Sick of their slow Steam Deck, a fan of the portable gaming PC has some advice on how to fix download speeds on the handheld. Don’t let the tech jargon put you off, either, as it doesn’t take a tech whizz to follow these six simple steps.
Reddit user Gawdamn69 has given step-by-step instructions on what you can do to hopefully improve said speeds on your Steam Deck. One of these steps is to put your device in desktop mode, which is something that’s much easier – and cooler – when using the best Steam Deck dock.
We have yet to test this ourselves, but it’s easy enough to reverse the steps if you encounter any hiccups. Still, you should take the advice with some degree of trepidation. Essentially, it’s a your-mileage-may-vary kind of situation, as some comments point out other limitations. You may not see a huge improvement if you have weak internet at home anyway, and those running anything but the best Steam Deck SD card might have other issues that slow things down.
That aside, Gawdamn69 advises the following:
- Go into ‘Settings’ > ‘Downloads’ and set ‘Limit bandwidth to:’ to any number above 1,000
- Put the Steam Deck into ‘Desktop Mode’ by pressing the Steam button, selecting ‘Power’ and then choosing ‘Switch to Desktop’
- On the ‘Linux Desktop,’ click on the Wi-Fi logo, find your internet connection, click the left trackpad and select ‘Configure Wi-Fi Settings’
- Under the ‘Wi-Fi Section Mode,’ go to ‘Infrastructure’ > ‘BSSID’ > ‘Restrict to device’ > set it to wlan0
- Under ‘iPv4’ > ‘Auto’ > set ‘Other DNS’ to 8.8.8.8
- Restart the device
After that, it’s just a case of starting a download and testing to see if the solution offers better download speeds overall. The user says they’ve seen significant improvements, but it’s not a guarantee for everyone.
Even though the Steam Deck is a highly praised mobile gaming PC, it’s by no means perfect. Thankfully, there are people out there who seem to have a good handle on things. From fixing loud fan bursts to warning against filling up the SSD, you’ve always got a helpful community who can offer up advice to hopefully get the most out of the portable powerhouse.
