The BEST Steam Deck Plugins I've Found So Far!

what is going on YouTube in today's video we're going to be checking out steam deck plugins now I believe that steam deck plugins aren't for everybody I feel like they're for people that like to customize and add more functionality to their machines in this case the steam deck so I'm going to be going over my favorite ones and the ones that I find to be the most useful or I've been the most useful for me since I started using them a few months ago so I use decky loader to get all of my plugins so nothing else no crankshaft nothing like that just decky loader which I'll be showing you guys how to install it's super easy and I want to give a big shout out to all the people out there working on putting together these plugins for steam deck users but yeah in today's video we're going to be checking out all the different plugins that I've got installed and how they've improved my entire experience with the handheld in general installing these plugins are super quick and super easy anybody can do it I'm telling you guys right now it's going to take you probably five minutes to get it all set up and running and you're probably gonna find one or two of these that might work well to improve your experience and the steam deck so let me know down in the comment section what you guys think about them and if you already have experience with plugins and how they've helped you out and if you've got more plugins to add to this video go ahead and leave it down in the comment section below I'd like to try out some cool ones that you guys have found but let's go ahead and check out some cool and useful plugins that you might want on your steam deck installing decky loader is probably one of the easiest things that you'll have to do on the steam deck you'll need to switch the desktop mode to get it done and once it's set up from there you gain access to a new option in the steam quick access menu from here you can download all the plugins that you want quickly and easily and begin using them right away all right let's check out all the plugins on my steam deck starting off with CSS loader now this one has to be my favorite plugin to use on the deck it'll provide access to a variety of themes for changing the appearance of the steam Dax user interface which is great for customization there's a lot of themes that you can pick from with new ones being added all the time if you're like me and you get bored of the same user interface after a while then this plugin might be worth checking out within the plugin menu you can download themes that will affect the console on a system-wide level or just affect certain parts of the UI like the keyboard for example currently I've got a theme called Art hero downloaded enabled which personally I think looks great and works great for the steam deck hltb for deck is up next and this work works great for adding more information on how long Games should take to complete for average Gamers or completionists I find it useful for providing an idea of how long it'll take me to get through a game based on different play Styles you can enable or disable the view details option which links you to a web page with more granular details on how long it'll take to beat a game I have to keep this disabled as I find that I never need that much information so for me I like to keep it clean if you've ever wanted to record gameplay footage or just do General screen recording on your steam bag then you'll probably like this next plugin here decade recorder is super easy to use to capture footage directly from the steam deck in MP4 mov or MKV format when you open a recorder through the plugin menu you'll also see a toggle to enable replay mode which allows you to save your last 30 seconds of gameplay with a quick press of the Steam and start buttons simultaneously with Deca recorder you're able to start and stop a recording at any time which I find to be very convenient proton DD badge this is a plugin that's up next and this builds upon the steam verified badges feature in my opinion that system only tells you if a game is verified to work or not what the proton DB badges plugin does is give different badges to various games based on how well they work on the steam deck so functionality as opposed to just whether it's verified or not to work on a steam deck games can get between five different badges from borked being the lowest for the worst performing games all the way up to highest for platinum being the best performing games right out of the box I've noticed a lot of the games in my library tend to have a gold badge which is pretty accurate based on my experience playing them of course I love games with Platinum badges the most for example Mad Max is one of the best games I've played on the steam bag when it comes to how smooth everything works and this has a platinum badge the same goes for games with the gold badge like Spider-Man which runs very well but at lower settings you can edit how the badges appear from the plugin menu and each badge can be clicked on to take you directly to a web page with even more information deck settings is up next and this is something that can help a lot of people struggling with finding the best settings to use for different games the way it works is people share game settings that have worked for them which is then uploaded for others to use I'm not sure how well it works yet as I haven't used it very much but I'm sure it can be a great way to find Gameplay settings for the best experience on the steam deck granted some games do not have uploaded settings yet but I'm sure that's going to change over time the plugin identifies every game on your console and provides gameplay settings for each one if there's any also if you open the plugin while a game is running it highlights settings for that specific game at the top for easy access which is extremely convenient next we've got game theme music now if you like having some degree of control over the theme music that plays before you open up a game then you'll like the game theme music plugin it adds an additional option to the settings menu for each game which will allow changing the theme music for that game when you click on the open to change theme music music option the plugin does an automatic search and provides different options to pick from but there isn't always a lot of options for every game it's not something I use a lot but I like to have the option there for the times when I need it you can also adjust the volume at which the theme music plays at very easily and this is very important to me because some of them I find to be too loud the steam grid DB plugin is up next and this is a customization tool that will allow you to choose how games appear on the console you can choose between a variety of thumbnails icons and more for each game to personalize how each one looks it'll also come in handy for changing the thumbnail and more when the steam deck decides to use the weirdest cover photo or thumbnail for a game this happened to me for the longest time with Assassin's Creed 3 remastered but with this plugin I was able to polish up how it looked by changing the thumbnail cover photo on anything else steam grid will let me change changing artwork is super easy and can be done from the settings menu of each individual game vibrant deck is up up next and this plugin is great it allows increasing or reducing the overall call saturation of the steam deck screen if you've ever wanted a more colorful screen on your deck then this one is a must-have I wouldn't overdo it with this plugin though or colors are going to be oversaturated and things end up looking pretty bad from the plug-in settings menu you can select how much saturation you want from 0 up to 400. I keep mine around 160 and it works great for adding just a bit more color to the screen which to me is all I need there's also other settings there for adjusting the saturation of the individual red green and blue but I like to keep this at default because I don't want to mess up the color balance the next plugin to consider is controller tools now I use a dual sense controller with the steam deck sometimes but I could never check on the battery level to know when it needs to charge with the controller tools plug-in that problem went right out of the window besides showing you the battery level level it also shows you charging status what kind of device is connected and if that device is direct or a Bluetooth connection if you find that you never use external devices with your steam DAC and this one might be pretty much pointless to have storage cleaner is up next and this has been great as a performance tool for reducing clutter on a steam deck it'll let you delete Shader cache files and compatibility data which will free up storage space in the process cheddar cache files are temporary files that get created every time you run a game so a new one gets recreated every time you rerun the game as for compatibility data I personally don't mess with that since it's got some connection with game saves which would be a tragic loss for me at least the Bluetooth plugin is up next and this is a nice little tool for checking on the status of all of your connected Bluetooth devices at least without going into the steam deck settings menu it'll display symbols with different devices that's connected through Bluetooth and also as a toggle to quickly enable or disable Bluetooth complete greatly on the device honestly this plugin is kind of redundant in my opinion but it's a bit quicker to access Bluetooth devices connected to the steam deck using this plugin then going through the settings menu pause games is the final plugin that I'll be talking about and this will let you quickly pause whatever game you're currently playing as you can tell from the name I've actually never needed more than the simple pause function that the plugin provides but there's two other options which I've never really used at the end of the day you really don't need any of these plugins to enjoy using the steam deck but they're great tools for customization and adding a lot more functionality big shout out to all the creators of these plugins for all their hard work comment down below if you've got plugins installed on your steam bag currently or plan to do so and which ones you think would benefit you personally I'll link the download page for decky loader and anything else down in the description below so make sure to check that out if you're interested in setting these up that's all for this one it's told me as always and I will catch you all in my next video [Music] thank you

Channel: Gamespace | Midas

Views: 214,891

Keywords: midas gamespace, steam deck plugins, steam deck, decky loader, css loader, best steam deck plugins, steam deck upgrade, steam deck user interface, steam deck themes, steam deck screen recording, recording gameplay on steam deck, screen recording on steam deck, best steam deck tools, best plugins for steam deck, steam deck gameplay, decky loader steam deck, steam deck gaming, steam deck plugin loader, decky loader plugins, steam deck customization, steam deck custom themes

Id: Rc9DIhqxLnM

Length: 9min 26sec (566 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 26 2023