How to Change Graphics Settings on Steam Deck

The Steam Deck offers a robust and versatile gaming experience right at your fingertips. However, to optimize your gaming and ensure the best possible performance, you might need to tweak your Steam Deck’s graphics settings. This guide will provide an in-depth look at how you can alter these settings to meet your specific needs and preferences, enhancing both gameplay and battery life.

Do You Need to Change Graphics Settings?

Like any gaming device, the performance of games on the Steam Deck will depend on their system requirements. While the device’s custom APU (a combination of a CPU and GPU), developed by AMD, is expected to handle most games well, there might be instances where adjusting the graphics settings could improve performance or battery life.

If a game is not running as smoothly as you’d like, or if you want to extend battery life, you could consider lowering some graphics settings, such as the resolution, frame rate, or details like texture quality and shadows. The Steam Deck’s 7-inch screen has a resolution of 1280×800 pixels, so running games at this resolution, rather than a higher one, should be sufficient for most users.

Valve is also integrating a feature in SteamOS that will allow players to set game-specific settings, which means you could adjust the graphics settings for each game individually based on its performance.

How to Change Graphics Settings on Steam Deck

The Steam Deck is designed to run AAA games natively, and Valve has indicated that it’s optimizing the SteamOS interface and the Proton compatibility layer to ensure games run smoothly on the device. But you’ll need to keep in mind that changing graphics settings may influence your device’s performance and battery life. Higher settings typically provide more visual detail but may also require more processing power and reduce battery life. It’s all about finding the balance that works best for your individual gaming style and demands.

Enable Performance Overlay on Steam Deck

If you’re just wanting to get a baseline to see how well your Steam Deck is running or performing, you can do so by enabling the Performance Overlay. There aren’t any extra apps that you need to download, as this is just built into SteamOS itself.

1. Turn on your Steam Deck.
2. Press the Options button on the right side below the trackpad.
3. Scroll down and select the Battery icon.
4. Scroll down until you reach the Performance Overlay Level section.
   
5. Slide the toggle to the right until you reach the overlay that you prefer. There are four different options to choose from.

Enable Per-Game Profile For More Customization

One feature that you might want to enable if you want to change graphics settings on Steam Deck is the “Per-Game Profile”. Enabling this means that you can create and use a different performance profile based on the game that you are playing. This can come in extremely handy if you’re playing an Indie game that doesn’t require much power, so you want to turn things down a notch (or two) in order to squeeze more battery life out of your Steam Deck.

1. Turn on your Steam Deck.
2. Open and start the game that you want to customize.
3. Press the Options button on the right side below the trackpad.
4. Scroll down until you see the Using default profile section.
5. Highlight and enable the toggle next to Use per-game profile.
   
6. Press the Options button to save your changes.

Change Graphics Settings on Steam Deck In-game

Apart from resolution and framerate, there are additional graphic settings that you can adjust to fine-tune your gaming experience. These include texture quality, shadow quality, and anti-aliasing, among others. Depending on the game, you might need to adjust these settings within the game’s own menu rather than from the Steam Deck’s system settings. Refer to the specific game’s user manual or help menu for more information on how to access these settings.