The Steam Deck is ideal for use as an Android device; it is highly responsive and has a bright screen. Here, I will show you how to install Waydroid in a few easy steps:

1. Go to desktop mode.
2. Set the sudo password:
   • Navigate to Settings > System Settings > User > Change Password.
3. Open Konsole and run the following commands:
   • git clone https://github.com/ryanrudolfoba/steamos-waydroid-installer
   • cd steamos-waydroid-installer
   • chmod +x steamos-waydroid-installer.sh
   • ./steamos-waydroid-installer.sh
4. Enter your password.

You have to launch it through Steam even in desktop mode. It works great for tablet gaming. However, the most demanding games, like Fortnite, may not work (your mileage may vary).

To make the touchscreen more phone-like, you need to follow these steps. This method also works on many other games if you don't like the default touchscreen behavior:

1. In the Steam launcher, click on the gamepad icon beside "Play" on the right. Then, select Edit Layouts and go to Action Sets.
2. Click the gear icon next to Default and choose Add Always-on Command.
3. Click Add Command, then select the System tab. Choose Touchscreen Native Support.

Updating the Steam Deck might break the launcher, so you may need to fix it if you update the deck firmware. Follow these steps to update:


cd ~/
wget https://https//raw.githubuserconten...er/refs/heads/main/extras/Waydroid-Updater.sh -O ~/Waydroid-Updater.sh
chmod +x ~/Waydroid-Updater.sh
~/Waydroid-Updater.sh

This was entirely taken from https://www.youtube.com/@10MinuteSteamDeckGamer go check him out for video sorry I could not find the link to the original video...

 

[JeremyVignaut]

Did anybody find a way to play balatro on it ?
The apk works but it doesn't let me install on the play store. I would like to synchronize it with my phone so bad....

Post automatically merged: Mar 5, 2025

Did anybody find a way to play balatro on it ?
The apk works but it doesn't let me install on the play store. I would like to synchronize it with my phone so bad....

 

[ShadowOne333]

Can we play Call of Duty Mobile with this?
I tried installing gameloop (official app for playing on Windows) but it didn't work on my end, not sure if I missed anything.

 

[Exnor]

Are those binaries safe?

 

[BlusterBong]

Isn't SteamOS 3.0 Arch based, and reliant on the absolute ton of iron-on-chain above water that is SystemD? Just do sudo pacman -S waydroid if the extra and multilib repos or an unofficial repo like the chaotic AUR if you want to use yay or trizen if they arn't already in your pacman.conf file.

Can we play Call of Duty Mobile with this?
I tried installing gameloop (official app for playing on Windows) but it didn't work on my end, not sure if I missed anything.

FYI, Waydroid isn't an emulator like bluestacks or nox, or whatever you used. Android is Linux under the hood, so you can run it in a containerized environment like Waydroid if you're on any Linux distrobution

 

[Magsor]

Isn't SteamOS 3.0 Arch based, and reliant on the absolute ton of iron-on-chain above water that is SystemD? Just do sudo pacman -S waydroid if the extra and multilib repos or an unofficial repo like the chaotic AUR if you want to use yay or trizen if they arn't already in your pacman.conf file.

Look. It took me a very long time to analyse what you are saying .Is there a better way ? I have never used linux before and I am willing to learn.
I tried sudo pacman -S waydroid and it did not work because it says could not lock database: Read-only file system. It is a blessing and a curse that the steam deack has it mean I can factory reseat at will in 10 min. Do I need something called yay or trizen is that gonna make my life better?

 

[BlusterBong]

Look. It took me a very long time to analyse what you are saying .Is there a better way ? I have never used linux before and I am willing to learn.
I tried sudo pacman -S waydroid and it did not work because it says could not lock database: Read-only file system. It is a blessing and a curse that the steam deack has it mean I can factory reseat at will in 10 min. Do I need something called yay or trizen is that gonna make my life better?

Yay and Trizen are package managers that you use when downloading packages from the AUR (aka the Arch User Repository)

as for your error, it's becuase SteamOS 3.0 is an immutable distro, which is they say they lock out the main parts of the OS's files like the /usr or /etc folders by making them read-only and only allowing dedicated update tools like steamos-update and sandboxed software methods such as Flatpak or Snap to be used.

all you need to do to unlock the filesystem is use use this script to easily automate the process of unlocking the filesytem and populating the needed keys.

but if you don't trust it for one reason or another or would do it manually, use the command "steamos-readonly disable" with sudo before it, and if that fails for some reason, just follow this handy guide to fix it, then "pacman-key --init" to generate the standard Arch repo keys, then subsequently "pacman-key --populate holo" since you're better off keeping the SteamOS Repos over the base Arch Repos.


Once that's done, install base-devel and git if you haven't (this lets you install from the AUR that you'd need to compile in the first place like versions of software that have the -git instead of -bin at the end as those are the source code that the system uses to build the package.), thenuse "sudo pacman -S glibc linux-api-headers" to restore files that would otherwise be missing normally for compiling C++ code when you need to compile code when installing software through source, then you'd just have to add in your desired additional repos in your pacman.conf file and then, then you can install Waydroid as if you were using normal Arch where you can get waydroid through pacman or the AUR.