7 methods to customise your Steam Deck

The Steam Deck is principally a small pc in your palms. Its essential function is playing games, however it’s much more open to customization than different consoles or even the Switch. Although you may simply use it with no drawback as it’s out of the field, you would be lacking out on so many potentialities.

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Personalizing your Steam Deck is available in two essential flavors: aesthetic and technical. The previous includes giving your deck a singular, cool look, whereas the latter focuses on ease of use and enhancing efficiency. I perceive that delving into the technical particulars could be a bit intimidating, so I’ve chosen seven of the good and most helpful customization suggestions that it’s best to check out, none of which require a level in pc science.

Steam Deck

The Steam Deck is like having a handheld gaming PC in your palms that performs a ton of pc video games

1 Change your startup film

A contemporary boot display

The very first thing you will notice when turning in your Steam Deck might be a bit of startup film earlier than it drops you into the principle UI. Valve anticipated that folks may get uninterested in the default and generously included a technique to change it. Simply head to the Factors Store to money in any Steam Factors you’ve accrued to get a contemporary intro from one in all your favourite video games.

In case you’re keen to do some extra tinkering within the desktop mode, you possibly can technically add any video file to the boot animation. This might be something from a house video to your favourite YouTube clip, or something in between that you just need to see earlier than attending to the video games.

2 Choose your keyboard theme

Flashy keys

Going proper alongside together with your startup film, an alternative choice you possibly can spend your Steam Factors on is numerous keyboard themes. These clearly will not change any performance of the digital keyboard however can provide it a extra pleasing shade palette and are a small technique to add a private contact to your deck.

You get a few free keyboard themes to start out with, with the remainder costing you the aforementioned Steam Factors. Sadly, in contrast to the boot films, there does not appear to be a method so as to add your individual customized keyboards right here, and you need to make do with those provided on the system.

3 Experiment with Decky Loader

Make it your individual

Decky Loader

If we’re going to speak about tweaking nearly each beauty facet of your Steam Deck, I’ve to name within the large weapons and go straight to Decky Loader. It is a plugin that you have to set up by desktop mode, however it’s simply definitely worth the small quantity of bother required.

There’s virtually an excessive amount of this program does to cowl comprehensively, however some highlights embrace altering the system’s sound results, animations, menu types, and a lot extra. It even makes accessing settings simpler with a Fast Entry menu.

4 Tweak your efficiency settings

Stability your energy and efficiency

When you cannot get fairly as granular with settings as on a PC, the choices the Steam Deck affords for getting video games to run and look nearly as good as doable are often enough. Relying on the sport, tweaking a number of settings may considerably enhance your expertise and even assist preserve battery on an extended journey.

Simply going into the Efficiency Settings menu allows you to alter issues just like the system’s FPS restrict, refresh price, HDR, and extra, relying on the sport and state of affairs. You possibly can push the deck to the restrict however run out of energy in an hour, or scale issues again to final so long as doable.

5 Flip off (or on) notifications

Don’t disturb

Gaming is a unbelievable communal expertise. That mentioned, typically I simply need to play a single-player sport in peace with none distractions. The Steam Deck needs to be nice for that in principle because it allows you to get away out of your PC, however by default, you find yourself bringing all of your Steam distractions with you.

Even for those who do not thoughts the occasional notification, I nonetheless extremely advocate you go into the Notifications part of the Settings menu to see what notifications are on. You possibly can disable any non-critical ones on a regular basis, solely whereas in a sport, or choose and select what you get informed about and the way.

6 Remap your buttons

Default is not at all times greatest

For essentially the most half, Steam video games are likely to have good controller help by default. This is actually because video games are developed for each PC and consoles. Nevertheless, there are a major variety of PC-exclusive titles that weren’t designed to be performed with a controller. When you have the choice to make use of a keyboard and mouse together with your Steam Deck, this is not at all times sensible, particularly if you’re on the transfer.

In case you hit the Steam button whereas in a sport and entry Controller Settings, you possibly can absolutely rebind all of the controls to fit your preferences. It is a very deep system, too, permitting for issues like customized radial buttons and extra. This additionally works for those who’re enjoying with a Bluetooth-connected controller just like the PS4 or PS5 controller.

7 Allow a lock display

Keep secure

It is a function that I feel needs to be enabled by default and isn’t solely a pleasant little bit of customization but additionally added safety. A lock display on your Steam Deck behaves precisely prefer it would on your iPhone. You merely arrange a six-digit password that must be entered to entry your system. Enabling a lock display is finished within the Safety part of your settings and will be triggered to pop up both if you wake the console up from sleep, or solely when going into desktop mode.