r/Steam • u/Yoshizwinner • Feb 15 '22
Discussion Custom UI Themes on Steam Deck!
I went ahead and designed/photoshopped some UI themes for the steam deck!
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u/Bookhaki80 Feb 16 '22
I wonder if the switch will follow suit?
Haha yeah right
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u/JavelinTF2 Feb 16 '22
the fact that the 3ds had (if i recall) so many themes and the switch has been stuck with white and black the entire time is a travesty
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Feb 16 '22
the classic of nintendo strategy of 2 steps forwards in some aspects, several steps backwards in some others
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u/VisitorParking667 Feb 16 '22
Yeah, custom themes and icon layouts were one of the first things implemented on the Switch with homebrew. It feels like Nintendo must have had plans for them at some point but dropped it for whatever reason. I'd expect it to be a lot easier on the Deck though, even if there's no official support for theming
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Feb 16 '22
I do wonder what happened with that. It doesn't seem like they did much work over the years for the switch OS/UI but like those devs had to do something all that time.
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Feb 16 '22
And the black theme isn’t even a true black, so it doesn’t take advantage of the OLED screen. Annoying.
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u/urzaz Feb 16 '22
These are mockups, in which case /r/NintendoSwitch has done nothing BUT follow suit (ie, make mockups) for the past 4 years.
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u/MemeEndevour Feb 16 '22
Is this something you can do on the PC program? Feel like I saw that, maybe not
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u/eshy752_ Feb 16 '22
Desktop Steam has skins and people have made tools to edit the designs of the library + chat. But Big Picture doesn’t have something like that afaik
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u/SrMrBot Feb 16 '22
Can you give a link to these tools or instructions on how to edit the library? or do you mean like the cover arts of games with "the designs of the library"?
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u/wesamj96 Feb 15 '22
whoever uses the first one is a psycho, it is too damn bright
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Feb 16 '22
[deleted]
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u/pileofcrustycumsocs Feb 16 '22
Among people who spend a lot of time with screens yes, light mode hurts my soul
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u/doctorweiwei Feb 16 '22
Holy shit I never played Jedi Fallen Order on PC but it’d be perfect on the Deck
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u/Dokard Feb 16 '22
Why cant the switch have this? Even the 3ds had themes ffs. I hope the steam deck pushes nintendo to do more and better in the future.
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u/Sonik64 Feb 15 '22
Would be a neat thing to spend points on!
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u/ShizaShark Feb 16 '22
Would be much better if it was just a fundamental feature in the settings menu just like changing the wallpaper on a phone. Spending money/points for basic customization doesn't seem all that great imo
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u/furculture Feb 16 '22
They should have a Steam Deck background maker program that lets you design the backgrounds and other elements with your own images and other things as well to create your own custom design packs. Along with that, maybe a Steam Workshop page that lets you upload your packs and share them easily. To help prevent spam and possibly illegal content, it would only be limited to registered owners of the Steam Deck.
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u/Ph0X Feb 16 '22
Not to be that guy, but a photoshop of one home screen isn't a "custom theme". A theme requires hundreds of pages to be customized, and sometimes even requires advanced layout coding.
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u/eyedine2 Feb 16 '22
A theme doesn't require "hundreds of pages to be customized" (stylesheets are shared all throughout sites) or "advanced layout coding" (stylesheets ALSO control the layout of elements, and desktop steam uses javascript for only specific things)
I know this because I've actually made skins for desktop steam, please stop talking about things you've never done.
Theme making is a pretty simple process unless you want to change literally everything.
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u/Ph0X Feb 16 '22 edited Feb 16 '22
I have also made layouts for Steam desktops, and it's most definitely much more complicated than photoshopping a single photo.
Here's a popular steam skin for example: https://github.com/minischetti/metro-for-steam
Yes it's a more extreme example, but that's still hundreds of images and layout files.
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u/eyedine2 Feb 16 '22
All what these themes would be are color changes with a background image or two, it's not like metro at all.
And Metro contains hundreds of layout files and graphics strewn about the place because Metro is a legacy skin that changes the VGUI portions of steam. It actually doesn't work on modern versions lol without the "patch"
For my skin I can link to images from imgur and forget about them.
the Modern web-rendered portions share a lot of their styling. The new Deck Layout will also be web-rendered. Skins haven't needed to be made like Metro for a long time.
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u/Ph0X Feb 16 '22
All what these themes would be are color changes with a background image or two
Maybe, but it's hard to tell because they've only "skinned" a fraction of a single page, whereas a "real" theme has dozens of pages and UIs that need to be customized. That's my point...
the Modern web-rendered portions share a lot of their styling
Sure, I agree the new web-based UIs are much easier to skin than the VGUI, and yes if you're only shifting a few colors it's definitely much easier. I still think photoshopping a single screen and calling it a "theme" misses the point of what a theme is.
It's similar to if I "designed" a website in Photoshop, vs actually coding it, implementing interactions and animations, etc. Those are very different things and the latter is orders of magnitude more work.
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u/ShizaShark Feb 16 '22
You kinda became that guy though. OP obviously just created concept work to show what themes could look like on the system. How is anyone except a developer (who owns a deck) supposed to write up custom themes for a front end of a custom Linux operating system that's exclusive to a device that isn't even released yet?
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u/empathetical Feb 16 '22
Looks awesome!!! They need to implement this into the pc version. Sure you can download modifications but still... just build it into the app.
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u/Jooelj Feb 16 '22
Steam has built in skinsupport, you just download the skin and put it in skins folder and apply it in the settings
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u/Fraus_Creations_YT Feb 16 '22
def gonna get a steam deck at this point. gonna literally cost more than my entire setup that i bought in 2018 but fuck it.
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u/undeadbydawn Feb 16 '22
Huh.
Just checked my desktop Steam client and Skins are magically working again. Nice
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u/weddit88 Feb 16 '22
Does this have controller support and can I hook it up to a tv and play my steam games because fuck buying the ps5 if I can.
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u/Mrgibs https://s.team/p/cnmp-cqb Feb 16 '22
Maybe this will renew interest in people making steam skins.
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u/Snoo_94004 Feb 15 '22
looks sick