The Steam Deck, while initially overwhelming with its numerous settings and options, can be made user-friendly and personalized through understanding key settings, utilizing helpful plugins, and adopting a mindset that plays to the device's strengths.
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So, you got a Steam Dick. First off,
>> But if you turned it on and immediately thought,
thought, >> "Brilliant.
>> "Brilliant.
I have absolutely no idea what's going on."
on."
>> You're not alone. There's a lot here.
Buttons, menus, options, settings, decky
this, lossless scaling that, and about
10 different opinions online telling you
That's stressful. But here's the good
news. It doesn't need to be a science
project. And by the end of this, it
should feel a lot less intimidating.
Perhaps you've had your Steam Deck for a
while, or you just got one for the
holidays. And if so, welcome and
congrats. You've landed in one of the
best, most welcoming gaming communities
I've ever been a part of. Also, you're
stuck with us.
>> You can't leave now
>> cuz I find you.
>> If you've been out of the game for a
little while, I totally get it. It's
completely normal to turn this thing on
and feel a little overwhelmed. So, in
this video, I'm keeping it super simple
and I'm going over some helpful
settings, my favorite optional plugins,
and then how I'd actually make the Steam
Deck feel like yours.
If you're new to the Steam Deck, the
settings can be a lot at first. Getting
a feel for them can be a lot like
walking into an IKEA without a game
plan. So, this is just a good lay of the
land. Some plain English explanations,
and then uh we'll move on to the fun
stuff. So, the first setting I'd
recommend changing is the battery charge
limit. By default, the Steam Deck will
charge all the way to 100%, which is
totally fine. But like most devices with
lithium batteries, sitting at full
charge all the time can cause long-term
wear, especially if you play plugged in
a lot. If your Steam Deck mostly lives
on a couch, at a desk, or near an
outlet, which let's be honest, that's
pretty much most of us, I'd recommend
capping the battery at around 80 to 85%
instead. What that does is reduce stress
on the battery cells and help preserve
overall battery health over time. It's
basically like saying, "I'd rather have
slightly less battery today than a worn
out battery a year from now."
>> Now, if you travel a lot or you know
that you'll want every minute of battery
life while you're out, then by all
means, turn this off. Next up is the
performance overlay. And this thing
looks a lot scarier than it actually is.
All the overlay does is show you a few
live stats while you're playing. Things
like frame rate, battery draw, and
system usage. I usually turn it on when
I'm launching a game and then tweaking
settings to get everything just right.
And then once everything looks good, I
turn it off. If game feels a little
choppy or battery drain is faster than
expected, then this gives me a quick
answer as to why. And here's the key thing.
thing.
>> This is a tool, not a lifestyle.
>> There are those of you out there who
stare at this more than the game itself.
And I get it. But it's just there to
help you make small informed tweaks when
something feels off. Once you get a feel
for how your games run, you'll barely
touch this. And that's kind of the point.
By default, most games aim for 60 frames
per second, which is great. But let's be
honest, with newer games, the Deck just
has a hard time pulling that off without
workarounds that I'll talk about later.
So, setting the screen to 40 Hz lets you
target 40 frames per second, which
sounds lower on paper, but actually
feels surprisingly smooth on the Steam
Deck. Games feel stable, motion looks
good, and your battery lasts noticeably
longer. for indie games, 90 all day. But
if you're not sure where to start with
performance, then 40 Hz is an excellent
middle ground. It's kind of the Steam
Deck's comfort zone.
Now, this one sounds scary than it
actually is, but it's pretty simple. TDP
stands for thermal design power.
>> can't hear you.
>> But really, all it really means is how
hard the Steam Deck is allowed to work,
how much power it can use, and how much
heat it's allowed to generate. Loring
the TDP just tells the system, "Hey,
don't go full throttle if you don't need
to." What I usually do is I keep an eye
on CPU and GPU usage as I lower TDP.
Once I see things start to throttle a
little bit, then I know I found the
sweet spot. This is especially useful
for indie games or older titles or
anything that doesn't need a ton of
horsepower. You'll often get longer
battery life, less heat, and no real
downside. The next one's really easy to
miss, but it's really handy if you have
a gaming PC. I don't, but maybe you do.
In the settings, you can enable game
file transfers over your local network,
which lets the Steam Deck pull game
files directly from your PC instead of
redownloading everything from the
internet. It's faster. It saves
bandwidth and it's especially useful if
we've already got a big Steam library
installed somewhere else.
This one's small, but it ends up being
something that you'll probably use all
the time. If you hold the Steam button
or the three dot button, you'll get a
bunch of built-in shortcuts. Things like
quick access to settings, screenshots,
and zoom and system controls. My
favorite is holding the three dot button
and moving the joystick up or down to
adjust brightness on the fly. It's
definitely worth poking around for 30
seconds and just seeing if you can
A lot of games feel totally fine with
default controls, but they feel way
better with community configurations.
People take the time to map things to
back buttons, make smart use of the
trackpads, and dial in gyro in ways you
might not think to do yourself. It's a
really easy way to unlock more of what
the Steam Deck can do without having to
design a layout from scratch. And that's
especially true with gyro aiming. In
first-person shooters, gyro can be a
genuine game changer. It gives you much
finer control for small adjustments
while still using the sticks for
movement. And the nice thing is that all
of this is per game and completely
reversible. So, it's always worth
checking to see what the community came
up with, even if you just use it as like
And before we leave settings, there are
a couple of customization options that
don't really affect performance at all.
Things like keyboard themes, system
sounds, and startup movies. You can even
head into the Steam store and use the
points you've earned from game purchases
to download more of this stuff. It's
just an easy way to make the Steam Deck
feel a little more like yours. But,
we're going to take it a step further
Up to this point, everything we've
talked about is built into the Steam
Deck. This next part is where it starts
to feel a little less stock by way of
plugins. Now, to use any plugins on the
Steam Deck,
>> you'll want to go into desktop mode and
install Deck Loader first.
>> It's a quick one-time setup, and I've
linked a super easy way to install this
in the description below. And once
you're back in game mode, everything
lives right inside the quick access
menu. Once that's in place, plugins feel
like part of the system. These are the
ones that genuinely improve my
day-to-day experience with the Steam
Deck. There are small quality of life
upgrades that I think are good starting
One of the most common questions with
the Steam Deck is does this game
actually run well? Valve has implemented
a solution to that in the form of the
Steam Deck verification badge. But if
there's anything I've learned about that
badge, it's to basically ignore it.
>> What do you mean? What do you What do
you mean?
>> What do you mean?
>> Proton DB gives all the answers right
where you need it, inside your Steam
library. When you open a game, Proton DB
adds a small compatibility badge that
shows how well it runs on the deck based
on real reports from other players,
ranging anywhere from if it launches,
whether it needs tweaks to TDP or
upscaling, whether it works perfectly
out of the box or has a few controller
quirks. What I like about this is it
saves you time and guesswork. Why do the
research when someone else has already
Steam Grid DB lets you swap custom
artwork right from the deck. box art,
wide banners, icons, they're all
community made and all designed to
actually look good on the Steam Deck
screen. This doesn't change how anything
runs, but it does change how it feels to
scroll through your library. Cuz let's
be honest, sometimes we spend more time
looking at it and deciding what we're
going to play rather than actually
playing anything at all. A few minutes later,
>> 3:28 a.m.
>> How long to beat or HLTB adds estimated
play time right into the Steam
interface. So, before you start a game,
you can estimate roughly how much of
your life you're going to dedicate to
it. I love this because it helps set
expectations. Sometimes you want a
short, focused experience. Other times,
you're ready to commit to something
bigger. Instead of guessing or googling
on your phone, it's right there. It's an
excellent tool to assist in your backlog
Storage cleaner is exactly what it
sounds like. As you install and
uninstall games, the Steam Deck tends to
hang on to leftover files, shader
caches, compatibility data, and stuff
that you don't really see that slowly
eats up storage. Storage Cleaner gives
you a simple way to see what's taking up
space and safely clear out what you're
no longer using, and is way easier than
going to desktop mode and digging in
folders. It's like spring cleaning for
Earlier when we were in settings, we
talked about startup movies that you can
download with your Steam points.
Animation Changer is basically that
idea, just a step further. This plug-in
opens the door to a much bigger library
of community-made boot, sleep, and
resume animations. I tend to bounce back
and forth between the Dreamcast and PS1
themed ones, and most recently one
inspired by Better Call Saul. As a side
note, I actually just finished watching
this TV series and I have been talking
about it a lot over in my weekly
newsletter where I share what I'm
playing, watching, thinking, and a bit
of behind the scenes stuff from these
videos over on Patreon. If you're into
that kind of thing, the link is down
below. But yeah, animation changer. It's
totally cosmetic. It's totally optional,
but it's a really fun way to make the
Steam Deck feel like yours the second it
Now, CSS loader is where interface
customization goes a step further. It
lets you apply community-made themes
that tweak how the Steam Deck menus
look. Things like spacing, colors,
fonts, and layout touches. They're not
functional changes, but the UI can feel
cleaner or more your style. A lot of you
have asked how I customize the way my
interface looks. CSS loader is it. I
love how modular it is, and you can even
save profiles that basically serve as
like interface loadouts. It's yet
another reminder that the Steam Deck is
flexible in ways that most consoles just aren't.
If you use AirPods or Bluetooth
headphones, Magic Pods improves how they
connect and how they show up on the
Steam Deck. Battery levels, connection
status, and even turning on and off
features like noise cancellation and
transparency mode. If you play with
headphones a lot, this is an easy win.
Next is Wine Seller, and this is when a
game just isn't behaving the way you
expect. If you're not totally sure what
Proton is, it's
can't hear you. The Steam Deck is Linux-
based, and Proton is what it uses to
translate Windows games so that they run
properly. Can we get a translator in here?
>> Hola.
>> Now, most of the time Steam handles this
automatically so you don't have to think
about it. But sometimes a game just
works better on a different version of
Proton. And that's where Wine Seller
comes in. It lets you install and switch
Proton versions per game all in one
place without digging around or jumping
into desktop mode. For example, recently
I was having trouble with Rainbow 6
Vegas getting uh controller inputs to
recognize. I checked Proton DB, tried
the Proton version someone recommended,
and voila, problem solved. You won't
need this often, but when something
So, now that we've covered settings and
plugins, this last part is more about
mindset. I've talked before about how
the Steam Deck is few years old at this
point, so it shouldn't come as a
surprise that it's not the most powerful
handheld out there, and I'd wager most
deck owners are okay with that. For me,
it works best when you play to its
strengths versus forcing it to be
something that it's not. Indies run
great. Older games run great. And a lot
of stuff up through the PS4 and Xbox One
era runs really well without much
effort. That's the deck's comfort zone.
When you stay there, everything feels
easier. The battery life is good. The
the fans are quieter. It's just less
stress. But when it comes to newer, more
demanding games, I change how I play
instead of fighting the hardware. And
that's where streaming comes in. I think
GeForce Now is honestly the easiest
option. There's a native Steam Deck app
now, and it lets you access games you
already own or subscribe to across
platforms like Xbox, Epic, and GOG. If
you've got the bandwidth, the latency
feels basically non-existent, and it's a
great way to play modern AAA games with
high frame rates and crisp visuals
without heat or battery drain. It is
subscription based, but that's
essentially what you're paying for.
Premium GPUs that someone else paid for
doing the heavy lifting for you.
Now, for console stuff, PlayStation
Remote Play and Xbox Game Pass streaming
both work really well, too. Those take a
quick desktop mode setup, and I've
provided some simple guides down below.
And if you got a gaming PC at home,
Steam Remote Play is another great
option as well. Same idea as GeForce,
just streaming directly from your own
personal PC.
Now, there is one more option worth
mentioning here, and that's lossless
scaling. You may have seen the phrases
lossless scaling or frame gen buzzing
around the handheld communities. To use
it, you will need to purchase lossless
scaling from the Steam store. LSFGVK is
a Deky plugin that taps into that to add
frame generation in certain games, which
can help smooth things out when
performance is right on the edge. There
are some trade-offs. So, you may notice
some visual artifacting or some added
input delay, which I think makes it a
poor fit for games where reaction time
really matters. Games like Expedition 33
or Souls Light games. Sometimes it
helps, sometimes streaming is the
And lastly, if you're into retro,
there's emulation. I won't go too deep
into that for now, but EmC is the
easiest way to get started if you're
curious. Just know it does require your
own ROM files and in some cases even
BIOS files, but you can get all those from
Jokes aside, there are some excellent
guides right here on YouTube if
emulation is your jam. At the end of the
day, I think the Steam Deck is at its
best when you meet it where it's strong
and choose the approach that keeps
So, there you go, buds. My hope is that
with these tips, the Steam Deck feels a
little less intimidating and a lot more
inviting. You don't need to master it,
you just need to understand it. Because
once the noise fades and the
expectations settle, the Steam Deck
reveals what it's always been good at,
becoming something that feels easy to
pick up and eventually
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