Valve has announced a new preview update for Steam Deck OS. Version 3.5 is now available with various display improvements and multiple fixes to enhance your handheld gaming experience.
The update delivers plenty of display-related changes, such as improved color, making the console render a slightly warmer and more vibrant image (the Steam Deck now emulates the sRGB color gamut). Those unhappy with the change can adjust the vibrancy and color temperature in Settings > Adjust Display Colors.
Another noteworthy addition is HDR and VRR support for external monitors, reworked scaling settings, touchscreen fixes, improved latency, and the ability to offset CPU voltage settings.
Here is the complete changelog:
Display
The default color rendering for Steam Deck has been adjusted to emulate the sRGB color gamut, resulting in a slightly warmer and more vibrant color appearance.
Added Settings -> Adjust Display Colors, to tune the display"s Color Vibrancy and Color Temperature. The settings can be tuned with a preview of a test image (above), or with your running game.
Native: The native display color appearance (the color rendering for Steam Deck prior to this update).
sRGB: Emulate the sRGB primaries, in a smooth manner that does not introduce gradient clipping.
Boosted: Emulate a wider-gamut display appearance, resulting in increased apparent vibrance. May result in gradient clipping.
HDR can now be enabled in Display Settings if supported by the external display.
VRR can now be enabled in Display Settings if supported by the USB-C adapter.
Reworked Quick-Access scaling settings to separate scaling from filtering. Added Stretch and Zoom scaling as new options to handle different aspect ratios.
Fixed touchscreen orientation while external display is connected.
Compositing is now avoided in additional scenarios, reducing latency and stutter in situation with multiple overlays on screen.
Improved latency in certain situations where the application renders slower than the display"s refresh rate.
General
Fixed an issue where certain workloads would exhibit severe CPU performance issues unless SMT was manually disabled.
External storage devices are now auto-mounted when connected to Steam Deck. To format or manage storage devices use the new device management interface in Settings->Storage.
Updated graphics drivers, with many performance and functionality improvements. Improved performance for Starfield. Fixed viewmodel corruption in Amnesia: The Bunker and launch failures for Immortals of Aveum and Kaiju-A-GoGo.
Improved Bluetooth connection stability, especially with multiple controllers
Slightly improved sleep resume speed
Implemented switching between controller bindings and mouse/keyboard desktop bindings by long-pressing Options in the Linux hid-steam driver, to match Steam"s default Desktop configuration.
Improved fade transitions between applications.
The contents of the performance overlay can now be customized by creating a ~/.config/MangoHud/presets.conf configuration file.
Fixed a bug where some games could appear stretched if their window size didn"t match their swapchain size (eg. Naruto Shippuden Ultimate Ninja Storm 4)
Fixed Disgaea PC needing to be tapped on before input works
Fixed physical dimensions reported to games, fixing some issues with an incorrect aspect ratio sometimes being detected (eg. Returnal)
Worked around a problem where Allow Tearing could cause heavy stuttering if the Performance Overlay or other overlays appeared on screen. Tearing is now impossible in such situations, and the Performance Overlay should be disabled for best results.
Fixed a problem where keyboard input would not be detected in Overwatch 2
Controller firmware: fixed an issue where some thumbstick touch sensors would lose touch periodically
Firmware
Added voltage offset settings.
Improved robustness of the Firmware Settings Reset chord (Volume Down + Quick-Access + Power) against some boot hang scenarios.
Fixed a rare issue that would set the processor TDP limit too low causing CPU and GPU frequencies to be stuck at 400 MHz and 200 MHz respectively.
Fixed an issue when the charging light would turn back on when plugged in for a while after fully charged.
