The Steam Deck is one of the most popular gaming handhelds out there, competing directly with handhelds from other popular brands like the ASUS ROG Ally and Lenovo Legion Go. It provides a solid on-the-go gaming experience with a decent battery life. However, even though it may be a solid device, its users still face different issues from time to time.

Thankfully, Valve is pretty quick with addressing most of them, and the latest Steam Deck client update has brought fixes and improvements for over 45 issues that players have been facing.

What does the latest Steam Deck update offer?

The new update was released on January 20th, and it has made several improvements to the Steam Deck. The downloads page now has a new layout, making it easier to see active downloads, while the suspended animation which appears when you’re not using the Steam Deck has been updated. On top of that, large game libraries will now load assets much faster, and there are also improvements to how startup animations are displayed on different screen resolutions, including ultra-wide monitors.

A few patch notes that stood out to us

• Updated layout of downloads page for the active item
• Improved library asset loading times for large libraries
• Improved the display of the startup animations on 16:9 and ultra-wide monitor resolutions
• Fixed a bug where the video track of a game recording could be empty
• Slightly reduced steady-state CPU usage of Steam Input overall
• Added Nintendo Switch controller configurations to the options shown by default for the Wireless HORIPAD for Steam so that gyro configurations are more easily found
• Fixed some cases where bindings were removed for grip or share buttons on devices
• Fixed an issue where previewing a configuration, then editing your original configuration could corrupt it

Several fixes have also been introduced to improve the user experience. Child accounts can now adjust screen brightness, something that was not possible before, and users can now easily navigate to their game library from the downloads page by clicking on a game’s image. Aside from that, a major issue where Steam Clients would exit when the Steam Deck was resumed during a non-Steam app session has also been fixed. The brightness slider (HDR) in the Quick Access Menu was also not working properly, but the issue has now been resolved through the new update.

Aside from what’s mentioned above, Steam Input and controller support have also received improvements as their latency and CPU usage in Big Picture Mode and Virtual Menus have been reduced. The issue that was causing Drill Core to crash when Steam Input was enabled with a gamepad config has also been fixed. You can check out the patch notes for a full list of changes and improvements.

About the Author

Abdul Haddi

Abdul is a tech writer and Editor for PC Guide, specializing in all things tech, gaming, and hardware.