit/npjecebdjnmlolggnoajngnlodhgpfac
, to edit this values. Simply install the extension, reload play.geforcenow.com. Now open Dev-Tools (F12) and find the database with the objcetstore. Here you can add a key for "keyboardLayout" with the proper value for your language. German example:
{
   "key": "keyboardLayout",
   "value": {
     "name": "Deutsch",
     "code": "de-DE"
   }
 },
After saving, reload the page and you are done.
As an alternative, a
user-proivded extension
exists, with all the currently pre-defined layouts from the GFN page. Since this extension is not in the Chrome Webstore, you must sideload it as unpacked extension.
Launch Chromium with disabled User-Agent Client Hint
User-Agent Client Hint
is a new feature on Chromium-based browser designed to improve over User-Agent strings. Unfortunately, because it is new, there is not yet an extension that let users change it.
To disable this feature, launch Chrome or Chromium this way :
$ chromium --disable-features=UserAgentClientHint
Note
Using this command, the website can only rely on a User-Agent string to determine your OS, which will be dealt with in the next step.
Change your User-Agent string to make your OS appears as Windows
Warning
Web extensions can access your browsing data, please check extension permissions before installing them. On Chromium, always use the Chrome Webstore, but be aware that not all extensions in the Chrome Webstore are reviewed by Google.
Multiple extensions exist to switch the User-Agent string, they can be installed using the Chrome Webstore.
While Google provides one of these, it seems to not reliably alter the User-Agent string, notably on GeForce NOW.
User-Agent Switcher and Manager
is another extension with this feature. The Firefox version being recommended by Mozilla, it seems trustworthy enough.
This later extension provides a list of common User-Agent strings to choose from. Selecting the first "Chrome on Windows" one will work.
If you are using another extension, a User-Agent string such as this one will work :
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/99.0.7113.93 Safari/537.36
Tip
User-Agent strings contain the version of the web browser. If you read this article in the future, you may have to find a newer one to have your browser appear up to date.
Access the keyboard layout setting
With these steps applied, the keyboard layout settings will be available in the main settings panel, below the Network settings.
See also
NVIDIA's System Requirements page (Linux)
NVIDIA's System Requirements page (Browser)
NVIDIA's Linux installation/troubleshooting instructions
NVIDIA GeForce NOW official download