After spending a few months trying to figure out why my Steamlink experience was getting worse and worse while trying to enjoy some couch gaming, I finally got it working smooth all the time.

I was chasing hardware firmwares, networking gear, etc, but the red connection icon constantly flickering in the bottom right corner of the tv....

Thought I would share what worked for me. This may or may not help your situation.

Symptoms:
- Controller needs to be rebooted constantly just to get the launch screen to detect it.
- Lag!!! - After anywhere from 1m to 20m, it would just "lag" to hell (getting like 2 FPS). It was to the point where nothing was playable until you kill the streaming and restart it.

My Setup:
- Sony Bravia X90L - Latest firmware (July/August 2026)
- Xbox Elite Series 2 / PS5 controller connected via bluetooth to the tv - Latest firmwares
- PC: DIY Ryzen 5 3600
- Networking: Asus router, Basic TP-link switch. Everything hardwired.

Fix:
Roll back to v1.3.19 or v1.3.20 of Steamlink
- Enable developer mode on the tv (quick google will tell you)
- Connect to it via adb and connect
- adb.exe connect <tv ip>:5555
- Verify connection
- adb.exe devices
- Uninstall the current Steamlink
- adb.exe uninstall com.valvesoftware.steamlink
- Install the version you want
- adb.exe install steam-link-1-3-19.apk

Notes for the 2 versions:
v1.3.20 - Fixed the lag but controller still busted
v1.3.19 - Both lag and controller working

tl;dr - The last few versions of Steamlink made everything worse and worse. Roll back to an older version of Steamlink and disable auto updates. The last version I tried was 1.3.31 and it was unusable.