BigBro Now Sees Your Game: Screen Scanning, Live Game Integration & Proactive Coaching

When we launched the desktop app in April, we listed two features under "what's coming next": screen scanning and voice coaching. Today, one of those ships — and it brought friends.

This is the biggest update since launch. BigBro no longer just listens to you describe your game. It sees it.

Screen Scanning Is Live

Remember typing ten hero names during a 30-second draft timer? That's over.

Hit one hotkey on the Dota 2 pick screen and BigBro reads the hero portraits off your screen — allies, enemies, all of them — in a few seconds. A quick confirm step asks which hero is yours, you fix any misread by dragging a portrait, and the whole draft is loaded before the timer runs out.

One hotkey: Ctrl+Shift+B (Cmd+Shift+B on Mac) scans the whole pick screen
Fast: a full ten-hero board reads in about three seconds — well inside the pick timer
Correctable: drag-and-drop any portrait to fix a slot, mark your own hero with one key

Ask "what should I pick?" and BigBro answers with real counter-pick data against the actual enemy lineup — because it just read it.

Live Game Integration (Dota 2)

This one goes deeper. BigBro now connects to Dota 2's official Game State Integration — the same read-only system the pro scene's broadcast tools use.

Setup is one toggle and one Dota restart. From then on, while you're in a match, BigBro knows your gold, your items, your KDA, and the game clock. No screenshots, no typing, no alt-tab.

That changes the answers. "Can I afford to fight?" gets answered with your actual net worth. "What do I build next?" knows what's already in your inventory and how the game is going.

A few things worth saying clearly:

It's official and read-only. One config file, sanctioned by Valve. No memory reading, no injection, no ban risk, no FPS impact.
Coaching, not cheating. BigBro sees what's on your own screen — it educates, it doesn't automate.
Dota 2 only for now. League of Legends keeps full screenshot and draft analysis while we work with what Riot makes available.

Proactive Coaching

Here's the part we're most excited about. With game integration on, BigBro doesn't wait to be asked anymore.

At the moments that decide games — a power spike you're about to hit, a timing you're about to miss — BigBro speaks up with a short, specific nudge. Not a wall of text. One call, when it matters, like a coach actually watching your game.

You stay in control: it's brief, it's rate-limited, and everything else still works on the ask-and-answer model you know.

Also Since April

We've shipped a lot of smaller things that add up:

Contextual hints that teach the power features (portrait fixing, overlay shortcuts) right when they're relevant
A game-integration status chip so you always know the live connection state at a glance
Spanish support across the app and coaching
Dozens of fixes across the overlay, dashboard, and updater

Included in Free

All of this — screen scanning, live game integration, proactive coaching — is part of the app, on every plan, including Free. Voice coaching remains the one thing in development, coming as the $6/month Gaming Experience tier. Join the waitlist to lock in early-access pricing.

Get It

If you already have the desktop app, it's updating itself — you're likely on the new version already. Enable Game Integration in Account settings, restart Dota 2 once, and you're live.

Download for Mac — macOS 11+ (Apple Silicon)
Download for Windows — Windows 10+
Or use BigBro in your browser

Let's reduce the friction and elevate the game.

— The BigBro team