I love my Steam Deck, but sometimes I go days or weeks without turning it on for one reason or another. And this means finding a ton of downloads waiting for me every time.
Thankfully, this new feature on Steam Deck’s latest firmware could mitigate that by allowing you to download any existing updates (or full game installations) with the display off before it powers down into sleep mode. And the feature is available to use now, Valve said.
“Display-off downloads are accessible in two ways,” Valve explained in the announcement. “While Steam Deck is downloading content, pressing the power button now brings up a new dialog, asking whether you’d like to continue downloading with the screen off. Select Continue, and Steam Deck will go into the new low-power download mode. In addition, Steam Deck will automatically go into this mode after an idle timeout.”
Valve says the feature is enabled by default when Steam Deck is plugged in, but it can be enabled for battery power in the system’s settings under the Power menu. I’ll definitely be turning this feature on so try and avoid any waiting for downloads.
This doesn’t entirely fix the issue of having to download updates, but it’s a nice feature nonetheless. While in low power download mode, pressing a button or even moving the Steam Deck will show something like the image above. And if you’re on battery power, the Deck will automatically sleep once the level falls below 20 percent, as another nice quality of life tweak.
Since launching in 2022, the Steam Deck has since been surpassed a couple times over when it comes to hardware and other features by some other handheld PCs, and I’m waiting for Valve’s next iteration before upgrading to anything else. So for now, these minor updates for the Deck will have to do.
But Valve, I will be waiting for the Steam Deck 2, where hopefully features like this will be ready out of the box.
