Valve Shares Update on Steam Deck Dual-Boot Support SteamOS and Windows

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With Steam Deck OLED now in the spotlight, Valve reassures gamers that dual-boot support and SteamOS improvements are still “very high on the list,” and the development team will make some significant changes to the operating system in the next year.

Steam Deck designer Lawrence Yang told IGN in an email that the development team has not forgotten dual-boot support, but work on it was delayed since all the SteamOS developers have been working on getting Steam Deck OLED out.

“Dual-boot support (and SteamOS general install) is very high on the list for folks working on SteamOS.” Yang wrote. “It also happens that all of those OS folks have been working on getting Steam Deck OLED out the door. That said, we’re planning to make meaningful progress on these SteamOS updates in the coming year.”

Valve confirmed in an interview that work on Steam Deck OLED began “immediately after shipping the first” Steam Deck.

Steam Deck is fully capable of dual-booting; you can’t dual-boot SteamOS and Windows as Valve said on the Steam Support page that the dual-boot wizard is not ready but said it will ship alongside “SteamOS 3 once it’s complete.”

Dual-booting Windows will allow Steam Deck owners to have Windows and SteamOS installed on the handheld simultaneously, which has been a widely requested feature. Currently, you can only dual-boot Windows and SteamOS. Alternatively, remove SteamOS and make the Steam Deck a dedicated Windows handheld, but if you want to reinstall SteamOS, you’ll have to format the entire drive.

While many have had positive feedback about SteamOS, the operating system is limiting. You can only run PC games on Steam with other game launchers like Epic Games Store or even cloud services like Xbox Cloud Gaming, which is not natively available natively in SteamOS. There are tutorials on installing these third-party apps, but they can be time-consuming.

Taylor is a Reporter at IGN. You can follow her on Twitter @TayNixster.