DeckSight Installation

BIOS and Extras

Warning: For safety’s sake, do not install any new hardware while installing DeckSight. A case swap or something like that is fine, but no battery swap, or any electrical mods etc. It may take a couple of reboots for the EC firmware to acclimate after the initial flash, you do not want to disrupt this process.

Automated install

DeckSight.desktop.download

The installer will install “extras”, then the BIOS. The extras are a brightness service for the SteamOS desktop and a gamescope display script. The brightness service does not install on Bazzite. The installer pulls the latest release package from the git repo which includes the patched version of the latest BIOS (F7A0133). This installer performs a download from 2 different places, you must be connected to the internet. Otherwise you must download the release from the Github repo and run the install script manually.

You are running the installer and flashing the BIOS first because DeckSight will not work with the stock BIOS. Likewise, once you finish flashing this BIOS, the LCD will not work. So you run the installer, let it flash the BIOS and reboot. The LCD may show it’s backlight but it will not work. This is when you shut it back down and install DeckSight.

  1. Make sure you are updated to SteamOS current stable (3.7.8 or greater). Installer should works on SteamOS and Bazzite. If the installer does not launch or fails on a different distro, use the github repo for manual installation. Windows is unsupported.

  2. Plug in the charger, make sure the charge light is lit.

  3. If the Steam Deck has started in Gamescope, switch to Desktop mode.

  4. Make sure you have a sudo password set. Run “passwd” if not already set.

  5. Download DeckSight.desktop.download to any convenient location except a FAT32 formatted USB stick. FAT32 lacks permissions and the installer will not work.

  6. Double-click the file, and select “execute”, it will download and execute a helper script, that will download, extract, and execute the release package from DeckSight-public git repository.

  7. The graphical installer will launch, first, select which extra components to install (or remove). Last step will install the BIOS. If you are just updating the extras, you can cancel the installer before flashing the BIOS

    NOTE: You will need to plug the charger in after the BIOS is flashed to bring the Steam Deck out of “battery storage mode” If it was already plugged in it will reboot itself

  8. Install DeckSight, then proceed to the “tips” section

    DeckSight Remove and Replace

Manual install

https://github.com/ShadeTechnik/DeckSight-Public

  1. Download the latest release package from the git repo and extract.

  2. Run install.sh for the same Zenity based installer, or follow the readme files for each component.

Other BIOS versions

BIOS Files Download

The git repo release will only contain the patched version of the latest Steam Deck BIOS from Valve (currently F7A0131). Above are alternate (32GB etc.) BIOS versions. These BIOS versions must be manually installed, and the graphical installer will overwrite them if ran. You can still use the graphical installer to add/remove the extras, and you can do the initial BIOS install, but if updating, you should cancel when prompted to flash the BIOS as it will overwrite whatever is currently flashed.

Older versions of the BIOS have not been thoroughly tested but if you are looking for an older version, and can recover from a BIOS failure, contact info@shadetechnik.com.

If installing the 32GB version, the easiest way to get going is to use the graphical installer above to flash the standard DeckSight BIOS, install DeckSight OLED, then once it’s all working manually install the 32GB BIOS afterwards.

To manually flash the BIOS file from SteamOS run:
$ sudo /usr/share/jupiter_bios_updater/h2offt <path-to-bios-file.fd>

Other files

The Git repo linked above also contains an ICC profile and possibly other files which are not necessary but may be useful, as well as some information to use them: