DeckPad

Use a Steam Deck as a wireless gamepad for a PC.

Two halves: the sender runs on the Deck and reads Steam Input's virtual pad; the receiver runs on the PC and rebuilds it as a virtual Xbox 360 controller. They talk over UDP on your own network — no video streaming, no account needed.

Read install-receiver.sh before you run it. The receiver creates virtual input devices on the machine it runs on — a gamepad, and a keyboard limited to 18 keys (modifiers and F1–F12), so it cannot type arbitrary text. Nothing needs root, and nothing should be run as root.
deckpad-receiver-1.0.1.tar.gz
61 KB
sha256 de140d742393601072742fd43abb04e90d5f0db6faff3074eac79da6802687f2
deckpad-sender-1.0.1.tar.gz
60 KB
sha256 2441a9c36eeb24286f6d557d650f22344d50af12fb8df4609551d47498ed6be7

Installing it

No installer yet — these are archives you extract. You can do all of it from the Deck's own file manager; the terminal is only there if you prefer it.

On the Steam Deck — the sender

  1. Hold the power button and choose Switch to Desktop.
  2. Download deckpad-sender above. It lands in Downloads.
  3. Open Dolphin (the file manager in the taskbar), find the file, then right-click → Extract → Extract archive here.
  4. Open the folder it made and read README — it names the command that starts the sender, and how to add it to Steam so it launches from Game Mode.

On the PC — the receiver

  1. Download deckpad-receiver on the PC, not the Deck.
  2. Extract it the same way.
  3. Open install-receiver.sh in a text editor and read it first — see the warning above. Then run it. It does not need root and should not be given it.

Both halves must be on the same network, and they go on different machines — sender on the Deck, receiver on the PC. Installing both on one machine is the most common mistake.

Checking the download (optional). To confirm a file arrived intact, grab SHA256SUMS and run sha256sum -c SHA256SUMS in the folder you downloaded to. A mismatch means a corrupted or tampered file — do not extract it.