You won’t find many, if any, owners of Valve’s handheld raving about Steam Deck battery life, particularly in demanding games. While Minecraft doesn’t necessarily fall into that category, a modder has put together a unique solution to help everyone play the blocky favourite depending on whether you’re plugged in or not.
The mod by redditor jordonbc, named HarmonyLinkMC, adjusts Minecraft’s graphics depending on what power source your Steam Deck is using. In a short clip on the subreddit, the abundance of trees and greenery in the player’s blocky world drops significantly as they remove the power adaptor.
As outlined in Jordonbc’s development blog, the mod is based on HarmonyLink, a pre-existing Minecraft tool that they also created, which allows you to adapt your gameplay settings by giving you access to information like your power usage and docking status on the Steam Deck, so you can customize your Minecraft experience. The API of HarmonyLink is used as a starting point for the HarmonyLinkMC mod, which then helps adjust Minecraft’s graphics settings to create a more optimal experience for Steam Deck owners.
We said in our Steam Deck review that although the handheld’s battery is officially meant to last for eight hours, it can actually last from anything from two to eight hours. The ability to adjust the graphics settings when not using the power adaptor, as seen in the HarmonyLinkMC mod, could be monumental in getting more gameplay hours out of your Valve handheld.
Jordonbc themselves has hopes of making the HarmonyLink tool compatible with other games to help improve the gameplay experience for Steam Deck owners, and mods like this definitely seem like the way forward.
You can check out our guide to the best Minecraft skins if a more customized Minecraft experience is something you’re after.