Will Hearthstone Ever Be Released on Android?: Setting up Splashtop and Using It as a Temporary Stopgap

As many of you surely know, Hearthstone was recently released on iPad but it isn’t scheduled to be released on Android or iPhone until the middle of the year or so (not to mention the various other platforms that it will likely never be released for). It seemed quite pleasant to be able to play Hearthstone on my Nexus 7 so I took the suggestion of Dills from The Angry Chicken (an excellent Hearthstone podcast) and looked into Splashtop as a way of accessing my PC from my tablet (and therefore being able to play Hearthstone from the comfort of my bed or couch).

Get Splashtop Personal for your PC (Windows, Linux, Mac) and mobile device (Windows Phone, iOS, Android, etc.) here.

Get Hearthstone here. If you want an introductory article on strategies for arena in Hearthstone, go here.

Update: As per Niedar’s comment on Reddit, Google just released Chrome Remote Desktop (another remote desktop solution) which I wrote about here. It works pretty well but you have to drag first to move your cursor around and then click, there is no sound carried over from your computer (no US Netflixin’ or Pandora-ing through your tablet like with Splashtop) and there are far fewer options (just shows all your monitors, no fancy touch configuration.). So as it stands, I would still recommend using Splashtop but maybe use CRD to avoid paying for the ability to connect outside of your network.

Splashtop was the ideal solution. As long as the devices I was using were on the same network I was able to connect to my PC for free. Of course, If I wanted to access them remotely I would have to pay a monthly fee to use that service, but that was of no concern to me since I was planning on just using it in my home. Unfortunately, the first time I tried this about a month and a half ago I was repeatedly stumped by the dreaded satellite icon (indicating that Splashtop believed I was trying to connect across networks) despite both devices being right by the router and in the exact same room. I tried jumping through various hoops including adding TCP ports 6873-6875 in my Windows firewall for the streamer to push data through, attempting to add those same ports on the port forwards on my router, and installing and re-installing the program. Eventually, I decided it wasn’t worth it and gave up for the time being.

With the release of Hearthstone on iPad I was prompted to revisit the issue and decided to give it a second go. After hours of searching and reading through countless forum threads with angry people expressing their frustrations regarding Splashtop (these kinds of difficult issues are bound to occur given the complexity of the software) I was finally able to forge a solution that worked for me. About two hours into my troubleshooting I decided to give turning off my Windows Firewall a try and magically I was able to connect my tablet to my PC through Splashtop! So, with this new information I knew that there was something going on with the firewall.

I spent hours adding obscure firewall rules, trying and retrying to set up the ports suggested, changing the ports and trying those, adding every executable in the Splashtop program file and installing 4 different versions of the software in the hopes that an older version might be more friendly to my current situation. It all amounted to nothing. That is, until I reflected on the firewall being my cause of my issues. If the firewall was somehow blocking the communication despite all my efforts… What if I replaced the firewall with something that I could manipulate more intuitively?

After some searching I came across Tinywall and installed it with fingers crossed. After setting it all up. Magically it worked! I was able to connect and the horrible saga was over. All I had to do was run it through the typical setup:

  • Put it in autolearn mode to detect what traffic it should be letting through.
  • Set it back to normal mode.
  • However, do be careful to make sure that you don’t have anything malicious residing on your system though or else it will be able to bypass your newly acquired firewall rendering it meaningless.
  • Whitelist Splashtop specifically using the whitelist by window option to be extra certain that it’s will be let through appropriately.
  • You may also have to whitelist the other Splashtop executables as well if it you run into any difficulties (SRFeature and SRService).

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Ah~, the sweet taste of success!

Now I’m happily playing Hearthstone on my tablet, streaming Netflix and Pandora and equipped with the means to access my computer remotely (should I choose to set it up to connect from externally). Tinywall is pleasant and allows me to avoid working with Windows Firewall which I find to be annoyingly cumbersome to modify anything in (which I became especially familiar with while adding 16 different executables to the whitelist).Overall, pleased that everything has worked out and excited to share my solution with everyone!

Check out the content below for additional information that may be of help to you if you’re still struggling or want to try a different approach.

That’s all for now. Have a pezant day!

I included the steps for setting up TCP ports 6873-6875 as Splashtop suggests in case you’d like to try that first. Maybe it’ll work for you!

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For more information on Tinywall, see Jim Hillier’s post about it here.

If you’re still having issues. This forum topic may be of help to you. It seemed to be the most useful amalgamation of fixes that I found throughout my searching (it may not have solved my problem, but at least it was heartening).

If you would like to use Splashtop from outside your home here is a guide from Splashtop to set it up using a Linksys router (the process is the same for other routers, the port forward and login pages just look different).

Note: If you liked this article. Consider donating or installing this Chrome Extension I made that gives me credit for your Amazon purchases (by adding in my referral tag when you’re browsing Amazon).

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