50 Steam Deck Tips & Tricks in 10 Minutes

[Music] foreign [Music] deck I think everyone at this point has made a review on one of these but really today I wanted to make a master list of everything I've learned along the way I'll share it with you guys so here's exactly that 50 Steam deck tips and tricks in under 10 minutes without further Ado let's get started shall we tip number one cut down your input latency the steam deck's built-in frame limiter actually introduces additional input latency in some cases you're better off using in-game vsync and capping the refresh rate rather than using both the limiter and vsync as you'll end up stacking latencies now out of the box the steam deck ships with pretty Overkill stick dead zones this can make any sort of precise aiming or driving much more difficult than using a tune stick by default this is set to around 8 000 and by lowering it you should have a much more responsive experience at the same time you can also install deki for plugins like vibrantec that allow you to tweak the saturation and Gamma settings of the display and bring a little more pop to the colors just make sure not to overdo this to the point where you over saturate or deep fry anything if you find yourself wanting to a tinker with an experiment in the deck's desktop mode and you don't have a dock or want to plug in external peripherals consider using the steam link app for mobile or PC once you have that downloaded you can create a shortcut go into properties and add windowed in the Target bar now you'll essentially have full steam deck control from your main PC now not every game is perfectly two in performance wise so you can consider adjusting your GPU clock in games that are more CPU bound where GPU usage is consistently below 100 in some cases you'll find by decreasing the GPU clock frequency you can free up more power for the CPU and ultimately result in higher boost Glocks and more consistent performance if you're still struggling to nail the perfect visuals and frame rate balance it might be worth aiming for 40 Hertz instead of 30. at 60fps you have a frame time average of around 16.7 milliseconds and at 30 it's 33.3 milliseconds the average frame time of 40 FPS is around 25 milliseconds which is right in between 60 and 30. what this means is the overall smoothness of the game feels closer to 60 FPS and in many games you'll only be consuming slight extra wattage over 30 FPS so it can be a great sweet spot for battery life and responsiveness now regarding responsiveness oftentimes steam's Remote Play isn't the best at streaming games from your main PC to your steam deck using Moonlight and sunshine as a solution can just be overall better regarding smoothness lack of stuttering and ease of use make sure you're also taking a serious look into Community made control inputs for your favorite games they can often be significantly better than the default options and make your entire input experience much more comfortable gyro aiming can also be seriously underrated it may take some time to get used to but before you know it you can find yourself being able to snap onto enemies and FPS games with way more speed and precision than using the analog sticks or track pads if you're using the analog sticks for a game that requires a repetitive button input like sprinting for example you can actually add a second function to the outer zone of the joystick this is where you might not realize there's a ton of really in-depth options for controller customization and input mapping available that you might not have explored yet the back paddles can really come in handy if you're feeling like you're finally ready to venture into the world of Deep tinkering on the steam deck don't be afraid of Linux none of these additional plugins are a necessity to enjoy the steam deck but you have to remember this is a fully functioning PC that has the capability to do a lot this includes full scale emulation with programs like mu deck that can let you expand your game's library to the next level it's an awesome gateway to the emulation world and you can find a ton of really great guides on YouTube for fully setting this up when it comes to AAA gaming you might find that using xcloud can add another weapon to the steam decks Arsenal versatility since you're also streaming the games you don't take the battery life hit that you would on Native deck games another option for non-steam games is being able to launch them directly from your library and you can do this within the desktop mode find the game you'd like to add right click and select add to steam since your freshly added app will show up with blank cover art in your library another useful decky plug-in is steam grid DB here you can change the box art and menu art for these blank titles to create a little bit more of a cohesive experience it's also a good idea to keep in mind that valve's deck verification program doesn't necessarily mean a game won't work on the steam deck there's a ton of titles that work just fine on the deck without the verification badge if you're not sure about a game's playability a really good Community Driven resource is proton DB you can add this as a decky plug-in and it actually displays badges that provide visual indicators to see what the community says about a game's playability you can also consider installing proton GE for non-steam games think of proton as a translation layer where proton GE is a custom build with the latest experimental patches that can assist with higher compatibility results over valve's proton be sure to also be aware of the Native button shortcuts that can be accessed at any time by holding down the steam button or the triple dot button you can also set up a lock screen if you plan on using your deck outside of where you normally use it and you want that extra layer of security now there's a couple additional decky plugins that I found pretty useful the first one being hltv for deck which essentially just shows you an estimated time for how long a game takes to be completed you can check a list of times in the completion tab there's also animation changer which allows you to customize your animation and boot videos directly from the steam deck also if you're planning on using a dock be sure to adjust the set resolution to the display you're using if you're experiencing signal errors travel optimizations are also important for a bit of extra juice on the go as well as some nice headache prevention if you navigate over to internet settings there's an option to disable Wi-Fi try doing this after enabling offline mode if you're planning on using this it can prevent any wonky game Behavior or steam server quirks it's also a good idea to double check that cloud saves are enabled so you can just jump between the same save from your main PC to your deck an easy fix for weird Mouse inputs in desktop mode is remapping right and left click to the triggers you can also set the left trackpad to scroll and it makes the whole experience way easier be sure to also enable hidden files in the Linux desktop mode by checking show hidden files in the drop down menu keep in mind that using both trackpads for typing can feel a bit odd at first but once you get the Rhythm it's significantly quicker to type using both pads instead of one now the next option is configuring the trackpad aiming mode this is by default set to trackball and will ultimately be personal preference but you may feel like Mouse mode is easier to control this is actually really buried in the settings but once you find it uncheck track so if you haven't already tried out app at your desk job it's a great game that lets you get the full experience of all the Dex controls along with a couple Easter eggs so any storage concerns can be remedied with some simple upgrades be sure to check out external SD cards that I'll have Linked In the description for the best bang for buck value as well as consider upgrading the internal SSD also be mindful to remove any micro SD card out of the deck before you plan on opening it as you can actually crack the card by removing the back plate for some quick easy battery saving options you can opt to disable game Rumble and haptics as well as utilize FSR scaling when you're at lower resolutions this also includes optimizing a tuned TDP limit disabling Wireless connectivity and reducing the refresh rate so a quick easy way to lower and increase brightness is by holding the quick access button and pushing up or down on the left stick if you find that the ambient sensor is not nailing the brightness level that you want you can disable adaptive brightness in the settings also don't forget to double check which storage Drive is set to default so you don't accidentally have new games downloading to the wrong Drive the default is indicated by a yellow star if you end up connecting an X Xbox controller often also own an Xbox you can actually change the priority Connection by tapping the sync button so you can go back and forth between the two without needing to resync now if you're the type of person that likes to listen to music or podcasts when you game you can actually create a flat pack Chrome shortcut through Steam and play audio in the background while you game and speaking of games this one might be pretty obvious but make sure to take advantage of steam sales The Humble Bundle add the games you're considering to your wish list and that way you can save some of your hard-earned cash by picking up a couple discounted titles all at once and supporting Charities if you're experiencing any performance drops while games are updating or downloading it might be worth turning off allow downloads during gameplay as that can absolutely Crush performance if you plan on upgrading the internal storage with an SSD or microSD card the 64 gigabyte model will get you essentially the same gaming experience as the higher tier storage options besides the matte display on the 512 you will eventually have to deal with the storage quirks but it's not that big of a deal it's also a good idea to be mindful to optimize storage if you fill your Shader cache an easy way to quickly free up space is by jumping into desktop mode open Steam steam settings Shader pre-caching and uncheck the box and recheck it again once it's enabled again it will download the Shader cache only for games installed on Steam just don't forget to also address comp data folders at the same time if you're constantly gaming and environments filled with Reflections and don't mind sacrificing a bit of sharpness and color vibrancy you can opt to purchase a matte screen protector that will definitely help at minimizing Reflections it's also easy to get caught up with tweaking the performance settings to nail the perfect FPS but eventually turning off the counter in metrics will just let you enjoy the experience and relax if you want that Ultra immersion setup you can customize your notification settings and disable non-critical notifications you can also set up a night mode timer for late night gaming sessions that will warm up the screen a bit and can often be a bit easier on the eyes if you're playing right before you want to go to sleep so another plugin I can easily recommend is CSS loader this allows you to install custom themes and really personalize your entire UI experience there's a ton of really slick looking interface customizations if you're experiencing a sort of Gyro aiming issues or heavy back paddle clicks you can calibrate the gyros in the controller settings and I recommend pressing the flat part of the back buttons rather than the sides also if one of your thumb sticks feels gritty it may need to clean the ring in the housing wrapping things up remote play together is clutch it allows you to take supported games invite a friend that doesn't own that game and stream it and play in your game quick access menu up at the top and invite a friend and finally once you've got all the native experience down pack there's a ton of great accessories for the deck you should definitely check out from carrying bags docks and even dbrand's kill switch which is pretty awesome I'll have everything linked down below and that is pretty much it seriously thank you so much for watching if you have any tips feel free to drop them down below and I'll see you guys in the next one [Music] thank you

Channel: Specter

Views: 562,871

Keywords: steam deck tips, steam deck best plugins, steam deck, steam deck beginners guide, steam deck tricks, steam deck accessories, steam deck setup, steam deck battery life, steam deck sd card, steam deck hacks, steam deck decky, steam deck controller, steam deck gameplay, specter, emulation steam deck

Id: gKvzM5pLFk4

Length: 9min 53sec (593 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 03 2023