Hacker Yifanlu published a tutorial over at vitasdk.org, explaining how to enable PS4 Remote Play on your PS Vita without PSN Sign-in. This is obviously useful for those of us willing to stay on firmware 3.60: hacked Vitas running on firmware 3.60 do not have PSN access, and are therefore losing access to several services available to the console.

Update: a PS Vita homebrew was released that now automates the whole process. You can check ps4relink here. Otherwise keep reading if you’d rather do it manually.

Yifanlu had released Netcheck bypass a few days ago, a PS Vita plugin that lets you bypass the PSN sign-in when it is required. For some apps where this is just a security check, this actually allows to use the app on a 3.60 firmware, while for others, PSN access might actually be required to use the app, in which case Netcheck bypass does not help. This was the case for Remote Play, in which case YifanLu’s plugin was not really helping (it will still be useful in the tutorial below to make the process smoother).

This tutorial just fixes that issue, and lets you use PS4 Remote Play without PSN Sign in on your PS Vita. And although today this requires lots of manual hex-editing, I wouldn’t be surprised if an app was released soon to automate the process (as a reminder, the GekiHEN homebrew competition just got its deadline extended to March 19th!).

PS4 Remote Play without PSN sign-in, on PS Vita

It is now possible to do PS4 Remote Play without PSN Sign in on the PS Vita thanks to YifanLu’s tutorial. You can find the tutorial here, we also reproduce it below.

 Remote Play requires a PSN sign-in at some point because when you sign-in to PSN, your online ID gets cached (along with your avatar image URL and banner image URL). The online id is required to link (make sure the same PSN account/online ID is used on both your Vita and PS4). If you logged in to PSN in the past (before PSN spoofing was disabled by Sony), then this cached info is already on your Vita. However, if you formatted your Vita after PSN spoofing was disabled OR you purchased your Vita after spoofing was disabled, then you need to manually create this cache file. This guide will lead you through in doing that. Creating the Online ID Cache Make sure your Vita is linked to your PSN account. You do not have to be activated! To ensure you are linked, restore your Vita (do NOT format your memory card unless you want to lose everything). Once you get to the welcome screen, select that you already have a PSN account and type in the information. If you remember doing this when you last went through the setup, you do not have to do it again. Download and open up a hex editor. Create a new file and fill it with 328 bytes of 00. 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 REPLACE the first N bytes of the file with your PSN online ID (the same one tied to your PSN account!) where N is the length of the name [Note from Wololo: you can use an ascii to hex converter to get this done]. For example, if my PSN online id was “MyAccountName” then N would be 13 and the hex would be 4D 79 41 63 63 6F 75 6E 74 4E 61 6D 65 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 Make sure the file is still 328 bytes! Save the file as myprofile.dat Enable HENkaku if you haven’t already. With VitaShell/molecularShell, copy the file to ur0:user/00/np/myprofile.dat. If any directory doesn’t exist, create it. Reboot your Vita and you can now use PS4 LinkUsing PS4 Link

When you use PS4 link, the Vita will attempt to log-in to PSN and prompt you to update. If you cancel out, then it will still work. If you don’t want to be annoyed by the prompt again, you can install https://github.com/yifanlu/netcheck_bypass

Source: Yifanlu on Vitasdk