Steam Deck UI now available on Windows without workarounds courtesy of latest Steam Client Update
Valve has finally updated Big Picture Mode on Windows devices, a decade after releasing the television-friendly UI. To recap, Valve has been public beta testing a new Big Picture Mode UI since November 2022. As we discussed at the time, the new Big Picture Mode borrows heavily from the Steck Deck UI within SteamOS 3.
On the face of it, Big Picture Mode is indistinguishable from Steam Deck UI with the console connected to an external display. Incidentally, the old Big Picture Mode is still accessible on Windows. According to Valve, it is possible to trigger the latter by appending '-oldbigpicture'; the company plans to remove this feature from future Steam Client Update build, though.
The latest Steam Client Update also makes a few Windows-specific changes to Big Picture Mode, such as adding an option for switching the primary monitor and the ability to start in windowed mode. Additionally, Valve claims to have improved UI scaling at higher resolutions and the Big Picture Mode overlay from being incorrectly sized when Windows is set to anything but 100% scaling. You can find the full Steam Client Update on Valve's website.
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