Steam Deck is absolutely packed with features, settings, and configuration options that you may not know about all of them. I’ve rounded up nine Steam Deck tricks and tips you can use to get around your machine faster, save battery, and get the most out of Valve’s gaming handheld.
Drag the Steam Deck shortcuts
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The Steam button will quickly become your Steam Deck best friend, but it does more than open your menu. Hold it down for a few more seconds to bring up a list of Steam Deck shortcuts that show you how to take a screenshot, force quit the game, and more.
You will find a complete list of shortcuts by pressing the key Steam button, but here they are for quick reference:
- Steam + B (long press): Force shutdown of the game
- Steam + X: Show keyboard
- Steam + L1: Turn the magnifier on/off
- Steam + R1: Take a screenshot
- Steam + L2: Right mouse click (this is correct, believe it or not)
- Steam + R2: Left mouse click
- Steam + right joystick: Joystick mouse
- Steam + right trackpad: Mouse with pad
- Steam + right trackpad (click): Left mouse click
- Steam + left joystick up: Increase screen brightness
- Steam + left joystick down: Decrease screen brightness
- Steam + D-pad right: Enter key
- Steam + D-pad down: Tab key
- Steam + D-pad left: Escape key
Customize your controls
You have access to four back buttons on the Steam Deck, but they do nothing by default. You can customize your controls in any game by launching it and pressing Steam button. Scroll right and select Controller settings to rebind any button on the deck, browse community layouts, and create your own layouts. Valve even includes a few controller templates to get you started, regardless of whether the game supports controllers or not. You can’t do it that on Nintendo Switch.
Ignore the “Great on Deck” category.
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Steam Deck automatically sorts your library and gives a slightly misleading “Great on Deck” category. These are all Deck Verified games in your library, which means they’ve been tested by Valve and provide a seamless deck playing experience. But that doesn’t mean the rest of your Steam library is out.
Go to your full library and press x selection button Filter by Verified and Playable. Countless titles work perfectly fine on Steam Deck, but lack full verification due to a pre-game launcher or minor configuration issue. While you should explore your full library, I recommend starting with the best Deck Verified games first.
Change the keyboard theme
The default Steam Deck keyboard theme is boring. Head towards settings menu and select Keyboard to change it. You’ll have several themes by default, plus an extra one if you have the 512GB model, and Valve sells more themes in the Steam Points store. There aren’t many options right now, but I expect we’ll see a lot more keyboard themes in the future.
Turn on half shading in pixel art games
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Steam Deck now supports half shading, which can significantly increase battery life. Half-rate shading basically halves the pixel shader resolution. Although half-speed shading is available in every game, I recommend using it especially in pixel art games.
If you’re a big fan of platformers and indie titles like me, half-speed shading will save you a ton of battery life (hours, in many cases). The lower resolution doesn’t matter in pixel art games, but be careful with half-speed shading in more graphically complex games — it can really hurt image quality.
Use FSR when you can
You can use AMD’s FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR) with any game on the Steam Deck, but enabling it is a bit confusing. FSR improves performance and saves battery by upscaling a game from a lower resolution. To turn it on, lower the resolution in any game and open Quick settings Menu. Scroll down to Performance and select FSR under Scaling filter section.
There are a ton of other options here too — be sure to read our guide on how to check your Steam Deck frame rate to see what some of them do.
Use desktop for Xbox Game Pass
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You can use Xbox Game Pass on Steam Deck, at least for a bit. You can only stream Game Pass titles through Microsoft Edge, which requires you to access the Steam Deck desktop. To get there, press Steam button, select Power, and choose Switch to desktop.
Once you’ve fired up Edge and signed in to your Game Pass account, check out our roundup of the best games on Xbox Game Pass to know what to play first.
Limit power during travel
Battery life is a big issue, so if you can’t buy a Steam Deck power bank, you’ll need to find other ways to save power. Open it Quick settings menu and scroll down to Performance to limit your graphics power (referred to as Thermal power TDP). Powering down can save you a ton of battery life while traveling (although the TSA might still scoff at your Steam Deck at the airport).
Use the magnifying glass
Jacob Roach / Digital Trends
Open the game as Civilization VI, and you’ll quickly see the Steam Deck screen size problem. Fortunately, you can use the magnifying glass to zoom in on areas that might be difficult to read. To use it, hold Steam and L1 and use the right joystick to select the area of the screen you want to magnify. Let go and it will stay there. You can use it to turn off the magnifier Steam + L1 shortcut.
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Source: newstars.edu.vn