Try out an open-source app to access GeForce Now, while you can

GeForce Now is a pretty good solution for PC gaming if you’ve got a big game library, but want to access it remotely, or just without high-powered hardware. But the system is, of course, heavily reliant upon Nvidia — they built the service and the servers, after all. But what if you want to access it without giving Nvidia control of every part of the experience? Say hi to OpenNow, an open source client for GeForce Now.

That’s pretty much the end of it. According to the project’s GitHub page, it’s a project that “aims to give players a transparent, customizable alternative to the official client without hiding the technical parts from contributors.” Notably it’s absolutely not endorsed or authorized by Nvidia, and it’s being developed and maintained by a small team — just two at the moment, according to GitHub. The app collects “zero telemetry,” with settings and media stored on the local machine. Aside from authentication and the actual game stream itself, Nvidia doesn’t get anything.

It’s available on Windows, Mac, and Linux, with a native Arm Linux version, too — that means it should run on a Steam Deck, if you’re wondering. Using it, I was met with a pretty familiar feeling once you get past the initial launcher. It has all the same quirks of GeForce Now, including a little bit of jankiness with Steam and additional launchers in the remote window.

I’m neither an open-source expert nor a huge user of GeForce Now, but I have poked my head into it on a pretty regular basis. So I downloaded the Windows version and set it up, testing it against the browser-based version of GeForce Now. I thought that would be fair, considering the limitations versus Nvidia’s native app. I played a few rounds of some of my favorites in different genres: single-player RPG Baldur’s Gate III, 2D party fighter Brawlhalla, and 3D battle royale Fortnite.

It’s an impressive offering for a project from such a small team, and I appreciate that I can easily see the technical aspects of the stream to a much greater degree than on GeForce Now’s native browser app. (That one only really shows you an alert if something’s going wrong, and there are a lot of shades of performance in between “unplayable” and “a bit annoying.”)

That said, it seems to have some notable limits. On my 34-inch ultrawide, I was limited to 1080p resolution and 60 frames per second. Thanks to my account, I should be getting full 21:9 aspect ratio and up to 1440p resolution at a much higher framerate, which is doable in the browser version of GeForce Now. If you’re looking for high fidelity (and presumably paying for it), then this app isn’t quite there yet.

I was able to hold my own in Brawlhalla — a very fast, twitchy fighter reliant on positioning — and managed to get a victory in Fortnite, so there’s nothing wrong with the speed and latency of GeForce Now using the OpenNow app. At least not on Windows, and with my okay-ish home internet. So if you’re a GeForce Now user who really wants to use and support open-source software… well, then that’s a weird combination. But it’s a valid one, and it’s doable here. Unless you want an app for Android or iOS… but hey, you’re welcome to download the source code and build one yourself.

But I agree with VideoCardz, which brought this app to my attention. If I was relying on it as a “daily driver” for access to GeForce Now, and especially if I wanted to try my hand at customizing it with some open-source tweaking, I would worry about Nvidia shutting off access to OpenNow. Presumably someone at Nvidia really wants that telemetry data, and isn’t about to let users get in without it, especially on free accounts.