Heartbeat

Prevents On‑Together lobbies from expiring during long sessions, fixing the in‑game “Couldn't connect to the lobby” error by sending a periodic heartbeat to Steam.

Features

• Keeps your lobby joinable: Sends a small “heartbeat” update to your Steam lobby at a set interval so Steam doesn’t time it out.
• Works for hosts and dedicated servers: Runs whenever there is an active lobby, whether you’re hosting from the game client or running a server.
• Configurable interval: Adjust how often the heartbeat is sent to balance reliability vs. traffic.
• Tiny footprint: Does not touch gameplay or UI, only the lobby metadata.

Config options

Config file is generated at: BepInEx/config/com.ontogether.lobbyheartbeat.cfg

• LobbyHeartbeatEnabled: true

  • Turns the heartbeat on or off without uninstalling the mod.

• LobbyHeartbeatIntervalMinutes: 5

  • Minutes between each heartbeat.
  • Recommended to keep this under ~10 minutes so Steam doesn’t expire the lobby.

Manual installation

1. Install BepInEx 5 for On‑Together (from Thunderstore or manually).
2. Download the latest WhozHeartbeat.zip release for this mod.
3. Extract the zip into your On‑Together game folder so it merges into BepInEx\ (you should end up with BepInEx\plugins\Heartbeat\LobbyHeartbeat.dll).
4. Launch the game and host / start your server as usual. The heartbeat will run automatically any time a lobby is active.