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Last active September 28, 2026 06:22
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Create a Steam Gamescope Session, allowing you to seamlessly switch between your Desktop Environment and Gamemode.

Steam Gamescope Session

Instructions

1. Install Gamescope

Install the gamescope using your package manager.

2. Setup Steam inside Gamescope

  • Run the following command to launch Steam within a Gamescope instance from the terminal:

    gamescope -e -- steam -steamdeck

3. Run through Steam Deck set up

  • Run through the set up process by:
    • Selecting the language of your choice
    • Setting the timezome
  • You will then be presented with the home screen (like Big Picture mode).
  • Close the window to exit from Steam.

4. Creating a script to launch Steam inside Gamescope

  • Using a code editor, create a new file called gamescope-session, add the following lines to the file and then save the file

    #!/bin/bash
    
    STEAM_GAMESCOPE_VRR_SUPPORTED=1 STEAM_MULTIPLE_XWAYLANDS=1 gamescope --mangoapp -W <resolution_width> -H <resolution_height> -r <refresh_rate> -O <output_display> -e --xwayland-count 2 -- steam -steamdeck -steamos3
    
    • Replace <resolution_width> and <resolution_height> with the width and height of your primary dispaly's resolution, <refresh_rate> with the refresh rate of your primary display, and <output_display> with whatever display you wan't to use as the primary. You can get the <output_display> value for your primary display using wayland-info command and looking for the name field of your primary display.

      As an example, for me, the command looks like this:

      STEAM_GAMESCOPE_VRR_SUPPORTED=1 STEAM_MULTIPLE_XWAYLANDS=1 gamescope --mangoapp -W 1920 -H 1080 -r 165 -O DP-1 -e --xwayland-count 2 -- steam -steamdeck -steamos3
      
    • The --mangoapp flag enables controlling of MangoHud overlay from within Steam.

    • The STEAM_GAMESCOPE_VRR_SUPPORTED=1 flag is required to fix a VRR issue.

    • The STEAM_MULTIPLE_XWAYLANDS=1 flag combined with --xwayland-count 2 option is required when you want to be able to use keyboard and mouse properly inside Gamemode.

  • Set the file permissions and copy it to the ~/.local/bin directory using the commands:

    chmod +x gamescope-session
    cp gamescope-session ~/.local/bin
    

5. Creating a script to switch back to 'desktop mode' (close steam)

  • Create a new file named steamos-session-select, add the following lines to the file and save it:

    #!/bin/bash
    
    steam -shutdown
    
  • Set the file permissions and copy it into ~/.local/bin directory using the commands:

    chmod +x steamos-session-select  
    cp steamos-session-select ~/.local/bin
    

6. Applying fixes for software updates

  • Create a new file named steamos-select-branch, add the following lines to the file and then save it:

    #!/bin/bash
    
    echo "Not applicable for this OS"
    
  • Set the file permissions and copy it to the ~/.local/bin directory using the commands:

    chmod +x steamos-select-branch  
    cp steamos-select-branch ~/.local/bin
    
  • Create a new file named steamos-update, add the following lines to the file and then save it:

    #!/bin/bash
    
    exit 7;
    
  • Set the file permissions and copy it to the ~/.local/bin directory using the commands:

    chmod +x steamos-update  
    cp steamos-update ~/.local/bin
    
  • Create a new file named jupiter-biosupdate, add the following lines to the file and then save it:

    #!/bin/bash
    
    exit 0;
    
  • Set the file permissions and copy it to the ~/.local/bin directory using the commands:

    chmod +x jupiter-biosupdate
    cp jupiter-biosupdate ~/.local/bin
    

7. Understaing TTYs

Before proceeding to the next step, let's recap some info about TTY.

  • TTYs are essentially terminal sessions which can run in parallel.
  • You can switch between terminal sessions using the keyboard combination Ctrl+Alt+[F1-F6], where Ctrl+Alt+F1 will switch to TTY1, Ctr+Alt+F2 will switch to TTY2 and so on, upto TTY6.
  • On GNOME (I don't know about other desktop environments), TTY1 corresponds to GDM, the login manager and TTY2 corresponds to the GNOME session itself, while TTY3-TTY6 are available for use. For the sake of an example, let's choose TTY3 as our Gamescope session target.

8. Setting up autologin on target TTY

  • Open a terminal and execute the following command: sudo systemctl edit getty@tty3. Replace tty3 with any other tty which you want to use.

  • Insert the folling text where the cursor is pointed by default:

    [Service]
    ExecStart=
    ExecStart=-/sbin/agetty -o '-p -f -- \\u' --noclear --autologin <username> %I TERM
    Restart=no
    

    Replace <username> with you user account's username.

  • Save the file and reboot your system.

9. Setting up command to start and exit the session

  • Edit the ~/.bashrc file and insert the following text at the end:

    alias gsteam="gamescope-session; chvt 2; exit"
    

    Here, I'm using chvt 2 since GNOME runs on TTY2. If you know for sure that your desktop environment runs on a different TTY instance, replace 2 with whatever instance number you desktop environment runs.

  • Save the file and exit.

  • Edit your ~/.bash_profile file and insert the following text at the end:

    if [[ $(tty) == "/dev/tty3" ]]; then
        gsteam
    fi
    

    Here I'm using /dev/tty3. If your selected target TTY was anything else, replace tty3 with your selected target i.e, if you want to use tty5 for the Gamemode, replace /dev/tty3 with /dev/tty5.

  • Save the file and exit.

10. Testing things out

  • Log out and login again and test it out by switching to the selected TTY using the keyboard shortcut. Here, since I used TTY3, I can test it by pressing Ctrl+Alt+F3, which should open Steam Gamemode.
  • You can exit it by going into the menu and selecting Switch to Desktop, which should switch you back to your usual Desktop Environment and terminate the Steam Gamemode.
  • To switch between the TTY sessions (including the one where your desktop environment is running), you can just use the keyboard shortcuts, and both the desktop environment and Steam Gamemode will run in parallel.
  • Steam Gamemode will only terminate if you click Switch to Desktop in Steam.

Credits

Shoutout to shahnawazshahin for the Gamescope Session guide and u/felix_ribeiro for the fix for Keyboard and Mouse input.

@hosean90

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@Star-veil I don't that's possible currently, when using the -steamos flag.

Gotcha, Yeah I haven't found a way around it. My current fix is adding a bash script as a Non-Steam game to the library that does steam -shutdown, if I find anything more elegant I'll share it here

I don't know if anything have changed in the past updates, but currently, both -steamos3 and -steamdeck enables script desktop switch, and either can be used instead of the other

Just remove -steamos3 and leave -steamdeck and it will work

@Rishikant181

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@Star-veil I don't that's possible currently, when using the -steamos flag.

Gotcha, Yeah I haven't found a way around it. My current fix is adding a bash script as a Non-Steam game to the library that does steam -shutdown, if I find anything more elegant I'll share it here

I don't know if anything have changed in the past updates, but currently, both -steamos3 and -steamdeck enables script desktop switch, and either can be used instead of the other

Just remove -steamos3 and leave -steamdeck and it will work

Let me test that out

@Rishikant181

Rishikant181 commented Aug 31, 2026 •

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A couple of things to be aware first there's a typo in the tty conf , is: ExecStart=-/sbin/agetty` -o '-p -f -- \\u' --noclear --autologin <username> %I $TERM TERM without the $ breaks the tty Second, in ubuntu there's not .bash_profile everything goes to .profile if you create .bash_profile youre overriding .profile which is a VERY bad thing for bash... because it breaks lots of things of the terminal.. and the PATH third, in Ubuntu at least there is not .local/bin/ by default so it is better to be sure that it exist because your commands just overwrite ./local/bin all over in every step. better to use cp whatever .local/bin/ so the terminal returns "theres no local/bin" Then, the graphics are scrambled.. this could be a nvidia thing but if I launch it through GDM dedicated session it works normally so I'm not sure whats happening but maybe is related to the existing session.

Strange, for the ExecStart..., I have it without $, i.e, just TERM and it's working fine.
As for the scrambled graphics, might be Nvidia, or might be something else. I'm not really an expert on that matter lol.

@Rishikant181

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@Star-veil I don't that's possible currently, when using the -steamos flag.

Gotcha, Yeah I haven't found a way around it. My current fix is adding a bash script as a Non-Steam game to the library that does steam -shutdown, if I find anything more elegant I'll share it here

I don't know if anything have changed in the past updates, but currently, both -steamos3 and -steamdeck enables script desktop switch, and either can be used instead of the other

Just remove -steamos3 and leave -steamdeck and it will work

Okay just tried this, but it unfortunately disabled the per-game resolution selection. So I can't do super-sampling with it.

@akashidom

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is there a way to use custom proton compactibility tool? i feel like it switch my proton-cachyos to proton-11 only in this gamescope session because proton 11 were suddenly being downloaded.

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