Valve has just deployed a new Steam Deck update that’s brimming with quality-of-life improvements. The patch includes changes to chat, downloads, and several other features that long-time and new system owners will certainly appreciate.
As much as I love my Steam Deck, chatting to friends on the device is a chore, even while using the trackpads for speedier input. Thankfully, we now have access to preset messages that are easily accessible at the press of a button and flick of a thumbstick.
You have eight Quick Chat messages at your disposal, one for each direction of the thumbstick. The default texts are fine, and the double exclamation point for ‘Yo!!’ did bring out an absurd smile from me, but you can configure them to whatever you’d like via system menus.
This update also introduces a feature called Remote Downloads Management. Through this tool, you can now pause and reorder game downloads across Steam clients, such as from your PC to Deck or vice versa.
While that’s useful, I’d like to see Valve go further still with this feature. For instance, I’d love the ability to outright start downloads on my Steam Deck from my PC, regardless of sleep state. Such a feature could prove handy on the Steam Machine too, whenever it arrives, enabling me to kickstart downloads from the Deck, so I’m hoping we’ll see it materialise in the future.
Speaking of Valve hardware, this update also contains changes that will benefit the Steam Controller, as well as other gamepads. More specifically, the Deck now includes a battery level icon in the system header, and will fire off toast notifications when your controller charge becomes low.
There’s a handful of noteworthy small improvements here too, including a tidier Steam Input interface, as well as the ability to switch to desktop mode from the login screen. I’m also thankful the Store menu shortcut now goes to the homepage, rather than the ‘Great on Deck’ section, as it always should have.
You can read the full change log over on the official blog post. For more Valve chatter, check out our coverage on the current status of Steam Deck 2 development.
