Porthole - Local Port Sharing has been released in version 3.0.0.

The free tool gives Steam friends access to local network ports without port forwarding. New are the experimental Virtual LAN addon, addons, an anonymous mode without a Steam client, joining through a friend, better performance under load and a Halloween Theme Pack.

3.0.0 is here, and it’s even bigger than 2.0.0. Porthole can now put your whole lobby on one network, can run without Steam open, and got a lot faster under load. Here’s what changed:

One LAN for the whole lobby (experimental addon) The new Virtual LAN addon puts everyone in the lobby on one network, like a real LAN party. LAN-only games find each other on their own, and whatever a member hosts is reachable by the others at a fixed address, no ports to pick. The host switches it on in the lobby settings, and members join from the Virtual LAN tab. It has its own firewall, so file sharing, remote desktop and the like stay closed while games get through. Members also link to each other directly, so their LAN traffic doesn’t detour through the host. Works on Windows, Linux and macOS, even alongside other tunneling or proxy software. It’s still experimental, so please let us know how it goes!

The Halloween Theme Pack Five new backgrounds: Haunt, Witchcraft, Ghosts, Pumpkins, Pumpkins and ghosts. Plus four matching colour schemes, haunted banners, tombstone, eye and flask avatar frames, spooky badges and name styles. Everyone in your lobby sees your banner, frame, badge and name. It’s a separate pack from the Supporter Pack, and just like it, cosmetic only.

Addons Porthole can now be extended with addons: small sandboxed scripts that can only do what they declare up front. The bundled ones are off by default, so nothing bloats the base app. Settings > Addons lists them and shows what each one may do before you turn it on. A lobby also shows which addons it uses, so you know what to enable before you play.

Faster when it counts

• Smoother speed and lower ping under load. Porthole learns the rate the relay allows and stays just under it.
• Game packets now get a priority lane of their own.
• The first connection after you open Porthole starts at the speed it settled at last time, so a game’s opening burst shouldn’t spike your ping.
• Packet loss is counted from what each side actually receives, so Wi-Fi or a jittery link no longer reads as heavy loss.
• A download limit next to the upload limit, under a new Bandwidth group in Settings. Both apply live.

Join through a friend Can’t reach the host directly? Porthole can route you through another member who allows it, and shows the whole chain on hover. If going through someone would clearly be faster, Porthole offers to switch, without leaving the lobby. Who may connect through you is up to you: nobody, friends only (the default) or anyone.

Anonymous mode Anonymous mode runs Porthole without a Steam client, in the window or on the command line, so a machine without Steam can host or join by code. Hosts decide whether anonymous players may join. For a server that runs around the clock, porthole expose now hosts headless, and the command line can do everything the GUI does: ports, members, passwords, temporary codes, bandwidth and more.

Make yourself at home A new Appearance window gathers everything about how Porthole looks: the background, the colours, frosted panels, which header buttons show, and your own row in the member list. The Supporter Pack got a free update too: banners behind your name (Gold and Weave) and more avatar frames. Streaming? Anonymize players hides everyone’s names and avatars on your screen, yours included.

Plenty more that’s new

• Discord Rich Presence: your Discord profile shows that you’re hosting or in a lobby, which game and how many are in.
• Connection details: click a member’s ping for an hour of ping, loss and speed graphs, the full route, and connection settings you can change live.
• A new welcome screen with the hosts you joined before and Porthole’s news.
• A member who stops answering is flagged within seconds.
• The chat says why someone left when it wasn’t their choice: lost connection, kicked or banned.
• Members can invite their friends into friends-only and private lobbies when the host allows it, and the host can let someone in by Steam ID.
• Relay locations show real place names instead of codes.
• Every privileged change shows the exact command before anything runs as administrator.
• A Preferred renderer setting for machines where the automatic graphics choice misbehaves.
• Porthole now runs on Intel Macs in addition to Apple Silicon.

And it’s tougher now

• When a host quits, its players are told right away instead of waiting out a timeout.
• After a dropped connection, the reconnect window should no longer hang on its first attempt, and you rejoin automatically once the host is back.
• Joining a host that isn’t running gives up after about 15 seconds and says so.
• Porthole should now start on Steam clients that failed to update over the past year (attempted fix for the “Couldn’t start Steam” error).
• Fixed a crash when the connection to Steam dropped mid-session, and heavy packet loss right after someone joined.
• Supporter cosmetics should show up reliably instead of blinking in and vanishing.
• Report issue is now a proper bug reporter: describe what went wrong, press Send, and the log comes along.

What’s next The Virtual LAN is the big one we want to get right, so expect it to keep improving. After that: persistent lobbies, a voice chat addon, and a good chunk of our to-do list as we get ready for the open-source release.

Source: Steam