Wow, I have such great aim. It's totally true, last night I started downloading Horizon Forbidden West on my Steam deckAnd I did it before going to bed. I know it'll be a close call, I know I might find bugs, but I can't wait any longer and I want to try it. The thing is, with the Deck a bit far from the router, the download was showing as taking almost an hour. Well, today I woke up to news that could have saved me the wait.
And that's because Valve Its testing a new feature to complete all downloads in one new low power and screen off modeOnce the downloads are complete, the Steam Deck will go into full sleep mode. In other words, what they're developing is a feature that would put the device into a sort of semi-sleep state while it downloads, before finally going to sleep completely without us having to monitor it.
The new Steam Deck feature will work by default when connected to mains power.
This feature will be enabled by default when the Steam Deck is connected to a power outlet. It can also be enabled manually in the power settings.
These types of downloads are accessible in two ways:
- When the Steam Deck is downloading content, pressing the power button will display a new dialog box asking if you want to continue downloading with the screen off. If you say yes, it will enter this new mode.
- In addition, the device will automatically enter this mode after a waiting period, the same period we have set for it to go into standby mode.
While in this mode, pressing the power button or moving the Deck will bring up a new status screen showing the download progress. From this screen, you can either fully wake the console or let it continue downloading with the screen off.
If we use the device on battery power —without electricity— it will go into total standby mode if the battery level drops below 20%.
This new feature is currently available in the Beta and Preview channels. It will be released to the Stable channel in a future update.