5 Important Steam Deck Apps You Ought to Be Utilizing In 2026

It is protected to say handheld gaming is seeing an enormous resurgence. Kicked off by the Nintendo Swap in 2017, and now cemented by the Steam Deck with its launch in 2022, there is no such thing as a scarcity of handhelds to select from. Examples vary from Android-powered units just like the Retroid Pocket, to Linux-based techniques just like the Steam Deck. 

It is truthfully by no means been a greater time to be a handheld gamer, however that does not imply you may’t extend the life of your gear with some awesome apps. Now that the Steam Deck has secured its place available in the market, loads of apps have been launched to additional dial within the handheld’s gaming expertise. The query is, which apps are literally price utilizing? Properly, that is exactly what we’re right here for right now: We have rounded up the highest 5 apps each Steam Deck gamer ought to set up on their {hardware}. From unified recreation launchers to recreation streaming apps, BGR has you coated.

The Steam Deck presents a reasonably simple UI, and when you can sideload apps and video games to launch out of your Steam library, there are simpler methods to go about maintaining every part in a single place. 

The Heroic Games Launcher is one of the top choices to corral your multi-store library of video games. Not solely is the app open supply (similar to the remainder of the software program constructed into the Steam Deck), however it additionally helps software program from a mess of shops. From Steam, to GOG, to Epic, to Amazon Prime Video games, the Heroic Video games Launcher helps all of them.

It is helpful to make use of a third-party launcher like Heroic to assemble every part in a single place, however it’s additionally the proper launcher to assemble the free video games you’ve got been gathering from the likes of Epic and Amazon. Each corporations supply freebies each month, and plenty of avid gamers usually go away these freebies unused. This not must be the case with the Heroic Video games Launcher: It is the proper excuse to cease sitting in your backlog and get gaming, with the assistance of a launcher that helps the entire main PC gaming shops and places all of your video games in the identical place.

Now that you’ve got a launcher set as much as simply launch your entire video games, you are going to need to install Decky Loader to realize entry to a large world of Steam Deck plugins. Accessible from a single button press, Decky Loader is principally a Swiss Military Knife for the Steam Deck. Plugins vary from customizing with new visuals and sounds, to tweaking your video games’ efficiency on a per-game foundation, even together with video games you emulate with apps like EmuDeck (extra on that later).

Decky Loader is pretty easy to put in, and because it’s only a assortment of scripts working within the background, it is also non-destructive and simple to uninstall. Decky Loader can also be open supply, which implies you may contribute to the challenge, and no firm has unique management of the app. Neighborhood management is an excellent factor on the subject of extending the performance of your Steam Deck. That is very true if you’re deep into the world of emulation, or make the most of another options that might run afoul of the mess that’s copyright regulation all over the world.

Whether or not you’d wish to theme your deck to look and sound like a PS2, or just want to enhance the colours of your display with a plugin like VibrantDeck, the world is your oyster with Decky Loader.

EmuDeck is an all-in-one emulation station for the Steam Deck, doing the heavy lifting for you in an effort to spend your time gaming as an alternative of tinkering. The app integrates instantly into your Steam library, and you may even add the video games to third-party launchers like Heroic Launcher. Coping with a big library of video games throughout a wide array of consoles can get messy quick, which is why EmuDeck is extremely really helpful for all you Steam Deck emulation fanatics on the market.

Now, in the event you’re accustomed to emulation, you may have to produce your personal BIOS and video games, and EmuDeck does not change this. What it does do is make this course of a lot simpler than in the event you have been utilizing a handful of standalone emulators. You possibly can simply verify in case your BIOS is supported from a fast menu, you may compress your video games to save lots of room, you may again up your saves to the cloud, and you may even benefit from the Steam Deck’s gyroscope for titles/emulators that assist the characteristic. Better of all, you may select which emulators you utilize, must you discover one which helps the ROMs you are making an attempt to play higher than one other.

Up subsequent is Moonlight, an open-source game-streaming app that connects to your PC to stream put in titles over your community to your Steam Deck handheld. It is like a non-commercial model of GeForce Now or Xbox Cloud Gaming; which is extra correct than it sounds, since Moonlight is actually constructed on prime of Nvidia’s GameStream protocol.

Moonlight helps streams at as much as 4K, and it contains HDR assist. When you will not get a lot use out of streaming at such a excessive decision on the Steam Deck, the HDR assist is nice for all of you OLED homeowners on the market. Moonlight additionally helps high-FPS streams, as much as 120Hz, one other win for anybody utilizing the OLED mannequin that helps excessive framerates.

After all, in the event you want one more reason to take a look at Moonlight in your recreation streaming wants, the truth that it’s free is unquestionably an enormous profit, particularly with the wide selection of options it presents. You will be hard-pressed to seek out another streaming service that gives excessive FPS assist with out charging you for it (taking a look at you, GeForce Now). Whereas recreation streaming has but to take off with the mainstream, due to uneven efficiency that is reliant on a steady community, a minimum of you will not be out any funds by giving Moonlight a go to check its wide selection of capabilities.

One of many nice issues about Steam OS and the Steam Deck is you can simply change your Proton variations on a per-game foundation. It’s possible you’ll need to do that to discover a Proton model that performs higher in a recreation than the default possibility. The factor is, regardless of what number of variations of Proton are on the market, you’re restricted to a handful on the default Steam Deck setup. That is where ProtonUp-Qt comes into the picture: This device makes it simple to put in Proton-GE, a community-made fork that gives additional patches for prolonged compatibility, due to its pleasant graphical consumer interface.

Through the use of ProtonUp-Qt, you may guarantee you’ve got Proton-GE put in in your Steam Deck video games to entry, and you may even select what variations, must you want an older variant to get a recreation working. As soon as you’ve got put in your Proton-GE model of selection, you’ll choose that Proton model simply as you’d with the defaults already obtainable on Steam.

ProtonUp-Qt is without doubt one of the best methods to increase recreation compatibility on the Steam Deck, and because it’s available on the Linux app store Flathub as a Flatpak, it is also simple to put in. Steam OS helps Flatpaks from Flathub out of the field throughout the default Uncover Software program Heart. Merely boot into the Desktop Mode, open Uncover, and seek for ProtonUp-Qt to put in it. Straightforward-peasy, simply as handheld gaming was meant to be.