Please mention whether you’re on stable, beta, or a different update channel. There’s a good chance most bugs on the stable update channel have been fixed already, so anyone on the beta update can let people know if the bug they’re facing is already fixed.
There’s still some crackling audio on resume from suspend, occasionally. Would love to see that bug ironed out completely.
I’d recommend trying the “Pause games” decky plugin, it can pause the game process immediately before suspending which fixes most of the audio bugs.
Ah! I actually meant to do that (saw that on another post), but the second to last Deck update broke Decky Loader’s injection sequence, so I forgot about it in the meantime.
ETA: the latest Deck update corrected that issue, and Decky works fine, now.
If you turn off your deck being online and then turn it on again somewhere with no internet access, sometimes it will not get past the “looking for updates” screen before loading steam. I’ve had that happen more than enough times. Only way to exit from that loop is connecting to internet, but that’s not always possible.
100% agree on this one it’s fucking crazy
I just want some updated stacks: Bluetooth especially.
On beta, the two bugs that annoy me the most are both related to docked play.
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The first one is that pressing home + A on a controller to open the QAM will open it for just a moment before opening the full steam overlay instead. It’s acting like it’s counting it as two home presses.
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Second one is that every SteamOS update somehow messes up my bluetooth pairing for controllers. The controllers are still listed, but won’t connect. Have to forget them and repair before they’ll work again.
I have these exact same issues, never heard of someone else experiencing them.
I’d say the Bluetooth issues, and the inability for me to turn the steam deck on when docked at a distance (without extras) are my biggest pet peeves right now. Otherwise I’m a happy camper.
The Home + A is annoying, but I usually get it after a few attempts.
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The weird jumping/flickering animation when pressing play on a game in gaming mode and “Launching game…” appears.
Doesn’t have any impact on actually launching the games but it’s just annoying.
Thought it was Decky at first but I’ve tried disabling it and it still does it.
The one where the zoom animation plays several times in quick succession? Yea, I get that bug too. Very annoying.
That’s the one!
Huh, I’ve had mine for a couple weeks and only saw it for the first time yesterday, after an update…
On the stable channel, it seems like (from comparing notes with friends) a recent update introduced crashes into older games that did not crash previously. In my case, Proton is always involved.
- random crashes
- not having audio in the startup animation
Sometimes when I go into Desktop Mode, X11 doesn’t have any screens. The deck just sits there with a black screen, until I ssh in and kill plasma
There was a bug with that, caused both by Decky Recorder and by having Valve’s own game recorder turned on. Uninstalling Decky Recorder and making sure the built in recorder is turned off before entering desktop mode seems to fix it.
- I usually use my steam deck as my PC with a external monitor in desktop mode, but Cyberpunk 2077 has audio cracking issues in desktop mode.
- When i unlock the steam deck in desktop mode, it requires a password input, but it cant use the screen’s virtual keyboard, i have to use an external keyboard to do that.
- The internet proxy settings in gaming mode still interfere with and conflict with the internet proxy settings in desktop mode.
- The Steam Deck in gaming mode can’t use a system screenshot shortcut with the keyboard, so I have to switch to the Steam Deck’s gamepad to take a screenshot when I’m using the keyboard.
- The Steam Deck updates in desktop mode seems almost endless; I get the notifications almost everyday I log in.
I would love to see a Bluetooth headset fully working.
Have used my BT headset for almost a year and never had an issue. What are you referring to?
Does it not work? I sometimes use Bluetooth earbuds and they work great.
Interesting. In my experience when on any Linux distribution I have to decide if I want good Audio quality and not use the microphone of the headset or if I want to use a worse audio code but activate the microphone. I thought this still was a widespread issue, or did I miss something?
This is a Bluetooth issue, not Linux or Deck specific. When microphone is enabled on a headset, Bluetooth will switch to a different audio codec. That codec supports one output channel (microphone) and one input channel, so it will be mono audio. The sound quality is good enough for audio calls but not for anything else. The only thing you can do is to disable the microphone. Or, you can do what people have done for couple decades now: complain at Bluetooth Special Interest Group until they improve the standard.
Yes it is not Deck specific, but Linux specific. It works on Windows / Android /IOS. And contrary to any other Linux installation, the deck is a commercial product. As a commercial product I want modern Headsets to work properly as they do on other systems. Proper Audio I/O is necessary for any multiplayer game.
What headphones in particular are you using? Because with standard AD2P you’re limited to mSBC at best, but maybe your device has some proprietary implementation.
You could try with a hardware dongle, but no guarantee that will work either.
At least in the long run it should be fixed by Bluetooth LE audio, but I’m not sure if the Deck properly supports it yet, and it requires new audio devices as well.
I’m a musician who is just getting started producing on Linux. I haven’t had issues with audio aside from my audio interface not being compatible due to have software control for hardware which i hated anyways. Using a focuarite interface now and its been good. Pulseaudio has been pretty solid for a while now which is what the steamdeck uses from what i can see online.
Both my mic and headphones have worked great with all distros I’ve tried. That said, sometimes stuff just doesn’t wanna play well with Linux, even if it seems like it should and im typically not using bluetooth devices on Linux for audio so im not as familiar with issues they may have.
You might try another set of headphones to see if its an issue with the headohones themselves. And or, try them with a different distro/pc because it may be a issue with the deck itself.
My problem is not headphone specific but Bluetooth specific. It boils down to one of these questions, where there are multiple of to find. My deck also does not provite an answer and I can hear the audio quality difference massively between A2DP and other Codecs.
What kind of Daw are you using on Linux btw? I only know of Bitwig with Linux support. And I still did not get around to giving that a proper try.
Ah ok so from what im hearing, because the kernal on the deck hasn’t been updated with a codec that you prefer for these headphones, they sound worse. That sucks man. I would hope it wouldn’t be the same case for other distros but if your headphones are newer that can make it more difficult to have compatibility. Takes a while for Linux to catch up on most stable distributions is my understanding.
And I use Reaper! Love Reaper a ton, clean and easy to use daw for $60 bucks (small business/personal use) I’m currently on Fedora 40.
I will take a look at reaper, thanks!
Pulseaudio has been pretty solid for a while now which is what the steamdeck uses from what i can see online.
It uses Pipewire, but it has pretty close to full API compatibility with Pulseaudio (and Jack) so most applications will “just work” and you get lower and more stable latency in return.
Sometimes when I scroll down with the d-pad it scrolls up instead, until it gets to the top, then scrolls down.
Also, I just today changed my timezone setting, but the clock didn’t update. I think I’m on stable, but not sure.
The default scroll settings now is circular scroll (where you move your finger in a circle on the track pad). If you don’t know it’s circular it will make it seem like it changes directions at times.
It used to default to swipe up/down to scroll, and the change in defaults has confused a lot of people.
But I’m talking about using the D-Pad, and it only happens occasionally.
Oh, also, another d-pad bug is with the keyboard, sometimes if I hold down a direction to highlight a key, it will only move one key at a time and won’t scroll over unless I tap a key with my finger, and then it’ll work normally. This one is pretty frequent.
Oh my bad, I accidentally skipped over that.
