These are lists of some tools and software that are useful for Steam Deck and can enhance your experience with it, as well as all the websites and other such Steam Deck resources I know.

I made these lists for the wiki on Reddit's SteamDeck sub and I thought it was a pretty useful to keep around. I wanted to dump them here for everybody to preserve them and to maybe find a new home for this Steam Deck resource.

Let me know what you think.

List of tools and homebrew

Below is a list of tools and homebrew that can enhance your experience with the Steam Deck. Since the Steam Deck offers most things that a normal Linux desktop environment can, tools are included that can be found in the Discover store (including from non-default repositories) and have proven to be an especially good fit.

Emulation and non-steam games

• BCML Installer for Steam Deck

  BCML (a modding tool voor Breath of the Wild for WiiU) can be difficult to get running on Steam Deck, because it uses an immutable filesystem and the version of Python installed by default is higher than what BCML supports. This script helps people install it.

• BoilR

  Add non-steam games to your steam library.

• Emudeck

  This script automates downloading, installing and setting up a large list of different emulators.

• EmulationStation DE

  A graphical and themeable emulator front-end that allows you to access all your favorite games in one place, which is installed by Emudeck and Retrodeck, but can also be used by itself.

• Mod Organizer 2 Linux Installer

  This project aims to make modding and playing Bethesda games on Linux as easy as possible. It does that by providing installers which automatically setup a working experience for the user.

• Retrodeck

  A flatpak application containing a large list of different emulators.

• SGDBoop

  A tool that automatically applies assets from SteamGridDB directly to your Steam library, removing the need to download and set them manually.

• Steam ROM Manager

  Steam ROM Manager is a super flexible tool for adding non-Steam games to steam in bulk and managing their artwork assets. It can be installed with Emudeck, but can also be used by itself.

File management

• Deck Drive Manager

  Copy Steam Games From Your PC to Your Steam Deck SD Card.

• Disk Usage Analyzer

  A tool for managing your used and free space.

• Firelight

  Filelight is an application to visualize the disk usage on your computer by showing folders using an easy-to-understand view of concentric rings. Filelight makes it simple to free up space!

• gdu

  If you prefer the command-line, gdu is a fast disk usage analyzer with console interface, written in Go.

• Shortix

  A script that creates human readable symlinks for Proton game prefixes. Reddit release post

• Steam Deck Shader Cache Killer

  Script to Purge The Steam Decks Shader Cache/ Compat Data. Reddit release post

File transfer and synchronization

• Deck Screenshot Sync

  A work-in-progress auto-uploader for screenshots made from the Deck onto your PC or phone. Reddit post by u/ Xinerki.

• MEGASync

  Easy automated syncing between your computers and your MEGA Cloud Drive.

• OpenCloudSaves

  Open Cloud Saves is an open source application for managing your saves games across Windows, MacOs, and Linux (including SteamOS).

• Syncthing

  Syncthing is a file synchronization tool like Dropbox, except that it can work with your own machines and without a server. This can be very useful for keeping non-Steam and emulator save games in sync or backed up.

• Warpinator

  Send and Receive Files across the Network

Launchers

• Alfea

  Alfae is an experimental project to launch GOG/Local/ItchIo/Epic/Bottles Games in an organised fashion. Also can add games to deck UI.

• Bottles

  Runs Windows software on Linux with Bottles.

• Heroic Game Launcher

  Heroic is an Open Source Games Launcher. Right now it supports launching games from the Epic Games Store using Legendary and GOG Games using our custom implementation with gogdl.

• Lutris

  Lutris is a video game preservation platform aiming to keep your video game collection up and running for the years to come.

• NonSteamLaunchers

  Installs the latest GE-Proton and several non-Steam launchers under one Proton prefix folder and adds them to your Steam library. Reddit release post for v2.7

• Steam Tinker Launch

  Steam Tinker Launch is a versatile Linux wrapper tool for use with the Steam client which allows for easy graphical configuration of game tools, such as GameScope, MangoHud, modding tools and a bunch more. It supports both games using Proton and native Linux games, and works on both X11 and Wayland.

Plugins and mods

• Crankshaft

  [This application does not seem to be maintained any longer.] Crankshaft is a Steam client plugin manager and framework that lets you install and create plugins to add more functionality to your Steam client.

• Decky Plugin Loader

  A plugin loader for the Steam Deck.

• Steam Deck Repo Manager

  A GUI tool to install boot videos on your Steam Deck built on top of the Steam Deck Repo website. Reddit release post

Remote access and game streaming

• AnyDesk

  AnyDesk allows you to connect to your Steam Deck desktop remotely, like TeamViewer.

• Barrier

  Share mouse and keyboard over the local network.

• Chiaki4deck

  Chiaki4deck is a fork of Chiaki, adding features for the Steam Deck. It is a free and Open Source Client for PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 Remote Play. It can be used to play in real time on a PlayStation as long as there is a network connection.

• Deskreen

  Turn any device into a secondary screen for your computer. Streams your Steam Deck screen to a browser on another machine.

• KDE Connect

  Enables communication between all your devices.

• Moonlight

  Moonlight allows you to play your PC games on almost any device, whether you're in another room or miles away from your gaming rig.

• NoMachine

  Like AnyDesk, allows remote desktop connections to your Steam Deck. Disabling read-only on the filesystem is required to install, but otherwise works very well.

• Remote Mouse

  Use your phone as a keyboard and mouse, and copy/paste between devices (apps for iOS and for Android available.) Gained improved support for Linux and Steam Deck in December 2022.

• Rustdesk

  An open source TeamViewer alternative, remote desktop software. Works out of the box, no configuration required. Use the AppImage from the nightly build.

• Steam Link

  Connect your Steam Deck or other Steam devices with each other for remote streaming.

• Sunshine

  Sunshine is a self-hosted game stream host for Moonlight, offering low latency, cloud gaming server capabilities.

• Unified Remote

  Remote control app for your Steam Deck. Turn your smartphone into a universal remote control, control mouse, keyboard and more.

Other tools

• Boot Video Randomizer

  Replace the Deck startup video file with a file of the user's choice. Randomizer provides two features: individual random set and on-boot randomization. Reddit release post

• CoreKeyboard

  CoreKeyboard is an X11-based virtual keyboard. It has the advantage over Valve's built-in keyboard to offer access to special keys such as Ctrl, Alt and function keys.

• Great on Deck browser extension for Chrome or Firefox

  See what games are verified for the Steam Deck and which medal they have on ProtonDB in the Steam store.

• Ludusavi

  Backup tool for PC game saves. Here is the Reddit release post.

• ProtonUp-Qt

  Install and manage Wine- and Proton-based compatibility tools for Steam and Lutris with this graphical user interface.

• Qbert

  Qbert generates a root overlay where you can install whatever software you need without messing your filesystem. NOTICE: something is broken atm, Qbert is not creating a correct overlay so basically the software is not working as intended.

• SC Controller

  User-mode driver, mapper and GTK3 based GUI for Steam Controller, DS4 and similar controllers. Steam Deck support added in version 0.4.8.8.

• Steam Deck SD Card Scanner

  An application to help you keep track of the different games you have on your SD Cards. If you ever found yourself wondering if you already have a game installed on a different SD Card then this is for you. Reddit post by u/ddotthomas.

• Steam Deck Utilities by CryoByte33

  Scripts and utilities to enhance the Steam Deck experience, particularly performance.

• Steam Shortcut Editor

  Allows you to modify the shortcuts file quickly and set game name to be the appid, so you have access to community controls. Link to Reddit post

• Vibrant Deck CLI

  A simple command line utility to tweak the screen saturation of the Steam Deck.

List of Steam Deck-related websites

Here is a collection of websites that offer information, guides and news about the Steam Deck.

Official Valve sites

• Official website

  The official website for the Steam Deck by Valve.

• Deck Verified Games From Your Library

  List of games from your library that Valve has tested so far.

• Valve's Steam Deck bug report forum, feature request forum and general discussion forum

  The official Steam Deck forums on the Steam site.

• Steam Devices page

  On this Steam page, you can find a list of Valve hardware and their serial numbers. You can click on the Steam Deck in the list to view a list of its hardware components.

Linux and Steam Deck gaming sites

• ProtonDB

  Crowdsourced Linux and Steam Deck game compatibility reports.

• GamingOnLinux

  GamingOnLinux deals with games on Linux (which the Steam Deck runs) in general, but has consistently reported on Steam Deck-related news.

• Linux Gaming Central

  Linux Gaming Central is dedicated to giving you news on the Linux gaming front. The link above points to the "Steam Deck" tag on the site.

• Boiling Steam

  Boiling Steam is dedicated to covering the world of PC Linux Gaming since 2014. The site often reports on the Steam Deck, as the search results the link points to show.

• Are We Anti-Cheat Yet?

  A comprehensive and crowd-sourced list of games using anti-cheats and their compatibility with GNU/Linux or Wine/Proton.

Steam Deck community sites

• Steam Deck Community

  An independent Steam Deck Forum.

• Steam Deck Life

  A Steam Deck blog for the latest news, tips and tricks and more.

• Steam Deck HQ

  A web site with game reviews with optimal configuration, tips and guides, and news.

• ShareDeck

  An unofficial site to find and share Steam Deck performance configurations.

• overkill.wtf

  overkill.wtf primarily focuses on the Steam Deck, with a hint of Switch, PC gaming and whatever else we find interesting at that moment--but mostly Steam Deck.

• Great on Deck

  Unofficial Steam Deck compatibility website. Verification, performance reviews and tweaks for Steam Deck. Emulation guides, Epic Games Store, Ubisoft Connect games and more.

• CheckMyDeck

  Check Steam Deck compatibility of your Steam library.

• sdeck.wiki

  A list of Steam Deck resources.

• Steam Deck Guide

  A guide covering Steam Deck, including the applications and tools that will make you better and more efficient with your Steam Deck device.

• Steam Deck Repo

  A website where you can upload and share community-made Steam Deck boot videos (plus in the future, other things like themes and an app to automatically apply them to the Steam Deck)!

• Steam Deck Linux Wiki

  This wiki aims to be a useful resource for those that want to explore the desktop side of the Steam Deck.

• Steam Deck Guide

  This guide contains all kinds of useful tips that were found online. Hopefully it will help you use your Steam Deck to the fullest.

List of Steam Deck-related subreddits and Lemmy communities

These other places covering the Steam Deck also exist on sites like Reddit and Lemmy:

• r/SteamDeck
• r/DeckSupport
• r/steamdeck_linux
• r/SteamDeckBootVids
• r/SteamDeckEmulation
• r/SteamDeckGames
• r/SteamDeckModded
• r/SteamDeckMods
• r/SteamDeckTech
• r/SteamDeckTinker
• r/SteamDeckTricks
• r/SteamDeckWins
• r/SteamDeckYuzu
• r/SteamOS
• r/WindowsOnDeck
• r/BestOfSteamDeck
• r/linux_gaming

List of Steam Deck-related podcasts

If you enjoy listening to Steam Deck news in your car or elsewhere, these podcasts might be for you:

• On Deck - by Nerdnest YouTube
• The Steam Deck Podcast - by FlipScreen Games
• Decked Up - by Mekel Kasanova YouTube
• Fan the Deck - by Richard Alvarez YouTube

List of Steam Deck-related Discord servers

Get together and discuss the Steam Deck on these Discord servers:

• Steam Deck Discord

  The main Steam Deck Discord, not affiliated with Valve, Valve employees are known to lurk on the Discord.

• Steam Deck Homebrew

  Steam Deck Homebrew Discord server, with, among others, a channel for Decky support.

Features:

• 4 Custom Buttons to assign Functions
• Full Gyro Support (only when "Steam Mode" is activated)
• A customization feature to only activate Gyro when a specific joystick is touched
• Continuous button pressing or "Rapid Fire" mode for face buttons
• Supports both Bluetooth and Wired connections
• A dedicated Steam button to start big picture mode or bring Steam up
• A Quick Access Menu button

However it doesn't have:

• vibration function
• trackpad
• Headphone jack

It will cost around $50

Decky broke with the Steam game recording update, but the 3.0 update fixes that and features a lot of behind the scene updates that should make Decky more reliable and plugins run better.

There are some decent deals going on right now, not so much for AAA titles really, they don't seem to be going on sale much in my opinion in the past year or so.

Indie games on the other hand have been having some really great discounts.

Here is the /r/gamedeals steam summer sale thread

https://old.reddit.com/r/GameDeals/comments/1dpxrdr/steam_summer_sale_2023_day_1/

The thread you are really interested in is the Hidden Gems thread tho...

https://old.reddit.com/r/GameDealsMeta/comments/1dpxyff/steam_summer_2024_hidden_gems/

Even more so than steam... I think some of the recent Fanatical bundles have been really great for indie games, I bought almost everything from these bundles

https://www.fanatical.com/en/pick-and-mix/platinum-collection-build-your-own-bundle

https://www.fanatical.com/en/pick-and-mix/build-your-own-revival-bundle

I also picked up a bunch from this one too

https://www.fanatical.com/en/pick-and-mix/build-your-own-handheld-heroes-bundle

I really like the digital board games from direwolf like Instanbul, Everdell, Wings Of Glory. Concordia is also a brilliant digital board game and perhaps one of the best board games ever invented by humanity... (not kidding).

How about y'all? Have you picked up any good indie games for your steam deck lately?

Kinda spent a lot, but with a lot of these indie games, like the big metroidivania games and such I just don't think they are ever going to come down below $3, they aren't worth that little lol anyways.. but just look at the isthereanydeal stats for some of the indie games in the fanatical bundles they straight up destroy steam's "summer sale" in my opinion at least at a cursory glance.

For example, look at "Trinity Fusion" in the "handheld heroes bundle", Steam advertises it on "sale" for $12, but if you buy 5 games or so on fanatical's bundle it is $3....

...just saying, might be a good time to flesh out your steam deck's indie, local co-op, party and retro style catalog!

To enable it on steam deck, you need to switch to the beta channel. After that, you'll have a new setting category for it, and should have a new tab in the overview page.

Default binds are steam button+A to start recording (if you don't have passive recording enable), and steam+y to flag a time in the recording.

It's stupid cheap on Steam right now and I've never played it. I've been doing 100% of my gaming on the deck, which has me wondering how well this plays on it. Not graphically/performance because it'll clearly run on a toaster. But mechanically. Are there parts that are hard to use controllers vs kb/mouse for?

Now that I think about it, is there a resource that speaks specifically to this sort of question for games? I know of protondb but that seems to be focused on getting it to run easily and with good performance.

EDIT: thanks for the input! I've purchased it and I'm stoked to give it a playthrough. I WFH, so the thought of sitting at the same desk I was just at for 8+ hrs to game is not at all appealing. Been loving the deck for this exact reason!

https://store.steampowered.com/steamdeck#SaleSection_34993

> The 64GB and 512GB Steam Deck LCD models are being phased out, and will only be available while supplies last.

64GB LCD is $296.65.

512GB LCD is $381.65.

• Fixed a an issue with a rare session crash during early startup of ELDEN RING
• Fixed a general issue affecting all units on 3.6, and OLED units on 3.5, causing a slow memory leak during gameplay
• Fixed a DSP firmware crash with previous 3.6 versions that could result in internal sound disappearing until next reboot
• Improved responsiveness of session restart in case of session crashes caused by certain GPU errors
• Fixed an issue that could cause videos to stutter in titles such as BlazBlue Centralfiction

Some pretty good fixes. Unfortunately you'll need to be on the beta/preview channel to get them, but hopefully it won't be long before they come to stable.

Updates available for stable and beta channels. Both are pretty minor, mainly just bug fixes.

Steam Deck specific changes:

• Show battery information for connected Bluetooth devices under Settings->Bluetooth and in the Quick Access menu.
• Added a per-device toggle to Settings->Bluetooth that controls whether a device is allowed to wake SteamDeck from sleep.
• Fixed a bug that would cause the UI to show stale data for Bluetooth devices.
• Fixed clickable screenshots in the post-game summary and library screenshot section not opening the screenshot dialog to the correct item.
• The magnifier scale can now be configured in Settings->Display.

This update has replaced 3 different Decky plugins for me: Controller tools (for showing controller battery), BT wake control (for controlling what BLE devices wake the deck), and the Bluetooth plugin (used for quick connections to Bluetooth devices that don't automatically connect).

The update also has a lot of desktop changes, click through to the article to see them all.

Whether on the deck or not ; I personally haven't tried any on the deck yet, but I downloaded about 40 demos or so, Tails of Iron 2 and Airborne Empire were good fun, The Alters and Tactical Breach Wizards completely hooked me!

Not an official announcement, but it's probably safe to assume an Xbox handheld is in development.

Name of the game is cross-post's community, playing it on our device is against ToS therefore the hoops

cross-posted from: https://sopuli.xyz/post/13626526

Attachment is the sound recording of installation experience

If you wanna know the deets, ask me in DM

if you already know, don't yell on the internet about it (like I just did lol)

I have really been loving my steam deck lately. I've now played through Fallout 3, New Vegas, all of their respective DLCs, and am about 100hrs into 4 right now.

Normally I play indie games since that's where my interests are and I grow tired of the AAA jackassery.

I mention that to illustrate that I do use and live the deck. But I guess I'm not creative enough to use the back buttons at all. So to the title question:

• What games do you play that make the most use of the back buttons?

• What functions are mapped to those buttons?

• Or are you like me and just never use them?

I have chiaki4deck set up and running smoothly, but I noticed it binds the ps4 controller buttons to keyboard. This makes in-game chat in FFXIV unusable with a keyboard. I've tried disabling direct chat in game and remapping the Cross button so it doesn't use Enter, but that didn't work. Does anyone have any advice for using a keyboard for in game chat through chiaki4deck?

The Steam Deck is connected to a usb-c dock plugged into the tv, with a wireless keyboard connected to the dock. The PS5 is in another room.

Just discovered this game today but if anyone is looking for a fun couch co-op game, this has been good so far. Playing at 4k 60 with no frame drops. Definitely not a Mario Kart but still worth checking out if you like those types of games. One of the best parts is it’s free as well!

Bought the device a few days ago and wanted to share the experience of running a Bevy game on it. I developing an open source life simulation game called Project Harmonia. The game is at the prototype stage: you can build walls, place objects and move around, but no no actual gameplay loop.

Bevy engine supports it natively since it's just a regular x86 with GNU/Linux. So nothing special was needed! I compiled the game via Cargo and it works.

The game runs great. I get stable 90 FPS (90Hz is the refresh rate of the device) consuming only 13.1 W. The UI is a little big and controls aren't adapted well for gamepads, but I will fix it later.

The console itself is also a nice machine for development. Next I will write about the setup I use.

As you may know, it runs SteamOS with KDE and based on ArchLinux.

Packages mostly mirror official ArchLinux repositories, but there are some additions and everything is compiled by Valve. So you can even install SuperTuxKart or GNOME 😃

Another difference from vanilla ArchLinux is immutable file system. You can make it writable via a single command in terminal, but each update wipes all changes made to the system. Home directory remains untouched.

Because of the immutable filesystem, I decided to try Flatpak. It installs packages into the user's home directory. Therefore, such apps won't be removed after an update.

But I faced some limitations due to containerization. For example, the Firefox extension for KeePassXC does not work because apps can't interact with each other. And it's not suited for installing stuff like compilers or libraries. So I decided to explore other options.

Next, I tried to create a script that I planned to run after each update. It installs all the packages I need through the system package manager.

But packages on SteamOS are older then in Archlinux. For example, Neovim on SteamOS is 0.9, but on ArchLinux it's 0.10, so I had to downgrade my configuration. And it causes incompatibilities with AUR. For example, I couldn't install Crow Translate because of it.

Another problem with such script is that Valve nuked /usr/include directory to free space. All packages are present, but the folder is missing. It makes sense for a gaming device, but I need it to compile packages from AUR.

It can be solved by reinstalling all packages that put files into /usr/include. But it causes another problem 😃 Allocated space for / is limited and you quickly run out of space after restoring headers and installing a couple of packages.

Then I decided to try Distrobox. It creates containers that tightly integrated with the host system. It even comes pre-installed on the Steam Deck.

And I like it a lot! It is very easy to use and combines the advantages of both approaches. All packages will persist across updates and I have access to all packages that I have on my regular PC. Graphical apps look native and can interact with each other.

The game on photos was compiled on the Steam Deck 🥰

Now that my Steam Deck LCD has been relieved of his duties as a daily driver desktop PC, I finally went ahead and replaced the Delta fan with a Huaying one. It turned out to be relatively easy to do ; and lo and behold, it is indeed quieter.

Recent adopters may or may not know there was a medium-sized kerfuffle about disparities in noise profiles of early Steam Deck units. It was proved and narrowed down to a difference between 2 fan models (see Gamers Nexus detailed analysis).

Obviously the one I got was a "bad" one, emitting a high pitched noise when running at full speed. I did not find it unbearable but it was still not ideal, particularly when using the SD in quiet environments.

Took me 2 years to get to the point where I figured it was an acceptable risk to attempt the replacement. How many of you did the same and kicked the Delta out of your unit ?

Source: https://x.com/OnDeck/status/1797695554891481455

Title. It seems excessive. Even when I fully power it down it tends to drop a lot more than I'd expect.

Thanks.

I recently received a Steam Deck and I love it!

I also planning to use it for development. On my PC I get used to Fish shell and usually use it instead of Bash. I can install it on Steam Deck and set it to the default shell, but after a system update it will be wiped. I can create a script and run it after each update, will I be able to login if my user points to /usr/bin/fish that doesn't exist in the system?..

I was wondering how much you are using your Steam Deck? And did the games you play on it change since you bought it?

I find that I used it a lot when I first got it, but my usage has gone down in the mean time. That's mostly because I play games that are not a great fit for the Steam Deck (strategy, building, etc.) and I prefer to play those on my PC.

https://x.com/Capcom_amuse/status/1796372401044996564

https://www.capcom.co.jp/amusement/game/event/6steam_deck.html

The company who's handling the port is the same company that ported the previous God of War. That one ran pretty well on the deck (other than a memory leak requiring a larger swap file in some cases), so I'm hoping this one will run acceptable with the addition of FSR.

I've had nothing but issues with it. I got it to work once, and now it simply refuses to work ever again. It just crashes immediately. What the hell am I doing wrong?

According to some data mining from the guy who runs SteamDB:

> Steam is still working on clip recording. It supports background recording, includes timeline markers in supported games for various events.

>Clips can be shared similar to screenshots, via the Steam community.

We don't actually have any proof that this will be coming to Steam Deck yet, but I'm pretty optimistic that it would.

I recommend clicking through to the article, it has several screenshots showing how the feature will look.

Steam Deck Specific changes:

• Show battery information for connected Bluetooth devices under Settings->Bluetooth and in the Quick Access menu.
• Added a per-device toggle to Settings->Bluetooth that controls whether a device is allowed to wake Steam Deck from sleep.
• Fixed a bug that would cause the UI to show stale data for Bluetooth devices.

Rest of the changelog is here and is mostly desktop client improvements