Forza Horizon 6 & FH5 Telemetry Setup for TachoDash

# How to Connect TachoDash to Forza Horizon 5 and Forza Horizon 6

Getting a Forza telemetry app onto your phone is usually described as complicated. With TachoDash it is two settings in the game and one tap in the app: switch the game's telemetry output on, tell it where your phone is, and the dashboard starts moving. Nothing goes through a PC, a capture card or an account.

This guide covers Forza Horizon 5 and Forza Horizon 6, which share the same setup path. If you are on Forza Motorsport 7 or Forza Motorsport (2023), there is one extra setting you must not miss — it gets its own section below.

What you need before you start

• A phone or tablet running iOS or Android.
• Forza Horizon 5 or Forza Horizon 6 running on your console.
• Both devices on the same Wi-Fi network. This is the one requirement people skip. If your phone is on mobile data, or on a different network from your console, nothing will appear no matter what else you set.
• About two minutes, once. The game remembers the setting, so this is not a per-session ritual.

Step 1: Switch on Data Out in the game

In game, open Settings → HUD and Gameplay → Telemetry.

Set Data Out to ON. It is off by default, which is why a fresh install of any Forza telemetry app shows an empty dashboard on first launch.

While you are on this screen, note the two fields underneath: IP address and Port. You fill those in the next step.

Step 2: Point the game at your phone

Here the Forza Horizon 5 data out IP address is simply the address your phone has on your home Wi-Fi. You can find it in your phone's Wi-Fi settings — look for the IPv4 address of the network you are connected to. Enter that in the game's IP address field.

For the port, pick any number outside the 5200–5300 range. That range is used by other things, and picking a port inside it is a silent failure: the game accepts the setting and the data goes nowhere. 5301 or 8080 are both fine. Write down whichever you choose — TachoDash listens on the port the game sends to, so the two only need to agree with each other.

Step 3: Open TachoDash and pick a theme

With the game running and Data Out already sending, open TachoDash. The app picks up the stream on your local network and the gauges move as you drive — the connection is a native UDP link over Wi-Fi, refreshed at frame rate, not a screenshot relay.

Pick any theme from the library to start. Every install includes free themes; premium themes are available as single purchases (Theme T1–Theme T10, $0.99–$9.99 each) or through a Monthly ($2.99), Quarterly ($7.99) or Yearly ($29.99) pass — USD prices, and local store pricing varies by region. You can switch themes later without redoing any of the network settings.

How to tell it is working

The dashboard moves when the car moves. That is the whole test. If the needles, digits and bars respond as you accelerate, brake or shift, the Forza Horizon 6 telemetry data out chain is complete end to end and you never need to touch these screens again on this network.

Two things worth knowing so you do not misread a working setup as broken:

• Menu screens show nothing. Many games stop sending data while paused or in menus, so a frozen dashboard on a pause screen is normal.
• A new Wi-Fi network means a new IP. If you move the console or the phone onto a different network — or your router hands out a different address — the game is still pointing at the old one. The fix is to re-enter the current address; the setting itself is unchanged.

If it is connected but nothing moves

Work through this in order, since each step assumes the one before it:

1. Same network? Check the phone is on Wi-Fi, not cellular, and on the same network name as the console.
2. Data Out ON? The setting occasionally gets reset after a game update or a settings reset.
3. Address still current? Compare the game's IP field against the phone's current address.
4. Port outside 5200–5300? If you picked something in that range, change it.
5. Game actually running? Data only flows from a live session, not from the front end.

If all five are correct on Forza Horizon 5 or 6, the stream is fine and the problem is on the app side — closing and reopening TachoDash re-binds the listener.

Forza Motorsport 7 and Forza Motorsport (2023): one extra setting

The same three steps apply, with one addition that catches most people: the output format must be set to Dash, not Sled. If you leave it on Sled, the game will happily send data the dashboard does not interpret, and the result looks exactly like a connection failure. Note that Forza Motorsport (2023) is also referred to as FM8 — same game, same setting.

Which games this works with

• Forza Horizon 6 — yes
• Forza Motorsport (2023) / FM8 — yes, with Dash selected
• Forza Horizon 5 — yes
• Forza Motorsport 7 — yes, with Dash selected
• Forza Horizon 4 — no. On the Xbox side the game does not expose the telemetry data the app reads. This is a limitation of the game, not a setting you can turn on, and no port or format change will fix it.

Once it is running

The setup is the boring part; what you get afterwards is the reason the app exists. TachoDash is a dashboard for the screen you already have — a phone on a mount, a tablet beside the wheel, an old handset on the shelf — with a growing library of themes that differ in typography, needles, colour and layout logic. Some read like a modern digital cluster, some are analog and vintage, some are deliberately quiet.

Two settings are worth finding early:

• Units are independent: mph or km/h, psi or bar, each set on its own.
• Theme parameters can be adjusted, so colours can be tuned to your rig without leaving the app.

TachoDash is built as a Forza telemetry dashboard and not a tuning or coaching tool — it is meant to look good on your rig and tell you what the car is doing, in that order.

Get TachoDash

TachoDash is available on the App Store and on Google Play. Browse the theme library to see the dashboards first, or use the download page for both store links side by side. If you want the wider picture before setting anything up, start with what TachoDash is.

TachoDash is an unofficial fan-made project, not affiliated with Playground Games or Microsoft.