The Steam Deck just got a dual-touchpad keyboard and some much-needed fixes

theverge.com:

Did I speak too soon? Two days after my one-month check-in with the Steam Deck portable gaming PC, Valve has already addressed a few of the most annoying issues I pointed out.

In a pair of updates, one in the stable channel and one only currently available in beta (full changelogs there), Valve has:

Trying the <a href=«https://twitter.com/hashtag/SteamDeck?src=hash&ref_src=» https: www.theverge.com>#SteamDeck

’s new dual-touchpad keyboard mode! pic.twitter.com/1kqu8usYIR

You can also now manually adjust your joystick deadzones and trackpad haptic strength, and there’s a whole bunch of USB-C fixes in the new BIOS since some owners had complained of issues charging or connecting or even getting their Decks stuck when plugging into certain USB-C devices. For instance, you cannow hold “...” + Volume Down to retry the Deck’s USB-C Power Delivery handshake, and Liam atGamingOnLinux says it does the job. Oh, and you can now uncap your framerate (if you hate battery life) instead of locking it to 60 or 30 or 15fps. Uncapped hasn’t been an option since the Steam Deck first launched.

The new keyboard is immediately a better experience for me, but I still find it a bit lacking compared to the original dual-trackpad one: it’s a bit hard to reach some of the letters, and this version has no autocomplete suggestions. I’m hoping Valve will add voice typing and swipe typing down the line, but it’s fine for now. (BTW, you can long-press letters to get accents on them, in case you didn’t know.)

There’s also fTPM support so you can install Windows 11, though I hear that might have actually snuck out in an earlier beta build. And though Valve doesn’t mention it in the changelogs, I’m also seeing the ability to restart the Steam Client from