If you use your Steam Deck for multiplayer games with your friends, there is a high chance you'll want to use Discord to talk to your friends (and foes?).
Thankfully, installing Discord on the Steam Deck is super easy, barely an inconvenience. But a few steps and one additional tool are needed for it correctly. This is where this guide has you covered. So, let's start this.
- On your Steam Deck, go to desktop mode. Click the
Steam button
, go down toPower
, and thenSwitch to Desktop
. Wait for the Deck to reboot. - In the desktop mode, open up
Discover
. You find it by clicking on themenu button
. - Search for
Discord
. (If the keyboard doesn't pop up, click theSteam Button + the X-button
.) Install the app. - Next, we want to install one additional tweak to run the voice overlay. For this, go back to
Discover
, and search forDiscover Overlay
. Install that. - Now, we need to add both programs,
Discord
andDiscover Overlay
to Steam. Open updesktop Steam
, go toLibrary
, and at the bottom left corner, click on the plus sign, thenAdd a Non-Steam Game...
. Find both tools, and add them to Steam. - We need one additional step. Go to your
Steam library
and look forDiscover Overlay
. Right-click it, and then chooseProperties
. UnderLaunch Options
, you want to replace whatever is written there with the following line of code:DISPLAY=:0 %command% run io.github.trigg.discover_overlay
. The easiest is to copy-paste this. - We're done. To use the tool, you'll want to have both
Discord
andDiscover Overlay
running in the background. Also, a side note: You navigateDiscover Overlay
using the touchscreen. I couldn't get the mouse cursor to appear. Also, theWeb Browser
controller layout seems to work best with Discord.
That's it. We now have Discord running properly on Steam Deck in game mode.