DeadEyeVR, the Etsy seller who sent me his Steam Deck USB-C hub, made another accessory for my review: the DeckTop. This is a Bluetooth keyboard with a built-in trackpad and a clamp for which you can attach your Deck to. So far, I’m pretty impressed with it. They did a far better job putting this product together. With the USB-C hub/stand hybrid, it was little more than two off-the-shelf components slapped together with some adhesive.

Holy cow, that FSR 2.1 article has proven to be quite a hit. It’s already my third most-viewed article on the entire site. As such I wanted to follow up and actually put FSR 2.1 to the test on Steam Deck, to see whether or not it could live up to the claims I previously brought out. I’m again using Kena: Bridge of Spirits as the test sample. The only other game I have in my library that I can test FSR 2.

New Deck client update (beta) mostly focuses on bug fixes. It improves the login time for users with big game libraries. DPI scaling should now be proper on initial load, and the OSK in Desktop Mode should be properly resized. All of this and more: Improved login times for users with large libraries Fixed links to store/discussions/etc in the Library Fixed crash when trying to view emojis in virtual keyboard in desktop mode Fixed improper DPI scaling on initial load Decreased load time of virtual keyboard and standalone controller configurator in desktop mode after the first time Properly resize virtual keyboard in desktop mode Streamlined joining a voice chat in groups without multiple voice chat channels.

Today’s beta Steam Deck client update allows the user to check the individual components that make up their Deck. As you can see in the cover photo, I can see how much memory is in the Deck, who the supplier is, the part number, and I can see these same statistics for every nook and cranny that make up the device, including the: controller board thumbsticks LCD eMMC module PSU custom APU speaker module fan thermal module Per Steam’s blog post, this was made in the effort “to provide further clarity and transparency about the components and their sources for your specific Steam Deck.

Not too long after yesterday’s beta Deck client update, Valve pushed an update to the Stable branch with these additions. This update brings improvements to the Quick Access Menu, adds an external display safe mode, increases boot video duration to 30 seconds, adds controller-specific glyphs to the Lock screen, fixes for Steam group chats, the Lock screen, the OSK, the performance overlay, and Steam Input. Patch notes are as follows:

Today’s beta Steam Deck client update adds a toggle in the Developer menu for safe mode when connecting to an external display. Enabling this will force the Deck to use a low resolution when it’s docked; this might help if the external display has issues. An in-game crash has also been fixed with regards to Steam Input, and “the previous behavior of using stick deflection” has been restored, rather than “the capacitive sensor for Radial Menus that don’t have center buttons bound.

You might have heard about NVIDIA’s Deep Learning Super Sampling (DLSS). While it may be advantagous for achieving higher framerates at lower resolutions, while still retaining most of the same graphics quality, the downside is that the technology is essentially locked behind a paywall: you need to have a RTX GPU in order to use it. But you don’t need to pay an arm and a leg for said GPU. Fortunately for us, we can make use of an alternate technology that offers much of the same capabilities: FSR 2.

EmuDeck, the popular application for getting emulators set up on your Deck quickly and conveniently, has just received a brand new 2.0 update. Features with this update include: the addition of a GUI to make it easier to use it doesn’t need to be re-installed to apply customizations, thanks to a Quick Settings menu saves can be backed up to the cloud support for Vikta3K, ScummVM, and Doom performance improvements across all emulators revamped controller schemes and hotkeys bug fixes and “under the hood” improvements Best place I could find the patch notes was on their Twitter.

A new Deck client update has shipped to the Beta and Preview branches. Notable additions to this update are startup videos can now be longer than 10 seconds, the QAM going to the notifications tab when there’s a new message from a friend, and controller-specific glyphs have been added to the Lock Screen. Patch notes are as follows: General: The Quick Access Menu will now open to the notifications tab when you have new friend chat messages, game invites, or voice chat invites Notifications for Game Invites in the Quick Access Menu now have an option in the footer to accept them without having to navigate to the chat window Fixed an issue where Steam group chats with long names or descriptions could cause break the layout of the chat screen Increase boot animation max length from 10 seconds to 30 seconds Added controller-specific glyphs on the Lock screen Fixed an issue on the Lock screen where you’d have to dismiss the On-Screen Keyboard manually if you slept the device while it was up Fixed invoking the On-Screen-Keyboard while already in a fullscreen keyboard input scenario causing bad behavior.

So, you found a bunch of startup videos for your Deck that you like. Maybe you found them over on Steam Deck Repo. But perhaps you’re a bit disappointed that you can only use one startup video at a time. Well, the good news is you can randomize the startup video each time you turn the Deck on. This way, you always have something fresh to watch. And it’s relatively simple.