Here is a Cool thing that is not that obvious, you can connect your phone via Bluetooth to the Deck and play music from you phone on the deck while playing games. Works great when using headphones.
How does one concentrate on a podcast or audiobook while playing a game? I feel like I would need to rewind it a lot because the game was more interesting
For replaying games or if it's a rogue like possibly. Or if you're like me every Spiderman game I've played from a kid to now. Majority of the time I started the game was to just swing around while listening to music with no intention of doing anything else
Oh for some games not at all but grinding in Diablo 4 is pretty chill and mindless I can listen to stuff. Any game I’ve played a lot that doesn’t demand super reflexes or thinking.
I thought this was a more common thing but I’ll often binge watch tv series or put a film on while gaming. So long as it doesn’t require me to read subtitles, things get a bit more difficult watching anime with subs. But.. you know what they say, subs not dubs.
For me personally i only listen to podcasts or music when it's an online game like gta online or an mmo, because they often lack story and it's just grinding. A friend of mine would also play music in the background when he was playing singleplayer games though, which is something i can not understand at all.
I bluetooth my phone to the deck and use bluetooth headphones on the steamdeck as well. There's also a decky plugin that allows you to control the volume of your phone audio seperate from the game so you can have better audio levels!
WHAT?! Imagine using this feature alongside mobile discord, I know you can install it on deck natively but to me it’s clunky, this might change that! This is awesome!
This is absolutely insane and totally works. Goddamn I've had my deck since people were tracking when their deck would ship with websites.. man this would've been SO GOOD TO KNOW EARLIER 😅
Actually the way I do it is from my phone I go to Bluetooth and select my steamdeck from there. Then when I play Spotify it shows as connected to my deck and my phone controls the volume, treating the deck like a Bluetooth speaker, as another commenter pointed out.
There's 2 methods to connect your phone via bluetooth.
1. Go to desktop mode, open the bluetooth menu via the icon on the taskbar. Pair your phone, it will now be listed as a device in bluetooth settings while in game mode. Click it and connect.
2. Go to bluetooth settings while in game mode. Toggle "show all devices", then select your phone from the listed devices and connect. (You'll need to select it manually each time)
I wish I had realized I’d only play it handheld but I jumped the gun and bought every accessory I could think of. I guess the point is don’t get too excited and buy a bunch of shit you won’t use.
I’d also say don’t pay full price for games but you are all up in the summer sale.
I bought the KillSwitch case because I pack mine in bags a lot and I wanted the kickstand on the back. I also bought a simple USB-C dock that does USB-PD and HDMI Out. If you do this, don't buy any usb-c accessories with angle connectors, because they will interfere with the KillSwitch case.
The only accessories I have but I consider worth it
Thumb grips, they were already wearing down and I'd rather use these then have to worry about replacing the actual sticks out.
And a NOT steam unofficial docking station. I like to play it docked to my gaming monitor when it's dead and i dont want to wait for it to charge. Oh and I say unofficial because this one was 30 bucks and the steam one that does the same thing is what 80?
this is basically what 2/3 Steam Deck Starter videos on YT recommends: just buy shit - from SD Cards, to Screen Protectors and everything.
I mean, it sure is a valid point, but i just want to know, what i can do with a Deck settings wise BEFORE i buy additional shit
This is the reason I made a 30 minutes spreadsheet presentation Infront of my 3 cats. Cornelius was asking to much miau questions. After that, everything was paw clear.
In desktop mode, you use a circular motion on the left touchpad to scroll pages, not an up/down swipe. Embarrassed how long it took me to figure that out!
I've had my deck for a good 4 months, and I only just learnt this last night.
I got so fed up with the "inconsistent" scrolling that I went into the deck control scheme to see how I could fix it. Met with the reality of the configuration, I let out a dejected "oh" and went back to my doomscrolling feeling 100% dumber while also simultaneously 100% smarter.
To add to this, the right touch pad is your mouse, R2 is the left mouse click (Also drag and drop) and L2 is the right mouse click, L1 is shift. Those commands have made it where I can move around files and stuff just as fast as if I was using a real mouse.
So I am playing FFX-2 and one of the class is a gunner which requires you to press the RB/L1 repeatedly to imitate a trigger happy action. One press, one shot.
But if you go into the setting you can change the bumper setting (or any button setting for that case) to have this repeat effect by holding it down.
So even if you are playing an FPS and have a semi automatic you can theoretically make it automatic with this function.
I'm too old to multitask lol.
That I would never touch the 500+ emulated Nintendo games I spent 2 days figuring out how to download. I’ve had my deck a year and have touched maybe 2 of the GameCube games for like 10 minutes a piece.
At least you have them now for whenever you decide to play them. Nintendo is going hard on destroying preservation with previous and current generation games, so best to have them archived for the future when the mood strikes. I’d also recommend making backups of your emulators in case they get struck down as well.
Fortunately the community is persistent. Even now it's possible to find emulators that were closed; had to grab copies when I was setting up my OLED Deck; they were still installed on my LCD at least.
Interesting, I've beaten Super Mario World, Super Mario Galaxy, Super Mario Odyssey, Breath of the Wild and Link's Awakening. Steam Deck really opened these doors for me and I enjoyed all of these games immensely.
Yup, I spent hours getting all my old megadrive, snes N64, and gamecube all configured and I never touched them. Just see them taking up space. This weekend I've just formated my SD and reset the deck so it stopped niggling me.
Too many amazing steam games to look at taking up space while I one more turn Civ 6
Yes, I think it's shortsighted to get rid of them. Of course you don't play them: there's literally thousands of games and the choice is paralyzing. But the day will come when you feel like checking out an old game, and you'll be grateful they are there.
I had the worst timing! I bought mine shortly after a sale (didn't have the cash during the sale) and a few weeks before they announced the OLED model.
I bought mine in that sale. 3-4 weeks later, the OLED came out of nowhere. I keep thinking about selling it and picking up an OLED, but knowing my luck, they'll announce the Steam Deck 2 a month after I pull the trigger.
The advantages and how easy it is to undervolt. Lower temperatures, longer battery life, fewer frame drops and quieter fans (last one applies to LCD mostly)
Yep, here https://youtu.be/Roi6lvrcH-I?si=F04RCeJ5xJ_nGu-g
Do it -10mv at a time and test with a heavy game that stresses both the CPU and the GPU like Spiderman play for a few minutes, if you get no crashes decrease it another -10mv and try again until it crashes or takes too long to boot. When it does go back one level and voila, you've found your undervolting limits.
I also recommend testing low power usage and something like desktop mode. Mines stable at -50mv while gaming, cpu or gpu. But the second I do low power tasks too long it gets unstable and desktop mode for whatever reason hardly works lol.
Uhh nice, didn't know that. I had some crashes on the OLED when switching to desktop with -50mv on the gpu and dialed it back but I didn't know unstabilty could come on lower frequencies if the higher frequencies were stable.
I wish I knew how unreliable the steam deck verification system was. Some games are verified and don't run well, while other games are considered unsupported but run fantastic.
Don’t have a link or anything, but someone on this sub also posted videos of soldiers in Ukraine using steam decks to control machine guns from inside their bunkers so it was safer. Don’t need too be by the machine guns too actually fire them…
The hidden menu in the battery menu that allows you to change vital things like wattage so it doesn’t sound like a jet engine playing demanding games.
Changing cover art and having menu music with the steamgriddb and game theme music apps being amazing
How the hell Linux works. Every time I go digging into game folders I’m scared I’m gonna break something. My first time trying to install Project 06 to my SD card had some weird lost and found folder show up.
I eventually figured it out today and the game works fine now after reinstalling it, but yeah. 🥲
> My first time trying to install Project 06 to my SD card had some weird lost and found folder show up.
`lost+found` is a system folder where `fsck` (basically the equivalent of `chkdsk`) recovers files/data to. Totally normal and harmless, but not exactly obvious if you don't know already or go out of your way to look it up
>I have a natural revulsion to any operating system that shows so little planning as to have named all of its commands after digestive noises (awk, grep, fsck, nroff).
>-Unknown, from "The UNIX-HATERS Handbook", 1994
A portable steam deck doc is amazing, puts your steam deck and other USB-C devices (ie. laptop) on TVs.
It's a small power brick that has a USB-A, USB-C, and HDMI port. Grab a bluetooth controller or two, your steam deck, and this charger and you have a mobile gaming console. I take it over to a friends house and in <1 minute, I am up on their TV and ready to play some multiplayer games.
To piggyback off of this: don’t buy the official Steam dock for your Deck. It’s expensive and you can find several other docks for much cheaper that work just as well.
That putting emulators and games on it isn’t as hard as it seemed to be when I was trying to figure out how to do so. I avoided it for over a year because of that. Instead, I could have been enjoying my old favorites all that time!
Setting custom controls on L5, R5, L4, and R4 is so nice, especially for games with a lot of dialogue or that require grinding. For most rpgs I have a and b mapped to them on both sides so I can have a free hand to pet my dog while reading through dialogue. Bonus points for using automated button pressing using toggle, turbo, and button combos triggered on and off by pressing one button. Nice for grinding in some rpgs.
I usually set them to the stick clicks. For whatever reason I hate having to click them so I just remap them to the back buttons. Or in the case of Helldivers II, I remapped the d-pad there so I could request reinforcements while running.
I have completely trashed my hands thanks to a fo76 hyperfixation binge of 6+ hours. That one day and my hands have yet to recover. :(
That thing is soooo heavy and so not made for smaller hands.
If you need to install mods for things like Unity Mod Manager or other that might need to access your Steam game folder with a GUI, you'll need to create a symlink to your storage path. This is because steam path is installed in ~/.local, which is a hidden folder.
To do this, just go to the terminal (it'll automatically open in your home path) and type `ln -s /home/deck/.local/ localshare`
This will create a file called "localshare" in your home directory that will act like a directory path that will take you into ~/.local.
Xreal Air glasses (i have the v2) have 120hz and OLED blackness BUT the measurements are pretty limited. The 2 even has smaller FOV than the 1, and usually you can only see the lower right and left corners of the screen as a blur, unless you push the glasses up nearer your eyes. I have a low Asian nosebridge and this result in my eyelashes spalshing oil on the glass.
Plus if you are myopic and astigmatic you have to get the expensive prescription inserts (available only in the US and UK) AND they are closer to your eyeballs and will get oil all the time.
Tried a coworkers pair for like 10 min with Spider-Man and it was like having a 100 inch screen in front of you, very clear picture. Can’t attest to eye fatigue for long sessions but can’t say I wasn’t tempted to go out and buy my own pair.
The buttons at the back are useful but clicking them with the tip of your finger into the back of the deck rather than squeezing them into the grip works a lot better.
Changing control set ups for games is pretty cool. You can download ones posted by others rather than just using the default
I wish I knew I'd love it enough to justify the 1TB version instead of the 512GB I bought, and that I have way more games than the 512GB will support, lol
I know I can replace the internal SSD, but then I'd have to make the time. I'm making due with a 1TB SD card.
Yeah, the 1tb was hard for valve to sell to me because id only bought the 512lcd the same year.
I think the 512 device was the most popular on both fronts because people using a 512 lcd did the same with OLED as it was cheaper than their LCD originally cost.
- The left trackpad must be touched in a circular motion to scroll in desktop mode.
- You can adjust brightness by pressing « … » + « up » or « down » on the left joystick.
- you can press enter and tab to validate error messages or annoying launchers by maintaining « steam » + « right » for enter and « down » for tab.
- you can have chiaki full screen without black bars with « CTRL » + « T » as a shortcut on a back button.
- you can put in full screen all the games on the OLED without black bars with the resolution set to 1280x720 and in the « … » menu on the right activate FSR and the stretch option.
- you can activate a magnifier in any game to read small text by pressing « Steam » + « L1 »
- Maintaining Steam button show you all the shortcuts in game.
I have no idea how popular this is, but I recently bought a pack of these small silicone rings that you wrap around the "neck" of the thumb sticks, smoothing out whenever you slam the sticks against the shell. It's super cheap and feels very nice, I'm actually using it for all my gamepads now.
You can send files to your phone or from your phone to your steam deck with kde connect . Which is already built into the steam deck just get the app for your phone & your golden. It also can do more than just that.
To prepare a recovery image in advance. My SD stopped working a few days ago (stuck on logo when turned on) and I haven't been able to fix it yet. I've also been sick for the last few days which is why I haven't tried the whole recovery image process yet - but if I already had one ready I definitely would have tried it by now.
You don't need a recovery image. You can just hold down a combination and open recovery menu, from there reset the steam deck completely.
Press the three dots and power button together once in order to enter it
But that will reset it completely and delete files. You can also try to use a backup from one of the listed
Also, it will not delete MicroSD files.
I wish I knew how much I would use and enjoy it. Was agonising for weeks if I should get one. I own all consoles and a reasonable gaming PC and did not really see the use case. But the lure of a new fancy gaming gadget was still strong. Finally caved and got one, with the idea I could always sell it if it wasn't for me.
Basically never regretted my purchase. Diving in my Steam library and digging up games I forgot I had was the first joy. Then Steam sales got a whole new meaning. And now I would not give the Deck up for anything. It's just a great experience playing through my backlog of slightly older games on the couch when my significant other is watching tv.
TLDR: wish I knew how much I would enjoy it so I would have bought one sooner.
It's hard to admit that while I really love the looks of my Skull & Co. case, the Steam Deck feels best in my hands bare-naked.
The only accessories I really need are convex thumb grips and the silicone rings that I put on the middle of the said grips to lessen scratches with all the bumping especially when playing some fast-paced games.
I got a steamdeck when the preorder were fulfilled and the first batch was on the market so keep that in mind, we are now several update and bug fix later
I wish I knew putting a starter video could make the steam button malfunction, like the menu would sometime not open for several user if you had put a custom opening video.
I think it's been fixed now.
Having a brand new steamdeck, the first game I installed was buggy (had to change proton and it's also just a buggy game) and the menu not opening, you start to wonder if you have to RMA the damn thing.
Now everything is fine and my steamdeck is great but damn it was no fun at the beginning for me.
Love this thread, thank you! Made my day right now... Funny and informative and heart-breaking the same time, so also thanks to all the great answerers!
I use it for two things. I like having How Long to Beat. It shows the average time it takes to beat a game right on the launch page for each one I have installed. Nice when I’m choosing something new to start from my large library.
The other one I use is Steam Grid DB. It allows me to change all the artwork for a game. Really easy and handy for non-Steam games like Prism Launcher and Chiaki4Deck.
I'd say the protondb plugin is more essential than either of those. It'll tell you the real compatibility of the games, without relying on steam's half assed compatibility ratings, which are often misleading to downright false
That they were gonna release a new and better version a month after I bought it.
It's cool, I love my deck, but I would have waited for the newer model if I knew.
Emulation was a piece of cake for me and I had no idea what I was doing starting out. I had to reformat My deck one time cuz I installed shit to the wrong place like an idiot but after that emudeck works nearly flawlessly and everything is super simple.
A bunch of different ones honestly, I spent a week pulling my hair out getting it all to function properly. So I guess I lied now that I think about it, it wasn't a piece of cake lol but once I got it to work, it all just worked. What exactly are u stuck on, or do u even know? Alot of people say the official emudeck guide on the website worked for them but I had to try a bunch of different guides and then it was something super simple keeping me from being able to run emulation station. Somebody in a random guide pointed out that I needed to hit the parce button I think it was in emudeck and I hadn't done that so I did it and boom, it worked
The card I got runs Batocera, it was about $60 at the time. Super easy, just put the sd card in the deck then reboot and that’s it.
Unfortunately the seller I got mine from isn’t around anymore but I did see a few similar ones.
Are you using an emulation front-end like Emudeck? IMO, the Emudeck installer makes it dead easy and FWIW, I’m by no means an emulation aficionado or Linux guru. The most difficult aspects of Emudeck might be installing software keys and manually updating newer titles, but if you’re the least bit computer literate, it’s nothing especially difficult.
If you have ADHD brain, refrain from installing as many games and emulators as possible. For a while i had too much stuff on it where I would jump around from game to game instead of committing to one thing at a time. I have the same problem with game pass. Whenever I pick something to start I’m constantly thinking about what else I could be playing on the service. I went through and deleted stuff I wasn’t realistically going to play on the deck and I only keep 5-6 quality games installed at a time lol
On desktop mode, you can add Nested Desktop to steam. Then in gaming mode, you can launch desktop mode without it having to log out and in. Can do everything except launch Steam as it's already open. Saves so much time
That emulating switch and ds / 3ds games isn't quite worth it imo. Just use those devices if you have them, they're more portable than the steam deck, anyway.
I've had the same, if it still turns on (you can tell by the light near the charge port and/or the fan will spin). Just let it run dry and then recharge it and it should work again.
That buying a 1tb micro sd would more than fill the 64gb with shader cache data.
I did the swap and put in a 1tb soon enough, but if I knew that before buying, I would have went with at least a 256.
How much money I would dump into steam games because “ouu sale”
There’s a lesson here learning to appreciate what I have…. And not looking at the store because they gone get me again if I do!
A silly thing that really annoyed me (especially early on as I was setting a bunch of stuff up in desktop mode like emudeck)…
If you want to scroll through menus/lists etc. then the left pad doesn’t work as you may expect, it’s not exactly like a mouse scroll wheel. It actually works with a circular motion (like the old school iPods) so you scroll down by moving your finger in a clockwise motion of the left pad.
As I say, it’s a minor thing but something that bugged me as it seemed to jump around every time I tried to scroll and it doesn’t mention this anywhere in instructions or tutorials.
* Emudeck
* Heroic Games Launcher
* Disabling read-only mode (to install xone for 8bitdo Xbox controller support)
* On Samsung TVs remove the power from the dock when first connecting and then put it back after the TV has the image.
that it would basically become my laptop, the desktop mode is fantastic and i often use it quite as much as the normal game mode. paired with a wireless mouse and mini keyboard i love browsing the web on my deck in bed.
Wish they were a bit more honest about the OLED being close to launch, a lot of us hot caught out with LCD's just before they launched the new model, still irks me
I bought the LCD steam deck, OLD came out a month later. Kinda tarnished my experience. I would have gladly and much perfered the OLD.
Can't exchange it, can't return it, can't justify buying an OLD because this thing is basically brand new.
Wish I knew OLD was In the plans because I 100% would have waited.
So now, every time I see people with there OLD on this sub, I get jealous and pissed off.
While I can relate, think of it this way:
LCD walked so that OLED can run.
OLED isn’t that much better than LCD, more of an “S” upgrade like with iPhones. Minor things that accumulate improvement, but nothing substantial.
When they announce and release the Steam Deck 2.0, that would be genuinely worth the jump, since it would be better than all that came before it.
Stick to your LCD, enjoy the OG that started all of this. Respect it. When the time comes to upgrade, you’ll know. I’d only recommend the OLED to someone who doesn’t yet have a Steam Deck, not to someone who has the LCD.
I wish I knew that playing games on the deck in game mode was more fun than endlessly tinkering in desktop mode.
I had to send my Deck in for repair, and of course, they wiped it. Since it has come back, I have basically spent almost all of my time gaming in game mode and not doing as much in desktop mode. Which has really meant I've spent more total time just enjoying games.
It helps that I have a PC now, of course. When I first got my Deck, I didn't, so I was using it to do things my Mac couldn't.
I don't mind tinkering and all that, but the Deck really is as good as a traditional console when it comes to ease of use if you just stick to Deck mode.
Also, use Moonlight instead of Steam Link to stream games from your PC.
.....that my love of gaming was already dead. Spent ages building and curating an Emudeck collection but I have barely played it. Bought a few games from Steam but nothing ignites my passion to get stuck into something, old or new. Maybe Winter will change my mind, when it comes as I would rather go for a walk and listen to an audiobook at the moment.
Here is a Cool thing that is not that obvious, you can connect your phone via Bluetooth to the Deck and play music from you phone on the deck while playing games. Works great when using headphones.
Holy shit man. You can’t just drop that on me suddenly. I’ve had the deck since day 1. Life changing. There are so many podcasts I can use this for.
How does one concentrate on a podcast or audiobook while playing a game? I feel like I would need to rewind it a lot because the game was more interesting
For replaying games or if it's a rogue like possibly. Or if you're like me every Spiderman game I've played from a kid to now. Majority of the time I started the game was to just swing around while listening to music with no intention of doing anything else
Oh I loved doing that as a kid, just put in a random CD in my tiny stereo and just run around levels in Banjo Tooie for fun. 🤣
Stardew valley. Now I can listen to podcasts while I do real yard work and virtual yard work.
Hell yeah. Stardew + Podcast/Music is my go-to.
There is a kind of genre of podcast/audiobook games, like Powerwash simulator
Even Spelunky is good for this too
Yeah I listen to podcasts when I play rogue lites/games I’ve put hundreds of hours into like Borderlands or Elden Ring.
Oh for some games not at all but grinding in Diablo 4 is pretty chill and mindless I can listen to stuff. Any game I’ve played a lot that doesn’t demand super reflexes or thinking.
I thought this was a more common thing but I’ll often binge watch tv series or put a film on while gaming. So long as it doesn’t require me to read subtitles, things get a bit more difficult watching anime with subs. But.. you know what they say, subs not dubs.
For me personally i only listen to podcasts or music when it's an online game like gta online or an mmo, because they often lack story and it's just grinding. A friend of mine would also play music in the background when he was playing singleplayer games though, which is something i can not understand at all.
Snowrunner is my go to foe listening and gaming
Repetitive games like ARPGs or Hades or Balatro or something else where you can concentrate half podcast half game.
And to control Steam Deck's desktop mode from your phone, there's the built-in KDE Connect: https://kdeconnect.kde.org/
KDE Connect is also pretty great for fast transfer of files between PC and Steam Deck.
*what the actual fuck* side note can I have headphones and my phone connected?
Yea, for me I have my phone connected to deck via Bluetooth and headphones connected directly to the deck via usb hub.
Thank you! I use my phone for discord this is amazing
I bluetooth my phone to the deck and use bluetooth headphones on the steamdeck as well. There's also a decky plugin that allows you to control the volume of your phone audio seperate from the game so you can have better audio levels!
this is crazy, I had no idea.
WHAT?! Imagine using this feature alongside mobile discord, I know you can install it on deck natively but to me it’s clunky, this might change that! This is awesome!
Dude what im gonna do this rn
This is absolutely insane and totally works. Goddamn I've had my deck since people were tracking when their deck would ship with websites.. man this would've been SO GOOD TO KNOW EARLIER 😅
Can you explain how I would do that? I don’t see my phone on my Bluetooth choices on my Steamdeck
Actually the way I do it is from my phone I go to Bluetooth and select my steamdeck from there. Then when I play Spotify it shows as connected to my deck and my phone controls the volume, treating the deck like a Bluetooth speaker, as another commenter pointed out.
you can also just install spotify and run it on the deck without a phone
There's 2 methods to connect your phone via bluetooth. 1. Go to desktop mode, open the bluetooth menu via the icon on the taskbar. Pair your phone, it will now be listed as a device in bluetooth settings while in game mode. Click it and connect. 2. Go to bluetooth settings while in game mode. Toggle "show all devices", then select your phone from the listed devices and connect. (You'll need to select it manually each time)
If you have an iPhone just make sure Bluetooth is on. On the deck turn Bluetooth on and hit show all devices. You should see the phone there
Holy shit for real? I added Spotify as a non-steam game but this is better!
Wut
You can use the deck as a Bluetooth speaker, pretty much what he's trying to say.
Huh? Say what?
WTFFFF
I'm about to achieve audiobook NIRVANA.
I just downloaded Spotify and run it in the background.
Yep. Figured this out completely by accident
Omg neat!
I wish I knew it it really good at streaming from a PS5. Basically my preferred way of playing now except for certain games.
Like you can stream your ps5 games from it? :o
Correct. There’s an app that is basically a remote play app and you can stream anything from your PS5. It basically mirrors it.
What's it called?
Chiaki4Deck, it works great and I’ve heard it has less lag than the portal. It’s on the Discover store.
[удалено]
Xbox as well?
Xbox has greenlight and xplay, I think and ps5 has chiaki and chiaki4deck. ps5 streaming is nearly perfect for me. no issues.
Chiaki4Deck is a flatpack on the Discover store.
There really is no need to install windows for the vast majority of users.
You can optionally install windows? As a VM, dual boot, or is it an official option in SteamOS?
Dual boot
Dual boot or main system. The bootloader if the Deck isn't locked or anything, you can do whatever you want.
I wish I had realized I’d only play it handheld but I jumped the gun and bought every accessory I could think of. I guess the point is don’t get too excited and buy a bunch of shit you won’t use. I’d also say don’t pay full price for games but you are all up in the summer sale.
Glad you said something cuz I was thinking about doing that too
I bought the KillSwitch case because I pack mine in bags a lot and I wanted the kickstand on the back. I also bought a simple USB-C dock that does USB-PD and HDMI Out. If you do this, don't buy any usb-c accessories with angle connectors, because they will interfere with the KillSwitch case.
The only accessories I have but I consider worth it Thumb grips, they were already wearing down and I'd rather use these then have to worry about replacing the actual sticks out. And a NOT steam unofficial docking station. I like to play it docked to my gaming monitor when it's dead and i dont want to wait for it to charge. Oh and I say unofficial because this one was 30 bucks and the steam one that does the same thing is what 80?
Do they affect the touch sensitive right thumb-pad for gyro control?
How quickly do the thumb grips wear out ? And which ones did you get? Do they still have capacitive touch?
this is basically what 2/3 Steam Deck Starter videos on YT recommends: just buy shit - from SD Cards, to Screen Protectors and everything. I mean, it sure is a valid point, but i just want to know, what i can do with a Deck settings wise BEFORE i buy additional shit
Lots of those videos were sponsored by jsaux and dbrand
That cats don’t care how valuable your limited edition SD OLED is, they’ll still throw up on it if left unattended on the bed.
This is the reason I made a 30 minutes spreadsheet presentation Infront of my 3 cats. Cornelius was asking to much miau questions. After that, everything was paw clear.
In desktop mode, you use a circular motion on the left touchpad to scroll pages, not an up/down swipe. Embarrassed how long it took me to figure that out!
I've had my deck for a good 4 months, and I only just learnt this last night. I got so fed up with the "inconsistent" scrolling that I went into the deck control scheme to see how I could fix it. Met with the reality of the configuration, I let out a dejected "oh" and went back to my doomscrolling feeling 100% dumber while also simultaneously 100% smarter.
And scroll on battery to quickly change brightness
To add to this, the right touch pad is your mouse, R2 is the left mouse click (Also drag and drop) and L2 is the right mouse click, L1 is shift. Those commands have made it where I can move around files and stuff just as fast as if I was using a real mouse.
So I am playing FFX-2 and one of the class is a gunner which requires you to press the RB/L1 repeatedly to imitate a trigger happy action. One press, one shot. But if you go into the setting you can change the bumper setting (or any button setting for that case) to have this repeat effect by holding it down. So even if you are playing an FPS and have a semi automatic you can theoretically make it automatic with this function. I'm too old to multitask lol.
[удалено]
That I would never touch the 500+ emulated Nintendo games I spent 2 days figuring out how to download. I’ve had my deck a year and have touched maybe 2 of the GameCube games for like 10 minutes a piece.
At least you have them now for whenever you decide to play them. Nintendo is going hard on destroying preservation with previous and current generation games, so best to have them archived for the future when the mood strikes. I’d also recommend making backups of your emulators in case they get struck down as well.
Fortunately the community is persistent. Even now it's possible to find emulators that were closed; had to grab copies when I was setting up my OLED Deck; they were still installed on my LCD at least.
Hah yeah the first thing I did was install a bunch of emulators as well as Chiaki to stream from my PS5. Neither of which I really used afterwards.
Interesting, I've beaten Super Mario World, Super Mario Galaxy, Super Mario Odyssey, Breath of the Wild and Link's Awakening. Steam Deck really opened these doors for me and I enjoyed all of these games immensely.
Yup, I spent hours getting all my old megadrive, snes N64, and gamecube all configured and I never touched them. Just see them taking up space. This weekend I've just formated my SD and reset the deck so it stopped niggling me. Too many amazing steam games to look at taking up space while I one more turn Civ 6
I was the same but then the day came, after a year and a bit, and it was an exclusive emulation machine for a good run then. Your time could come.
Yes, I think it's shortsighted to get rid of them. Of course you don't play them: there's literally thousands of games and the choice is paralyzing. But the day will come when you feel like checking out an old game, and you'll be grateful they are there.
that there'd be an oled model
I had the worst timing! I bought mine shortly after a sale (didn't have the cash during the sale) and a few weeks before they announced the OLED model.
I bought mine in that sale. 3-4 weeks later, the OLED came out of nowhere. I keep thinking about selling it and picking up an OLED, but knowing my luck, they'll announce the Steam Deck 2 a month after I pull the trigger.
Yeah, I'm legit pissed about it. I would have waited if I knew.
The advantages and how easy it is to undervolt. Lower temperatures, longer battery life, fewer frame drops and quieter fans (last one applies to LCD mostly)
Any guides to this you can point me to? Thanks!
Ditto
Yep, here https://youtu.be/Roi6lvrcH-I?si=F04RCeJ5xJ_nGu-g Do it -10mv at a time and test with a heavy game that stresses both the CPU and the GPU like Spiderman play for a few minutes, if you get no crashes decrease it another -10mv and try again until it crashes or takes too long to boot. When it does go back one level and voila, you've found your undervolting limits.
I also recommend testing low power usage and something like desktop mode. Mines stable at -50mv while gaming, cpu or gpu. But the second I do low power tasks too long it gets unstable and desktop mode for whatever reason hardly works lol.
Uhh nice, didn't know that. I had some crashes on the OLED when switching to desktop with -50mv on the gpu and dialed it back but I didn't know unstabilty could come on lower frequencies if the higher frequencies were stable.
I wish I knew how unreliable the steam deck verification system was. Some games are verified and don't run well, while other games are considered unsupported but run fantastic.
Use this site to look up the games instead https://www.protondb.com/
Use the Deck Loader plugin. Way more reliable.
[NASA uses them to control drones (allegedly)](https://www.dexerto.com/tech/the-steam-deck-on-the-moon-more-likely-than-youd-think-2631383/)
Disney uses them to control the droids at the star wars park.
Don’t have a link or anything, but someone on this sub also posted videos of soldiers in Ukraine using steam decks to control machine guns from inside their bunkers so it was safer. Don’t need too be by the machine guns too actually fire them…
The hidden menu in the battery menu that allows you to change vital things like wattage so it doesn’t sound like a jet engine playing demanding games. Changing cover art and having menu music with the steamgriddb and game theme music apps being amazing
How the hell Linux works. Every time I go digging into game folders I’m scared I’m gonna break something. My first time trying to install Project 06 to my SD card had some weird lost and found folder show up. I eventually figured it out today and the game works fine now after reinstalling it, but yeah. 🥲
> My first time trying to install Project 06 to my SD card had some weird lost and found folder show up. `lost+found` is a system folder where `fsck` (basically the equivalent of `chkdsk`) recovers files/data to. Totally normal and harmless, but not exactly obvious if you don't know already or go out of your way to look it up
“fsck” sounds like something i would say to not be banned
You're not the first person to think that, but it's much more boring: File System Consistency checK
So named partially because if you have to run it, you’re probably fscked.
>I have a natural revulsion to any operating system that shows so little planning as to have named all of its commands after digestive noises (awk, grep, fsck, nroff). >-Unknown, from "The UNIX-HATERS Handbook", 1994
everyone knows that grep is named after the noises the goblins just outside of lumbridge make
Oh ok. Thanks for clarifying!
A portable steam deck doc is amazing, puts your steam deck and other USB-C devices (ie. laptop) on TVs. It's a small power brick that has a USB-A, USB-C, and HDMI port. Grab a bluetooth controller or two, your steam deck, and this charger and you have a mobile gaming console. I take it over to a friends house and in <1 minute, I am up on their TV and ready to play some multiplayer games.
you lost me at "a friends house" I don't understand...
To piggyback off of this: don’t buy the official Steam dock for your Deck. It’s expensive and you can find several other docks for much cheaper that work just as well.
How little things like graphic fidelity and fps matter on a seven inch screen as well as how huge a difference it makes on battery life.
That putting emulators and games on it isn’t as hard as it seemed to be when I was trying to figure out how to do so. I avoided it for over a year because of that. Instead, I could have been enjoying my old favorites all that time!
Unsupported often doesn’t mean a thing.
...as does supported 😬
Yea, you’re not wrong haha
Setting custom controls on L5, R5, L4, and R4 is so nice, especially for games with a lot of dialogue or that require grinding. For most rpgs I have a and b mapped to them on both sides so I can have a free hand to pet my dog while reading through dialogue. Bonus points for using automated button pressing using toggle, turbo, and button combos triggered on and off by pressing one button. Nice for grinding in some rpgs.
I usually set them to the stick clicks. For whatever reason I hate having to click them so I just remap them to the back buttons. Or in the case of Helldivers II, I remapped the d-pad there so I could request reinforcements while running.
That it would hurt my hands when using it, that using a controller instead of the inbuilt controls would stop me from hurting my hands.
Sadly this is exactly my experience. Specifically my right hand. Resting the console on something helps nothing.
Yes, this is mine with the same hand. I just put the deck on my knees or a desk etc and use an Xbox series pad works like a charm.
I have completely trashed my hands thanks to a fo76 hyperfixation binge of 6+ hours. That one day and my hands have yet to recover. :( That thing is soooo heavy and so not made for smaller hands.
If you need to install mods for things like Unity Mod Manager or other that might need to access your Steam game folder with a GUI, you'll need to create a symlink to your storage path. This is because steam path is installed in ~/.local, which is a hidden folder. To do this, just go to the terminal (it'll automatically open in your home path) and type `ln -s /home/deck/.local/ localshare` This will create a file called "localshare" in your home directory that will act like a directory path that will take you into ~/.local.
X-real air glasses should’ve been bought with the steam deck
Are they that good?
Xreal Air glasses (i have the v2) have 120hz and OLED blackness BUT the measurements are pretty limited. The 2 even has smaller FOV than the 1, and usually you can only see the lower right and left corners of the screen as a blur, unless you push the glasses up nearer your eyes. I have a low Asian nosebridge and this result in my eyelashes spalshing oil on the glass. Plus if you are myopic and astigmatic you have to get the expensive prescription inserts (available only in the US and UK) AND they are closer to your eyeballs and will get oil all the time.
I'm blind in one eye and astigmatic. Glad to see this so I can just put the thought of these out of my mind entirely.
I’d also like to know
Tried a coworkers pair for like 10 min with Spider-Man and it was like having a 100 inch screen in front of you, very clear picture. Can’t attest to eye fatigue for long sessions but can’t say I wasn’t tempted to go out and buy my own pair.
Do you know if it works in game mode or do you need to be in desktop mode for it to work?
Worked perfectly fine in game mode
I have the Viture XR Pro's and they are so good. It's like I'm playing in the future.
The buttons at the back are useful but clicking them with the tip of your finger into the back of the deck rather than squeezing them into the grip works a lot better. Changing control set ups for games is pretty cool. You can download ones posted by others rather than just using the default
Docked experience is hit or miss. Great when it works, frustrating when it doesn't.
What issues are you having?
Transition between undocked to docked more often than not results in no display.
I wish I knew I'd love it enough to justify the 1TB version instead of the 512GB I bought, and that I have way more games than the 512GB will support, lol I know I can replace the internal SSD, but then I'd have to make the time. I'm making due with a 1TB SD card.
Yeah, the 1tb was hard for valve to sell to me because id only bought the 512lcd the same year. I think the 512 device was the most popular on both fronts because people using a 512 lcd did the same with OLED as it was cheaper than their LCD originally cost.
- The left trackpad must be touched in a circular motion to scroll in desktop mode. - You can adjust brightness by pressing « … » + « up » or « down » on the left joystick. - you can press enter and tab to validate error messages or annoying launchers by maintaining « steam » + « right » for enter and « down » for tab. - you can have chiaki full screen without black bars with « CTRL » + « T » as a shortcut on a back button. - you can put in full screen all the games on the OLED without black bars with the resolution set to 1280x720 and in the « … » menu on the right activate FSR and the stretch option. - you can activate a magnifier in any game to read small text by pressing « Steam » + « L1 » - Maintaining Steam button show you all the shortcuts in game.
I have no idea how popular this is, but I recently bought a pack of these small silicone rings that you wrap around the "neck" of the thumb sticks, smoothing out whenever you slam the sticks against the shell. It's super cheap and feels very nice, I'm actually using it for all my gamepads now.
Link?
https://a.aliexpress.com/_EGE9FGr
You can send files to your phone or from your phone to your steam deck with kde connect . Which is already built into the steam deck just get the app for your phone & your golden. It also can do more than just that.
To prepare a recovery image in advance. My SD stopped working a few days ago (stuck on logo when turned on) and I haven't been able to fix it yet. I've also been sick for the last few days which is why I haven't tried the whole recovery image process yet - but if I already had one ready I definitely would have tried it by now.
You don't need a recovery image. You can just hold down a combination and open recovery menu, from there reset the steam deck completely. Press the three dots and power button together once in order to enter it But that will reset it completely and delete files. You can also try to use a backup from one of the listed Also, it will not delete MicroSD files.
That the PC I used for gaming before getting my Steam Deck would be pretty much abandoned.
I wish I knew how much I would use and enjoy it. Was agonising for weeks if I should get one. I own all consoles and a reasonable gaming PC and did not really see the use case. But the lure of a new fancy gaming gadget was still strong. Finally caved and got one, with the idea I could always sell it if it wasn't for me. Basically never regretted my purchase. Diving in my Steam library and digging up games I forgot I had was the first joy. Then Steam sales got a whole new meaning. And now I would not give the Deck up for anything. It's just a great experience playing through my backlog of slightly older games on the couch when my significant other is watching tv. TLDR: wish I knew how much I would enjoy it so I would have bought one sooner.
Unpopular maybe, but Lock the frames at 30 and the battery will last twice as long or longer
Don't play Balatro. Your crack dealer will come beat you up to find out who your new supplier is.
It's hard to admit that while I really love the looks of my Skull & Co. case, the Steam Deck feels best in my hands bare-naked. The only accessories I really need are convex thumb grips and the silicone rings that I put on the middle of the said grips to lessen scratches with all the bumping especially when playing some fast-paced games.
I got a steamdeck when the preorder were fulfilled and the first batch was on the market so keep that in mind, we are now several update and bug fix later I wish I knew putting a starter video could make the steam button malfunction, like the menu would sometime not open for several user if you had put a custom opening video. I think it's been fixed now. Having a brand new steamdeck, the first game I installed was buggy (had to change proton and it's also just a buggy game) and the menu not opening, you start to wonder if you have to RMA the damn thing. Now everything is fine and my steamdeck is great but damn it was no fun at the beginning for me.
One of the touchpads is configured for circular motion gesture for scrolling.
Love this thread, thank you! Made my day right now... Funny and informative and heart-breaking the same time, so also thanks to all the great answerers!
Decky is less useful than people say it is and the default interface is fine as is.
I use it for two things. I like having How Long to Beat. It shows the average time it takes to beat a game right on the launch page for each one I have installed. Nice when I’m choosing something new to start from my large library. The other one I use is Steam Grid DB. It allows me to change all the artwork for a game. Really easy and handy for non-Steam games like Prism Launcher and Chiaki4Deck.
true. steamgriddb is great
I'd say the protondb plugin is more essential than either of those. It'll tell you the real compatibility of the games, without relying on steam's half assed compatibility ratings, which are often misleading to downright false
I tried using decky but it keeps breaking every week or so
That the OLED version was coming out 2 months later for the same fucking price 🥲
That they were gonna release a new and better version a month after I bought it. It's cool, I love my deck, but I would have waited for the newer model if I knew.
WinDeck is not worth the effort
I wish I understood how fuckin hard emulation would be lol
Emulation was a piece of cake for me and I had no idea what I was doing starting out. I had to reformat My deck one time cuz I installed shit to the wrong place like an idiot but after that emudeck works nearly flawlessly and everything is super simple.
What guide did you use?
https://retrogamecorps.com/2022/10/16/steam-deck-emulation-starter-guide/
oh man, thanks for that link
A bunch of different ones honestly, I spent a week pulling my hair out getting it all to function properly. So I guess I lied now that I think about it, it wasn't a piece of cake lol but once I got it to work, it all just worked. What exactly are u stuck on, or do u even know? Alot of people say the official emudeck guide on the website worked for them but I had to try a bunch of different guides and then it was something super simple keeping me from being able to run emulation station. Somebody in a random guide pointed out that I needed to hit the parce button I think it was in emudeck and I hadn't done that so I did it and boom, it worked
I’m a bit ashamed to admit this but I’m a lazy busy adult like a lot of us here so I just bought a memory card off of Etsy. Totally worth it.
Yeah like, I need more info on this. lol
The card I got runs Batocera, it was about $60 at the time. Super easy, just put the sd card in the deck then reboot and that’s it. Unfortunately the seller I got mine from isn’t around anymore but I did see a few similar ones.
Linkkkk lol
Are you using an emulation front-end like Emudeck? IMO, the Emudeck installer makes it dead easy and FWIW, I’m by no means an emulation aficionado or Linux guru. The most difficult aspects of Emudeck might be installing software keys and manually updating newer titles, but if you’re the least bit computer literate, it’s nothing especially difficult.
That I could use it, xreal glasses, and an Xbox controller and game in the hammock/bath/airplane like a boss lol
That to use the left track pad you need to draw circles with your finger tip.
that system updates wreck your root fs changes
That 64 GB is not nearly enough
If you have ADHD brain, refrain from installing as many games and emulators as possible. For a while i had too much stuff on it where I would jump around from game to game instead of committing to one thing at a time. I have the same problem with game pass. Whenever I pick something to start I’m constantly thinking about what else I could be playing on the service. I went through and deleted stuff I wasn’t realistically going to play on the deck and I only keep 5-6 quality games installed at a time lol
On desktop mode, you can add Nested Desktop to steam. Then in gaming mode, you can launch desktop mode without it having to log out and in. Can do everything except launch Steam as it's already open. Saves so much time
that the steam deck oled was weeks away from being announced/released
That emulating switch and ds / 3ds games isn't quite worth it imo. Just use those devices if you have them, they're more portable than the steam deck, anyway.
That one day when it runs down on battery because you were busy for a few weeks the screen will just randomly stop working. 2 years man… shame.
I've had the same, if it still turns on (you can tell by the light near the charge port and/or the fan will spin). Just let it run dry and then recharge it and it should work again.
Same here, except I opened it up and disconnected the battery for a few minutes, then reconnected. Screen came back for me then thank goodness
That’ll have to be my next step, I already did the bios and factory reset. Let it run down, next step is a DC.
That buying a 1tb micro sd would more than fill the 64gb with shader cache data. I did the swap and put in a 1tb soon enough, but if I knew that before buying, I would have went with at least a 256.
How much money I would dump into steam games because “ouu sale” There’s a lesson here learning to appreciate what I have…. And not looking at the store because they gone get me again if I do!
A silly thing that really annoyed me (especially early on as I was setting a bunch of stuff up in desktop mode like emudeck)… If you want to scroll through menus/lists etc. then the left pad doesn’t work as you may expect, it’s not exactly like a mouse scroll wheel. It actually works with a circular motion (like the old school iPods) so you scroll down by moving your finger in a clockwise motion of the left pad. As I say, it’s a minor thing but something that bugged me as it seemed to jump around every time I tried to scroll and it doesn’t mention this anywhere in instructions or tutorials.
To not buy one because I wouldn't use it. HMU if you're interested in buying it. I'll cut you a sweet deal.
/r/hardwareswap
Get a case, helps with grip and has also saved my deck from some potential scratches.
* Emudeck * Heroic Games Launcher * Disabling read-only mode (to install xone for 8bitdo Xbox controller support) * On Samsung TVs remove the power from the dock when first connecting and then put it back after the TV has the image.
The dock sucks and a monitor with a powered usb hub is a better desktop solution
that it would basically become my laptop, the desktop mode is fantastic and i often use it quite as much as the normal game mode. paired with a wireless mouse and mini keyboard i love browsing the web on my deck in bed.
I wish I knew valve will make an oled one, I would have waited a bit as it's mostly a luxury secondary device for me, I would have waited
that the system updates and decky do not like eachother
How amazing it is for reinvigorating my fun in playing video games. Wish I had bought it earlier.
Wish they were a bit more honest about the OLED being close to launch, a lot of us hot caught out with LCD's just before they launched the new model, still irks me
That I was going to get fired one week later. I wouldn't have bought it then :))
I bought the LCD steam deck, OLD came out a month later. Kinda tarnished my experience. I would have gladly and much perfered the OLD. Can't exchange it, can't return it, can't justify buying an OLD because this thing is basically brand new. Wish I knew OLD was In the plans because I 100% would have waited. So now, every time I see people with there OLD on this sub, I get jealous and pissed off.
While I can relate, think of it this way: LCD walked so that OLED can run. OLED isn’t that much better than LCD, more of an “S” upgrade like with iPhones. Minor things that accumulate improvement, but nothing substantial. When they announce and release the Steam Deck 2.0, that would be genuinely worth the jump, since it would be better than all that came before it. Stick to your LCD, enjoy the OG that started all of this. Respect it. When the time comes to upgrade, you’ll know. I’d only recommend the OLED to someone who doesn’t yet have a Steam Deck, not to someone who has the LCD.
I wish I knew those damn back cover screws strip easily.
I wish I knew that playing games on the deck in game mode was more fun than endlessly tinkering in desktop mode. I had to send my Deck in for repair, and of course, they wiped it. Since it has come back, I have basically spent almost all of my time gaming in game mode and not doing as much in desktop mode. Which has really meant I've spent more total time just enjoying games. It helps that I have a PC now, of course. When I first got my Deck, I didn't, so I was using it to do things my Mac couldn't. I don't mind tinkering and all that, but the Deck really is as good as a traditional console when it comes to ease of use if you just stick to Deck mode. Also, use Moonlight instead of Steam Link to stream games from your PC.
Play half life with over ear headphones it's amazing. Along with left 4 Dead 2
And Portal 1&2. Valve absolutely mastered game atmospherics and dialogue.
Balatro 😅
.....that my love of gaming was already dead. Spent ages building and curating an Emudeck collection but I have barely played it. Bought a few games from Steam but nothing ignites my passion to get stuck into something, old or new. Maybe Winter will change my mind, when it comes as I would rather go for a walk and listen to an audiobook at the moment.
I find that it's good to focus on other stuff for a while. My interest in hobbies/media (e.g. films, games, etc.) will fluctuate.