While Valve’s superior $399 Steam Deck is a succesful sufficient gaming system out of the field, a few of its greatest options are straightforward to overlook.
If you already know the place to look, you may customise the Steam Deck to your liking, reduce annoyances, and even develop your sport catalog nicely past the built-in Steam storefront.
Here, then, is a prolonged checklist of tips and tricks for the Steam Deck, loosely organized from easy to extra superior:
Know your fast instructions
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Long-press the Steam button, and you’ll see an inventory of fast instructions you may invoke from anyplace. A full checklist seems within the above screenshot, however listed below are just a few that it is best to strive committing to reminiscence:
- Adjust brightness: Steam + Left Stick Up/Down
- Force sport shutdown: Steam + Long-press B
- Take a screenshot: Steam + R1
- On-screen keyboard: Steam + X.
- Temporary cursor: Steam + Right Stick or Trackpad. Use R2 to click on.
Get sport strategies
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Not positive what to play on your Steam Deck? A pair strategies:
- From the house display, scroll down, then over to the “Recommended” tab. Steam will helpfully recommend untouched video games from your backlog.
- Hit the Steam button and choose “Library.” The first tab (“Great on Deck”) suggests video games which are fully-optimized for the transportable.
- Try enjoying a few of the smaller-scale, indie video games you’ve been neglecting. Chances are they’ll be simpler to select up and put down than, say, Elden Ring, and they could burn by means of much less battery life as nicely.
Check your battery life
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Tap the battery icon on the high of the display to shortly carry up the Performance tab. You’ll see a measure of projected battery life on the high.
Suspend and resume
With the Steam Deck, there’s no must stop your sport between play periods. Just press the ability button, and the Deck will enter sleep mode. Press it once more to shortly decide up the place you left off, even a day or two later.
(It’s nonetheless a good suggestion to save lots of your sport between periods if doable, and in fact placing the Steam Deck to sleep throughout multiplayer will most likely get you booted.)
Don’t miss Night mode
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If you’re gaming on the Steam Deck earlier than mattress, contemplate turning on Night mode to chop down on blue mild from the display:
- In Quick Settings: Head to the ⚙ settings part and toggle Night mode beneath the “Other” heading.
- In Settings: Look beneath the Display tab to schedule Night mode and modify the tint degree.
Minimize distractions
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Getting notified about buddy exercise throughout a sport is annoying sufficient on the desktop, nevertheless it’s even worse on the Steam Deck, the place display actual property is proscribed. Turn off these alerts beneath Settings > Notifications.
Browse in-game guides
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Need assist with the sport you’re enjoying? Instead of reaching for your cellphone, hit the Steam button, then choose “Guides” to carry up Steam’s player-contributed tutorials. Use the arrow buttons on the high to scroll by means of every web page. (Hey Valve, a search perform can be good.)
Tweak your efficiency profiles
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The Steam Deck’s Performance menu has plenty of tweakable knobs to fine-tune efficiency, visible constancy, and battery life, separate from in-game settings. Access this menu by hitting the … button, then choosing the 🔋battery icon.
Just a few choices to think about:
- Enable “Use per-game profile” earlier than making any modifications right here. That means you may modify settings on a game-by-game foundation as an alternative of throughout the board.
- To maximize the Steam Deck’s battery life with out main visible compromises, drop the Refresh Rate slider right down to 40 Hz, which can even cap the framerate at 40 frames per second.
- If you favor smoother framerates over larger decision, set the Scaling Filter to “FSR” and set FSR Sharpness to 4 or 5. Then, use in-game settings to decide on a decision decrease than 1280×800, akin to 1152×720 or 960×600. The FSR upscaling will restore a few of the sharpness with out affecting framerates.
Choose a default storage location
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If you’re increasing Steam Deck storage with a MicroSD card, set your default storage location beneath. Settings > Storage. Highlight both the inner drive or the MicroSD card, then press X.
You can even simply transfer video games between storage units from this identical menu. Just spotlight the sport, then press Y.
Learn to touchpad sort
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While utilizing the Steam Deck’s on-screen keyboard, put your thumbs on every trackpad and slide them round. You’ll see a round cursor for every thumb over the left- and right-hand sides of the keyboard, and you may both click on the trackpads or use the triggers to sort. There’s a studying curve, however ultimately it feels extra handy and correct than utilizing the touchscreen.
Change your keyboard
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Head to Settings > Keyboard to decide on between alternate types for the on-screen keyboard. You can even go to the Points Shop to amass further types at 5,000 factors apiece.
Check Steam Deck compatibility
While Steam has an official “Deck Verified” program that checks for sport compatibility, don’t neglect ProtonDB both. This community-built web site can present further insights for video games that don’t have an official stamp of approval, alongside with tweaks that may get them right into a playable state.
Use the button remapper
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If you’ve got numerous previous PC video games that weren’t made with controllers in thoughts, the Steam Deck’s button remapper is a killer characteristic. To use it, press the Steam button whereas enjoying a sport, choose “Controller Settings,” then hit the “A” button.
The potentialities are too in depth to cowl in a brief blurb—critically, you may even create your personal radial weapon wheels—so we’ve created a separate information utilizing the remapper to its full potential.
Stream from your PC
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Don’t scoff on the Steam Deck’s Remote Play characteristic, which helps you to stream video games from your desktop laptop. It can come in useful for a number of causes:
- You’ve received restricted time or scarce cupboard space to obtain extra video games.
- You need to preserve battery life whereas maximizing visible constancy.
- You need to play a sport that doesn’t natively assist the Steam Deck but.
To stream from your PC, hit down arrow subsequent to the “Install” or “Play” button for any sport, then choose your laptop from the checklist. Hit the “Stream” button to launch a distant play session.
Add a lock display
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To allow a PIN on the Steam Deck, head to Settings > Security. You can add lock display when waking up the console, or simply when switching to desktop mode. The latter’s particularly necessary if you happen to’re logged into electronic mail or different delicate accounts whereas utilizing the Steam Deck desktop.
Enter Desktop mode
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The Steam Deck’s true potential comes from coming into Desktop mode, which offers a full Linux-based surroundings for putting in extra software program—even from competing digital storefronts.
To enter the Steam Deck’s Desktop mode, hit the Steam button, scroll right down to Power, and choose ”Switch to Desktop.” Then, navigate with these controls:
- Right trackpad for cursor management.
- R2 and L2 for left and proper click on, respectively, or click on the suitable trackpad for a left click on.
- Steam + X for the on-screen keyboard.
Note that if you happen to shut down the Steam desktop app, the touchpad click on and on-screen keyboard will cease working.
Install extra software program
The best approach to set up non-Steam software program on your Steam Deck is thru the Desktop mode’s Discover retailer. Click the icon that appears like a buying bag, and you’ll see a variety of packages to put in, from Spotify and Discord to DOSBox and GZDoom.
Once put in, you’ll discover these packages within the utility launcher by clicking the Steam Deck brand on the bottom-left.
Add non-Steam apps to Gaming mode
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You don’t must be in Desktop mode to launch desktop apps. Instead, you may add them to Game mode for straightforward entry.
To achieve this, launch the Steam app whereas in Desktop mode. Then, hit the “Games” tab within the high menu and choose Add a non-Steam Game to My Library. If the app or sport doesn’t seem within the checklist that pops up, use the “Browse…” button to seek out it, then hit “Add Selected Programs.”
When you come to Game mode, you’ll discover these video games within the “Non-Steam” part of your library.
Install different sport sources
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After getting snug with Desktop mode, the subsequent step is to usher in video games from storefronts aside from Steam. Some choices to think about:
- Heroic Games Launcher offers entry to your Epic Games Store and GOG libraries and is out there by means of the Discover retailer. A separate utility known as HeroicBashLauncher can routinely add these video games to your Steam library, full with paintings.
- Lutris offers entry to the above shops and extra, and can be obtainable by means of the Discover retailer.
- Emudeck makes it straightforward to play traditional sport emulators by means of the Steam Deck’s Game mode, assuming you’ve got the required sport information.
- Check out this Reddit thread for one of the simplest ways to play Itch.io video games on the Steam Deck.
Transfer information with ease
Need to maneuver some information to your Steam Deck from one other laptop? Instead of swapping thumb drives again and forth, try Payload. Install this free app on each your laptop and the Steam Deck (in desktop mode), and you may switch information over your Wi-Fi community simply by dragging and dropping.
Consider a USB hub
For critical Steam Deck desktop customers, an inexpensive USB hub with HDMI output might be a useful addition. Plug it into the Deck’s USB-C port, and you may add an exterior mouse and keyboard whereas outputting video to a monitor or TV. (A correct Steam Deck dock may be value contemplating, official or in any other case.)
Deck out your Steam Deck
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To take Steam Deck customization to the subsequent degree, set up Decky Loader, which extends the Deck with a variety of user-made plugins. Want to swap out the Deck’s menu sounds or add management your music by means of the sidebar menu? Decky Loader makes it straightforward to take action. It’s additionally one of the simplest ways so as to add cowl artwork for non-Steam video games, utilizing the SteamGridDB plugin.
To set up Decky Loader, go to the mission’s GitHub web page from Desktop mode and click on the Download button on the high, then run the installer from your Downloads folder. After set up, return to Game mode, and you’ll see a brand new 🔌 plug icon within the … sidebar menu. Hit the shop icon on the high of the menu to browse for plugins from there.
…. to be continued
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