The session's watchers slept with sleep(1) and read files with cat, an exec each under proot; they now wait in bash itself. steam-compat writes its tool, the adopted wrappers and config.vdf only when they change, the games watcher probes ownership when its matches change or every five minutes instead of every 30 s, and Proton no longer inherits the client's steamrtarm64 library path.
DroidDeck brings the SteamOS experience to Android: Valve's Steam client in Big Picture on your Adreno handheld, with Windows games through Valve's ARM64 Proton.
Requirements and install
Use Android 9 or newer on a supported Adreno device (730 or newer, or 8xx). Mali, Xclipse, PowerVR, and Adreno 710 are unsupported. No root is required. Allow about 3 GB for the runtime and 1.1 GB more for the desktop and emulators. Install the APK from Releases, install the Linux runtime, then press Play and sign in. Steam downloads on first launch. Install Desktop & apps to use the desktop and emulators.
On Android 12+, if Steam exits without a log, turn off Restrict child processes in Developer options.
Build
Run tools/build_local.sh with Docker, Java 17, the Android SDK/NDK, and zstd installed. It builds the ARM64 audio sinks from PulseAudio 13.0 and packages them into the APK at app/build/outputs/apk/release/app-release.apk. Set DROIDDECK_PA13_SOURCE_DIR to an existing PulseAudio 13.0 source directory to skip downloading it. To install the APK on an attached device, run tools/deploy_local.sh.
Limits
Compatibility and performance vary by device; hardware validation is limited. Desktop compositing uses software rendering. Firefox sandboxing is reduced under proot. See the session logs in Download/DroidDeck/ when diagnosing problems.
Credits and licence
GPL-3.0. Runtime, shim, input, and controller work build on WinNative and Bannerlator (maxjivi05). See LICENSE. Steam and Proton belong to Valve Corporation; this project is not affiliated with Valve.
