Does Rust+ work when your PC is off?
Last checked
Yes. Rust+ itself does not need your PC. It runs between the Rust server and the Rust+ app on your phone, so Smart Alarm alerts and team chat keep working with your computer switched off. What stops is anything that runs on your PC: desktop companion apps, Discord bots you host yourself, and tools that read your screen.
What Rust+ does on its own
Rust+ is Facepunch’s official companion app. In Facepunch’s own words it lets you “communicate with your team from anywhere”, and Smart Alarms “send customizable push notification alerts when an electrical signal is detected”. None of that involves the game running on your computer. The alert goes from the Rust server to the phones of the players who paired that alarm.
What needs a computer running somewhere
Anything that relays Rust+ somewhere else, such as a clan’s Discord, has to keep its own connection to the Rust server open the whole time. Whatever holds that connection has to stay on. So it matters where it runs:
- On your PC, as with a desktop companion app or a bot you run yourself, it stops when the PC sleeps, shuts down or loses its connection. That is usually overnight, which is when bases get raided.
- On a server that is always on, it keeps going regardless of whose computer is off.
What can stop alerts even with nothing on your PC
- The Rust server restarting or going down. Rust+ has nothing to connect to until it is back.
- A wipe. A map wipe invalidates the pairing and every paired device, so alarms and switches have to be paired again afterwards. A tool that does not tell you this simply goes quiet.
- A destroyed device. A Smart Alarm that has been blown up cannot report anything, including that it is gone.
How Rustconnect handles it
Rustconnect holds the Rust+ connection on our own servers, around the clock, so no one in your clan needs to leave anything running. Raid alarms go to your clan’s Discord, where the whole team sees them, not only the phones where the alarm was paired.
A raid is usually many alarm triggers, not one. On one night a single raid set off an alarm 29 times in 19 minutes; Rustconnect reported it as one raid with a count, rather than 29 separate pings. It also tells you when a paired device stops responding, when the server wipes, and when the connection to the server drops and comes back, so a quiet channel means quiet rather than broken.
Rustconnect is in closed beta. See pricing, or whether a companion tool can get you banned.