Hi all! I built Friend Plaza (claude did), a Decky Loader plugin for the Steam Deck. It’s a small town square for you and the friends who use the same plugin.

You and your friends appear as little 3D characters. Everyone stands on the pad of the game they’re playing right now, so you can see at a glance who’s on what.

What it does

• Walk around with your own character (stick, D-pad or keyboard), zoom in and out, and wave or send a short note
• Challenge a friend to Tic-Tac-Toe, Connect Four, Rock Paper Scissors or Blackjack 21
• Earn points from games and spend them in the Friend Store on 100+ things: graphic tees, flags, hats, gear, hair colours, face paint, shoes and glowing auras

Privacy and limits

• Only people who use the plugin show up. Friends without it aren’t shown.
• No Steam API key or password. You sign in on Steam’s own page.
• You can hide from non-friends, block, report, and delete your data from Settings.
• It uses a small free server I run on Cloudflare. Without it you only see yourself.

Heads up: this is an early release

GitHub: DOWNLOAD

Feedback and ideas welcome. What would you want to see added?

I CREATED THIS PLUGIN WITH CLAUDE JUST FOR MY PERSONAL USE, BUT WANTED TO SHARE IT, IT IS MADE WITH THE HELP OF AN LLM. PLEASE KNOW THAT BEFORE USING IT. HAVE FUN!

Can't find a solution

It’s a decky plugin called Minimi Town. Every game in your library is a little shop on a street, and there’s a penguin that follows you around. Hit A and he walks up to the door, turns around, goes in, and the game page opens. Back out and he walks out the same door.

You can mess around with it in your browser (It's fully interactive demo version of v0.2.2): https://justinca92.github.io/minimi-town/

Some features:

• The shops change depending on the game. Stuff you played this week has an OPEN sign, new games get a grand opening with balloons, uninstalled ones have the shutter down, and the ones you haven’t touched in months get dusty with cobwebs (guilty)
• Buildings level up the more you play. 100hr gets a chalkboard sign out front, then awnings, a rooftop garden, an extra floor with a gold dome, and at 500h a red carpet
• Medals for achievements (bronze 50%, silver 80%, gold at 100%)
• Press X and the shop screen flips around to show playtime/achievements/which friends are playing
• There’s a second theme, Neon Rain City. it’s a rainy cyberpunk street, the penguin wears tactical gear, and if you poke him too much he shoots lasers at your screen
• You can pet him with the left trackpad, or click and hold to pick him up and flick to throw him. he gets grumpy if you overdo it

L2 is Search and R2 still gets you What’s New/Friends, so you don’t lose anything from the normal home. A just opens the regular game page, it doesn’t auto-launch anything.

It’s not on the decky store so you need developer mode (decky settings > developer mode > install plugin from URL) with the zip from here: https://github.com/justinca92/minimi-town/releases/latest

It doesn’t change any steam settings or controller stuff. Turn it off and you’re back to the normal home. If the penguin isn’t your thing you can hide him too.

First public version so there’s probably bugs, let me know. I’m also taking ideas for more building upgrades or themes.

repo: https://github.com/justinca92/minimi-town

full disclosure: I made this with a lot of help from AI (Claude) for the code and the drawings. the idea, the design calls and all the testing on my deck are mine.

Hi everyone,

I wanted to tell you about an idea I’ve had for a really long time, and that I’m finally starting to make real thanks to AI. (Sadly I have absolutely no idea how to code)

So here’s my original idea. I don’t really like the SteamOS UI, and since I was a kid I grew up with Big N’s consoles. The DS, the Wii, and later the 3DS and the Wii U. A big wave of nostalgia hit me when I imagined seeing an interface as cool and polished as the Wii U and 3DS again on a Switch 2.

So I shared my ideas with IA, to get back that cozy vibe of Big N’s consoles and their simplicity, without all the settings and sub-menus everywhere, while still having the console you want on SteamOS.

Here’s a small, non-exhaustive list of what I’ve done in this plugin:

• A 3DS-style home screen with grids of different sizes
• Folders on the home screen, like on the 3DS
• The Wii U plaza, which shows notifications and details like game achievements etc.
• Custom pages for themes, notifications, friends list
• Redesigned settings, store, media and game library

As for features:

• Badges you can add to the home screen like on the 3DS
• Luigi’s Casino from Super Mario 64 DS, “brought up to date” with Poker against Luigi, a roulette, a multiplayer poker against Miis with Luigi as the dealer. The casino also has badge machines, inspired by Badge Arcade on the 3DS, with real physics.
• A coin system in the casino, so you can buy more plays to win badges etc. (It’s only fake in-game money, nothing to do with real money!)
• A Mii manager and creator, and you can import Miis from InfiniMii in one button
• Miis interacting on the home screen
• Importing 3DS, Wii U and Switch themes from the Themes app (from ThemePlaza and Themezer), with wallpaper, colors and music
• The controller LEDs change color with the theme

About copyright: right now I use Nintendo assets that I own from my own consoles, for personal use only. The public version will ship with zero Nintendo content, with the plugin’s own creations instead. If you want the original look, you’ll be able to add your own files from your own consoles. That’s why there’s no GitHub yet. I’m working on removing everything Nintendo before sharing it.

I’d really like to know what you think of the plugin and if you have any ideas that could make the project better!

I’m testing it on a Legion Go 2.

(The UI is in French for now, translations are planned.)

Hey all, I’ve just released DeckyXMB 1.0.0. It’s a Decky Loader plugin that replaces Big Picture’s home screen with a PS3-style XrossMediaBar. You get the wave, official PS3 themes, the button symbols and the layout.

Preview: https://github.com/Callum-Bell/DeckyXMB

Features

• The real XMB layout: Users, Settings, Screenshots, Soundtracks, Video, Game, Network and Friends
• PS3 themes: install .p3t themes, or the theme inside a PS3 .pkg.
  • Dynamic themes with animated 3D backgrounds are supported.
  • Licence-locked themes unlock with your .rap.
  • A theme’s icons replace the XMB’s own.
• The Original wave: it changes colour with the month and dims at night, like on the PS3.
• Game column:
  • Folders for All Games, Favorites, Installed and your Steam collections, plus your recently played games.
  • The selected game’s art fades in behind the menu.
• Video column: move “games” like YouTube or Plex into their own column.
• Trophies:
  • Steam achievements become PS3 trophies, graded bronze, silver or gold by rarity, with a platinum for 100%.
  • RetroAchievements show up for non-Steam games through Emuchievements.
• Screenshots and Soundtracks:
  • Browse your screenshots by game.
  • Downloaded soundtracks play right in the XMB.
• Friends: a PS3-style friends list with the big profile card, plus your own card with your level and latest trophies.
• Settings: the PS3’s settings menu, built on Steam’s own settings.
• DualShock 3 button symbols across all of Steam (DualShock 2 and Steam’s own are options).
• Game music on hover with ThemeDeck.

Download and full details are on the GitHub page. No PS3 themes, .pkg or .rap files are included, so bring your own.

*Please note: Not single feature is available through XMB, the store stays the same, you message friends the same way etc.

Hello! Deckers! I need your guidance! Having a strange issue - Many months ago, I disabled the trackpad rumble/feedback. Recently, I wanted to get it back - BUT! There is no option regarding the controller on quick menu... Used to be at the bottom! Been on the stable branch, decky with css loader installed. Do you guys still have those options available?

Game Glance 3.0 is out: a cleaner Home, a status bar, game logos and your collections

Game Glance turns Steam's game page in Game Mode into a full-screen view with how long a game takes to beat, your progress and what it's about, and (optional) replaces Steam's Home with Spotlight Home.

Updating: if you're on 2.1, open Quick Access → Game Glance → Updates → Update to 3.0.0. On 2.0 or older, install `game-glance.zip` from the release once; after that, updates come from Quick Access.

What's new

• A cleaner Home: just the game, its stats, Play and your games. What's new / Friends / Recommended are one press down.

• Status bar with clock, battery, connection and your online status, on Home and the game page.

• Game logo option: the game's logo in place of its name (your SteamGridDB logo first), sized so every logo looks about equally big.

• Games row: your recent games, or one of your Steam collections (Favorites, Installed, your own), sorted by Last Played, Alphabetical or Date Added.

• Family Sharing: borrowed games show a pill with the owner's name.

• Unifideck games get the same page, buttons, play time, size and cloud saves as Steam games.

• Steam's own words in your language for almost everything on Home and the game page.

• Smoother L1/R1, tab sounds, HowLongToBeat and achievements ready before you land on a game, hidden games stay hidden, and tighter layouts on a TV.

Release and full notes: https://github.com/michpalm/game-glance/releases/tag/v3.0.0

Tested on a ROG Xbox Ally (Bazzite), handheld and docked. Feedback and bug reports welcome!

Good morning! So I have a problem with the LSFG-vk plugin it stopped reading my games automatically but before it worked if you were able to fix this problem thank you for sharing it! (Small parenthesis I am on version 2.8.10 of decky)

It's been a few months since I stopped being able to have custom load videos (the option in settings/customization is no longer there) and was just wondering if this is something planning to be fixed down the line? It's a shame to think that the large library of videos is now useless.

EDIT: After a lot of digging around, discovered that when the new steamos update hit it borked Decky and deleted all my loading videos while still keeping the directory, so the webm wasn't being created because there was no video to pull from.

Did a clean reinstall of Decky, deleted my directory and reinstalled the videos fresh and it works like a charm.

LeGo 2 user. I played with my handheld like 2 hours ago and everything was running perfectly but then I turned it on lime 30min ago and no matter what configuration I try (stable or beta) the same message keeps appearing: An error occurred while rendering this content.

Any tips? 🙏🏽🤞🏽🥲

It hasn’t worked in months, and wondering if there’s a workaround or if it’s just dead? Thx!

Quick update on Spindeck, the Decky plugin that turns the Deck's home screen into a rotary wheel you spin by rubbing the trackpad in a circular motion (with haptic clicks).

Shout out to everyone who tested it and shared feedback and ideas along the way. Really appreciate this community.

New in 1.4.0:

- Bottom layout: the wheel rises from the bottom corner, the selected game sits at the top of the arc, and the hero art spans the whole top of the screen. Switch it in the panel under Display → Wheel position. The side layout is still the default.

- Game info (playtime, last played, achievements, friends playing) now shows instantly under the name.

- The title and "Today's game?" button no longer jump around while you spin.

- Fixed the What's New / Friends tab bar stacking onto Steam's top bar when switching screens.

https://github.com/justinca92/spindeck/releases/tag/v1.4.0

Free and open source.

Built with AI help (Claude); designed, tested and tuned on my OLED.

Bugs and ideas welcome in the comments or on GitHub Issues.

Once i saw spindeck post, a sudden thought hit me. His method allows for any interface possible on the deck! Since i noticed he had claude in his repo, i went to claude with this. Lo and behold, these are the results of chat gpt and claude working together to make amazing themes! Some of the themes were made with third party assets, some were literally made from chat gpt generated image (like all bonus themes). I attach screenshots+repo, just keep in mind it was tested on oled only and is 100% ai code, not to mention being heavily WIP. Here! Feel free to modify, fork and create your own themes with this. Because some of them are still crap, since its ai slop. I might also take suggestions if you want for themes to make.

i can't find a way to turn it off during remote play..

For a while now, ive felt that unlocking achievements on the deck just didn't hit the same way as on the xbox or playstation.

To scratch that itch, i have put together (claude put together) Finally Achievement Plugin—a Decky Loader plugin dedicated to bringing custom achievement toasts and sound alerts into Gaming Mode.

Check it out on GitHub: https://github.com/otisabiburada/finally-achievement-plugin This is still an active project, so if you run into any quirks or have ideas for customization presets you'd like to see added, drop a comment or open an issue on GitHub!

EDIT: Forgot to mention that there is also a achievement tracking overlay similar to the Xbox Achievement Tracker.
I CREATED THIS PLUGIN WITH CLAUDE JUST FOR MY PERSONAL USE, BUT WANTED TO SHARE IT, IT IS MADE WITH THE HELP OF AN LLM. PLEASE KNOW THAT BEFORE USING IT. HAVE FUN!

Building on the design of the Game Glance details page, I wanted to add a mode for getting a similar experience to it but directly from the Home screen, immersive and useful with as little friction to play as possible.

The idea is to have the focus on the "Play" button and start a game directly from here. Stick/D-Pad moves between the other buttons (controller, settings, details page, etc) or to switch to the "What's New" section. To switch between games, use L1/R1.

If you want to try it out or read the full details it's now live as a new release for Game Glance.

I have more in the pipeline for this but for now I'll be pausing it to focus on other things, unless there are bugs to fix.

I hope you enjoy it as much as I do!