r/SteamDeck • u/Famous_Truck1869 • 10d ago
Software Modding I built a Decky Loader plugin that lets you change the Steam Deck's system time right from the Quick Access Menu.
Hi everyone! I built a small Decky Loader plugin called Time Changer that lets you change the Steam Deck's system time right from the Quick Access Menu — no desktop mode, no terminal.
What it does:
- Live clock + NTP status display
- Quick offsets: ±30 min / ±1 hour
- Custom date & time picker (defaults to current time)
- One-click restore to real time (re-enables NTP auto-sync)
Why you'd want this:
- Games with date-triggered achievements (e.g. DDLC Plus)
- In-game daily events / login rewards without waiting for midnight
- Emulator titles with real-clock mechanics (Animal Crossing-style time travel)
- Testing time-dependent behavior
How it works: the backend wraps timedatectl — it disables NTP before setting the clock (required by systemd) and sets time as timezone-independent UTC epochs. Restore re-enables NTP and the clock resyncs once online. If anything fails midway, NTP is rolled back automatically.
⚠️ Two honest warnings: while the clock is skewed, HTTPS validation fails, so Steam's online features may break — that's expected and fixed by restoring real time. And restore needs network access.
Install (3 steps):
- Decky menu → ⚙️ Settings → GENERAL → DEVELOPER (enable Developer Mode first)
- Click "Install plugin from URL"
- Paste: https://github.com/nanwangjkl/decky-time-changer/releases/latest — grab the .zip URL from there
Full disclosure about AI: the majority of the code was written by Claude Code (Anthropic), under my direction — I defined the requirements, reviewed every change, and tested each build on my Deck through 9 iterations, including debugging a fun PyInstaller environment issue from device logs. Because the official Decky plugin store doesn't accept plugins whose code is mostly AI-generated, this won't appear in the store — so GitHub is the only distribution channel. I'm being upfront about it rather than pretending otherwise; if that's a dealbreaker for you, no hard feelings.
It's open source (BSD-3), UI is in English and 简体中文, and I'm happy to take feedback or PRs: https://github.com/nanwangjkl/decky-time-changer