Steam Beta adds Bluetooth device battery info for Steam Deck, various desktop PC updates
www.gamingonlinux.com
Another round of Steam Client Beta updates are here with Steam Deck and Desktop PC seeing lots of improvements and bug fixes, and it's especially nice for people using Bluetooth on Steam Deck.

Steam Deck Specific changes:

  • Show battery information for connected Bluetooth devices under Settings->Bluetooth and in the Quick Access menu.
  • Added a per-device toggle to Settings->Bluetooth that controls whether a device is allowed to wake Steam Deck from sleep.
  • Fixed a bug that would cause the UI to show stale data for Bluetooth devices.

Rest of the changelog is here and is mostly desktop client improvements

  • @[email protected]English
    13•6 months ago

    Doesn’t this essentially integrate similar functionality to what one of the Decky plugins had been used for? Great that it’s an official feature now, in any case.

    • VahtosEnglish
      6•6 months ago

      Sort of, if you mean the controller tools one. I believe when that was working it would show battery percentage. The Bluetooth plugin does not. So this is more general.

      It also brings the feature of waking the deck via Bluetooth which is super convenient if you use it docked.

      I’m trying not to get my hopes up, but they have been making a lot of changes targeted at the docked experience lately, and I have a theory that is because they are getting close to announcing a Steam Deck Controller.

      • @SuperIceEnglish
        5•6 months ago

        Wake via Bluetooth isn’t new, the OLED model has always supported it (the LCD doesn’t due to hardware). This just lets you disable it for specific devices that you don’t want to wake the Deck.

        • VahtosEnglish
          2•6 months ago

          Oh that’s unfortunate. I have the LCD model and didn’t realize it can’t do this due to hardware.

      • @[email protected]
        2•6 months ago

        So like, if I had a Dualsense controller paired to it, I could wake the SteamDeck by pushing the PS button like I would with the PS5?

        • FubarberryOPMEnglish
          2•6 months ago

          Maybe, not all controllers work with the Deck’s Bluetooth wake up. The controller specifically needs to support BLE (Bluetooth low energy) because that’s what the deck uses while it’s asleep. I know Xbox controllers support it, but I’m not sure if dualsense does.

      • FubarberryOPMEnglish
        2•6 months ago

        The new list of Bluetooth devices in the quick access menu replaced the regular Bluetooth plugin too I think.

        I need to do more testing when I get home, but I think I can uninstall both the Bluetooth plugin and controller tools now.

        edit: And the plugin for managing what devices wake on Bluetooth connection, so 3 plugins total.

        • VahtosEnglish
          2•6 months ago

          I have all those plugins too, please report back if it works!

          • FubarberryOPMEnglish
            2•6 months ago

            Looks like it does, I can use the list of Bluetooth devices in the QAM to quick connect to Bluetooth devices that don’t auto connect, and the controller’s battery shows up in both the QAM device list and the full Bluetooth menu.

            My stadia controllers don’t support BLE and can’t wake the deck, but I have a Bluetooth keyboard that can. Going to Bluetooth menu in settings and selecting the keyboard gives me an option to disable wake functionality for it.

            So yeah, looks like I can uninstall all 3 Bluetooth Decky plugins I use.

            • VahtosEnglish
              2•6 months ago

              That’s awesome. Thanks for updating. Looking forward to this hitting stable!