Steam Deck Gets Major Operating System Update – Here’s What’s New

If you are lucky enough to possess a Valve Steam Deck you will know that it constantly gets minor updates pushed to it, seemingly at times every time you turn it on. The system is so stable by this stage however that major updates to the machine’s OS are getting fewer and far between. Today’s OS patch – 3.6.19 seems to bring a fair bit with it work talking about though, so let’s have a proper look at what’s new. SteamOS 3.6.19 – what’s new It was not a big secret that when this patch was pushed to the Stable branch it would have support for ROG Ally keys baked in but there is an awful lot more. Before we give you the full patch notes here are a few highlights that caught our eye. Patch highlights Added support for extra ROG Ally keys Added support for the ASUS ROG Raikiri Pro controller Improved pairing experience with Apple AirPods Updated graphics driver to Mesa 24.1, with many performance and other improvements Improved responsiveness of the Steam UI Worked around misdetection of some SanDisk microSD cards Fixed an issue where the internal display could remain blank after disconnecting an external display There are a few things above that have directly affected us, so it’s good to see them all get sorted in this latest stable update. Now for some bedtime reading, here are the full patch notes for this release SteamOS 3.6.19 Full patch notes General Updated to a more recent Arch Linux base, and updated Linux kernel to version 6.5 These updates improve hardware compatibility, system performance, security, and overall system stability Improved speed of subsequent OS updates Improved reliability of certain microSD card usage scenarios Worked around misdetection of some SanDisk microSD cards Improved responsiveness of session restart in case of session crashes caused by certain GPU errors Fixed an issue where certain games could crash with a ‘page allocation failure’ after a long play session Improved recovery from situations where the Steam installation could get corrupted Fixed some connectivity failures with access points supporting WPA3 security Fixed a problem where Steam Deck would be unable to connect to certain Wi-Fi 7 access points Fixed game session cursor offset alignment Fixed an issue where a thin grey line could appear at the bottom of the screen during boot in some situations Fixed an issue where the Performance Overlay would spuriously enable itself under certain conditions Fixed an issue preventing sleep on some types of aftermarket SSDs Fixed an issue preventing update checks from working properly on networks with an invalid IPv6 configuration Fixed an issue where touching the left trackpad after sleep could result in a spurious haptic click Fixed a general issue affecting OLED units on 3.5, causing a slow memory leak during gameplay Fixed an issue causing a “Update Error” message when attempting to interact with the update menu on the ‘Preview’ update channel. Fixed the frame limiter not properly applying in certain situations Fixed an issue where block corruption could appear on screen on certain state transitions Fixed an issue where updating the built-in controller firmware could result in a blank screen during boot Fixed a rare issue where sound output could be corrupted on certain boots Fixed a rare issue where 3.5mm headphones could produce elevated background noise on reconnection until next sleep/resume Fixed an issue where updates would sometimes be applied incorrectly if the unit was powered off abruptly near the end of an OS update Fixed an issue with copy-pasting UTF-8 text across applications Fixed a problem where a Game Recording capture failing could cause subsequent captures to also fail Fixed a crash when using the magnifier tool while game recording is active Fixed colorspace for Game Recording Fixed an issue where colors could appear washed out when using Steam Remote Play as a client Fixed a possible crash when using Steam Deck as the Remote Play host Fixed an issue that could cause videos to stutter in titles such as BlazBlue Centralfiction Fixed an issue with a rare session crash during early startup of ELDEN RING Fixed display regressions with certain titles such as Warriors All-Stars, Disgaea 5 Complete, Vampire: The Masquerade – Reckoning of New York Worked around a bug where HDR couldn’t be selected in Halo Infinite Fixed an issue causing temporary files to accrue when using Flatpak Security fix for Flatpak (CVE-2024-42472) Graphics and Performance Updated graphics driver to Mesa 24.1, with many performance and other improvements Improved responsiveness of the Steam UI Improved performance and stability in memory pressure situations Slightly improved cold boot time Display Improved display uniformity, under some conditions (Mura Compensation) Improved display color balance (reduced green tint) at lower brightness levels, under some conditions Improved gamma uniformity (yellow tint), under some conditions Fixed certain specific refresh rates failing to apply on the OLED Limited Edition model Fixed an issue where the internal display could remain blank after disconnecting an external display Fixed an issue where internal display could be abnormally limited to a lower frame rate after disconnecting an external display with VRR enabled Fixed rare situations where switching to Desktop Mode or back could result in a blank screen, or wrong colors External Display Fixed several issues where an external display could remain blank after resuming Fixed an issue where an external display could remain blank if its mode required chroma subsampling Fixed an issue where the system could crash on wakeup if an external DisplayPort monitor was connected Fixed a system crash when hotplugging a second display in Desktop mode Improved frame pacing with VRR on external displays Bluetooth Improved pairing experience with Apple AirPods Enabled support for Bluetooth HFP and BAP profiles Added mechanism to configure which Bluetooth device categories are allowed to wake the system from suspend By default, controllers are the only devices that can wake the system from sleep Finer-grained UI configuration options will be available as part of a future update Improved connection speed of some Bluetooth devices Fixed an issue where Bluetooth peripherals would disconnect on session switch Input Added support for extra ROG Ally keys Added support for the ASUS ROG Raikiri Pro controller Added support for the Machenike G5 Pro controller Added support for the Steam Deck motion sensors to the built-in non-Steam kernel driver Fixed an issue where scroll wheel Steam Input bindings weren’t functional Fixed an issue where DualShock 4 and DualSense controllers would sometimes not function properly on their first connection Fixed calibration on some third-party DualShock 4 controllers Desktop Mode Updated to KDE Plasma 5.27.10 Enabled thumbnail previews for videos in the file browser Fixed an issue with desktop use that could cause subsequent microSD card auto-mount to fail Fixed Zenity dialog boxes Fixed nested desktop crashing on launch BIOS / Firmware Adjusted power LED slow charging threshold Fixed not being able to set the SDCard as default boot device Fixed spurious power LED blinking in S5 Steam Deck OLED only Added support for the Windows Bluetooth driver (LCD models already have Windows Bluetooth support) Steam Deck LCD only Improved battery life by up to 10% in light load situations Added overclocking controls Steam Deck Docking Station Added support for some HDMI CEC features: TV remote input TV wake up TV input switching Updated Dock firmware, with compatibility fixes for high-refresh-rate VRR displays, and fixing several issues where displays could remain blank Development and Modding Modified files in /etc are now migrated to new OS versions based on a whitelist Fixes numerous issues with incidentally touched /etc files becoming ‘sticky’ and persisting unexpectedly Additional whitelist entries can be added via config fragments See /etc/atomic-update.conf.d/example-additional-keep-list.conf Added /etc/previous/ containing modifications from the previous update to prevent unexpected data loss Up to five previous snaphots of /etc modifications will additionally be retained in /var/lib/steamos-atomupd/etc_backup/ Added support for {ssh,sshd}_config fragments Split package reinstallation step out of `steamos-devmode` command and into new `steamos-unminimize` command.