I wanted to replicate the console experience: press a button on your controller, and the system (PS/XBOX) powers on. No login, no opening apps—just straight from shutdown to running, ready to play.
On Windows, this isn't as simple as it sounds due to key issues:
- How do you power on the computer from a complete shutdown without pressing the power button?
- How do you log in without typing your password?
- How do you open your preferred app on boot and be game-ready?
With Consolify, I aimed for a straightforward solution—powering your PC just by holding your controller.
Currently, Consolify only supports powering on your PC using a Raspberry Pi and a controller. I'll update this README as I expand the project. Feedback and suggestions are welcome!
- PC (with Bluetooth, either built-in or via an adapter)
Ideally, I recommend a dual-boot setup with Windows and Bazzite, but more on that later. - Raspberry Pi
I know this may seem surprising, but for my use case, it was the only easy way to trigger power-on. I'll explain why later. - A Controller (PS5, PS4, Xbox, etc.)
For obvious reasons. 🎮
- Wake-on-LAN setup for PC
- Raspberry Pi Bluetooth scanning
- Automatic PC wake-up with controller
- Seamless controller detection without pairing mode*
- Support for more controller types
- Full console-like experience (auto-login, app launch)
At first, I thought this would be simple. I saw a video where someone used an Xbox dongle with the "allow this device to wake the computer" option. Unfortunately, my Bluetooth adapter didn’t have this feature, and neither did my DualSense.
Then I came across Wake-on-LAN (WOL) and realized that with a simple command, I could turn on my PC from a terminal—even when I wasn’t home!
But this still wasn’t seamless. I didn’t want to open a terminal or use an app every time—I wanted it to work just by pressing the controller’s button.
That’s when it hit me:
My Raspberry Pi is already running services for my house—why not set it up for this too?
So, I wrote a script to let my Raspberry Pi automatically wake my PC when it detects my controller in pairing mode!
- The Raspberry Pi continuously scans for Bluetooth devices.
- When it detects a controller in pairing mode, it sends a Wake-on-LAN packet to the PC.
- The PC turns on!
Pressing just the PS/Xbox button makes the controller attempt to reconnect to its last paired device—which prevents the Pi from discovering it.
Pairing mode makes the controller actively visible, allowing the Pi to detect it and trigger the wake command.
- Open Device Manager → Network Adapters → Select your Ethernet/Wi-Fi Adapter → Properties.
- Under the Power Management tab, enable "Allow this device to wake the computer."
- Under the Advanced tab, enable "Wake on Magic Packet."
- Run:
sudo ethtool -s eth0 wol g(Replace eth0 with your network interface.)
- Install Required Packages on Raspberry Pi
sudo apt update && sudo apt install wakeonlan bluetooth bluez- Clone the Repo & Set run the wizard
git clone https://github.com/AnthonyKalampogias/Consolify.git
cd Consolify
chmod +x wizard.sh
sudo ./wizard.shIf you don't want to reboot, start the script manually:
./consolify.sh
Logs are stored in logs/consolify.log for debugging.
So in order to move forward with this project, I need to get the next step ready, which is
-
Setup a dualboot system with Bazzite and have a shared disk partition for the games so both Windows and Bazzite can see the same game library.
-
On boot, don't require login and open preferred game client immediately
To do this, my plan is to:
Split my disk into 3 partitions (I have a 2TB NVMe on my PC; you can do the same by just having multiple disks or tailoring it according to your setup): one for Windows, one for Bazzite, and the last one for games. I'll expand more on this as I go (ref. reddit post).
This way when the pc powers on it will go to bazzite where I will not set a password login (since my plan is to use bazzite only for gaming) and leave my windows user as is!
And finally set up Steam Big Picture to run on startup.