Would you like to make the startup of your Steam Deck a bit more lively? The Steam Deck has had support for custom boot animations for some time now. This means that as you log into the platform, your startup screen can display a short customized video. These intros can be tailored to promote both Steam and talented online designers covering a wide range of subjects.
If you are interested in finding your own custom boot animation, the latest Steam beta updates have made it much easier. With just a little bit of tinkering, you can set one up. Here’s everything you need to do:
How to add a custom boot animation to your Steam Deck
Step 1: First, you need to enable Steam’s latest SteamOS 3 beta update. While the boot animation capability will eventually be rolled into normal updates, you’ll need to take an extra step for now. Turn on your Steam Deck and use the Steam button to bring up the menu. Choose Settings, go down to System, and you should see an option for Beta Participation. Here, you will find a dropdown menu with options to choose from. By default, you’re on the Stable version of SteamOS. Switch to the Beta version and allow your Steam Deck to update to the latest Beta features.
Step 2: Now it’s time to find a boot animation that you like. You could just Google for one, and the Steam Deck subreddit can also make some recommendations. For specifics, you can start with the Steam Deck Repo site, which collects a number of excellent boot animations, or find a roundup of favorite animations like this article. Download it onto your Steam Deck when you find one that you like.
Whatever animation you choose, it needs to be in the WebM file format. If the video isn’t in this format, you’ll need to convert it using Cloudconvert’s versatile converter.
Step 3: Now tell your Steam Deck to use this video file as a boot-up animation. If you haven’t done so already, you should connect a keyboard and mouse to your Steam Deck for a bit more detailed work.
Step 4: Press and hold the power button on your Steam Deck and choose to go into Desktop Mode if you haven’t already done so. Open up your documents so you can view files and folders.
Step 5: Create a specific new folder for the Steam Deck to reference on startup. The path for this folder must be: “steamui/overrides/movies/” to work.
Step 6: With this folder created, drop the WebM video file you chose into it. The Steam Deck will override its current boot animation with this video file. Make sure everything is saved, then shut down your Steam Deck and boot it up again to see the animation play.
Previously, the old workaround disappeared when you updated your Steam Deck. But with this beta version implemented by Valve, it should stick around as the beta updates.
Step 7: Keep watching for updates from Valve. When this animation feature passes out of the beta phase, you can switch back to the stable version of SteamOS if you prefer. The beta can introduce some bugs and other issues, so keep that in mind if you want to continue using it. Also, Valve has previously switched the folder path name that SteamOS recognizes for boot animations. If the animation suddenly stops working, it may have switched again – head to the Steam Deck forums to check on the latest update news for more information.
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