Steam Client Beta Adds Big Art Mode and Screen Savers to Steam Deck

Steam Deck and Steam Machine have received a Steam client beta update that adds interface changes, recommendations, screen savers, game recording, the in-game overlay, Steam Input, Linux downloads, and other parts of the Steam experience. The update is available through the beta program and includes new settings, performance improvements, and fixes.

To get this update, you need to be in the beta program. To do that, go to System, scroll down, and make sure you're in Preview. Once you're in Preview, you'll see the option to update. That's what you need to do. The first thing in this new update is something called Big Art Mode. To enable it, go to Settings and scroll all the way down to the Home section. Here you can enable it.

Game Calendar in Recommended Settings

The difference now is that you do have these big arts popping up in the background, which I think is pretty cool. It makes it cleaner, and I think it gives this a really cool look. Next up in this update is your Recommended Settings. Now you have your calendar of games on the Steam Store.

Normally, you would have to go to the Steam Store to get this, but now it's in the Recommended section on your home screen. This update also includes a screen saver. Go to Settings, then Customization, and scroll down to Screen Saver. Now you have two options. You can choose Game Slideshow or Bouncing Logo. So, let's go to Game Slideshow. And you can preview it here.

It just shows a picture of a game you've played. Or, if you want to switch it up, you can do Bouncing Logo. Here's what it looks like. So now you have some screen savers. You can also have customized screen savers, which I'll post so you guys can see how to do that. But I think this is pretty neat.

Client beta update improves download speed on high-latency connections.

We also have some changes and improvements to general game recording, the in-game overlay, Big Picture Mode, and more. So, we're just going to break that down. As you can see here, they improved Steam client startup performance. This also includes some fixes. For Game Recording, they fixed some cases where the playback would jump to an unexpected point.

It also decreases the performance impact of game recording. For the In-Game Overlay, they fixed frame rate hitches. They also fixed overlay rendering and other overlay-related features. They also made changes to Big Picture Mode. For Steam Input, they improved CPU performance at runtime and in config loading. This also includes many fixes.