I implemented the same on my laptop with tlp. It is actually pretty easy to do so.
this post was submitted on 09 May 2025
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Steam Deck
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This has been possible via the BIOS for a while now, but it's long overdue at the OS level. I love that Value keeps adding little QoL improvements to the steam deck, it's turned out to be one of the best pieces of tech I've ever bought.
I do hope they focus a bit on the UI going forward - we've noticed a lot of silly little bugs while either using the Steam Deck controls or a controller.
A little hard to close a window without focus when using a controller....
It’s so weird that it doesn’t have it because both my kubuntu and endeavorOS installs have it by default. Like that’s a basic feature
It was already an option in desktop mode afaik, just wasn't part of game mode.
Finally!!
Still can’t believe some phones don’t have this
The logic is deeply flawed though.
Keep your battery at 80% to preserve it's health, because Lithium batteries prefer that. Sure. But here's what it effectively means:
Keep your battery forever stuck at 80%... to avoid losing battery capacity... so to avoid having less battery runtime you limit your battery runtime... Thus suffering today the consequences you feared in the future.
I mean, I was just gonna unplug it at 80 and plug it back it at 40.
Beforehand I couldn’t just leave it cause it would go to 100%.
If your referring to always keeping it plugged in, can’t I cap it at 60% then?
I think it comes down to driver support. It’s not that the hardware can’t do this, but rather it’s that you need to pass the option to control it all the way up from the lowest levels of the system eventually into user space where you can select an option in settings.
That, and it’s just not the first priority on devices that are generally low-margin.
Got my hopes up there might be some sleep limit too. Would much prefer if it shuts down/hibernated after being asleep for more than 26 hours (or past a certain battery level)
The problem is that the Steam Deck APU doesn't support amd_p_state and you need to rely on auto_cpufreq. This explains why the power consumption in sleep is so high.
It's a custom chip though isn't it? Seems a strange choice
I personally wouldn't want that, at least not if it's on a game.
Hibernate would be great as it's a slightly longer restore, but should work the same (if you are willing g to sacrifice the disk space)
Being able to pick up the deck and know it will have battery left would be really nice. It drains pretty fast in sleep mode.
It can’t dump a save state to disk? I guess that would be difficult on a normal OS.
That's basically what hibernate is. Shouldn't be hard to offer as an option.
The difficult bit is having it wake from sleep to hibernate itself. I suspect that would require hardware.
I really appreciate this one. Have done this on my other devices too, and while it does cut battery life by a little, your battery health will remain high for considerably longer
What do people set it to?
On my devices where it’s available I usually set it to 80-85%.
Default limit when toggled on is 80%, which generally seems like a good middle ground between usability and battery life. You can also raise the limit higher if you want more battery, or lower if you want to preserve the battery life better.
I thought the steam deck already had this. Admittedly, I’ve only had mine for about a month, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen it charge to 100%. I think 95% was the highest I’ve seen. It seemed like it had something similar to smart charge like Windows has.
When it charges up all the way, it stops charging and just does passthrough power instead. You can then see the battery % slowly drop over time, which is probably why you were seeing stuff like 95%
You shouldn't see the battery drop if it is not using the battery, which is what pass through would suggest.
Not quite - batteries have something called self-discharge, which happens faster at higher temps. If you're actively using the deck, it can get warm which speeds up this process. It's not fast, but it's absolutely possible to see depending on how long you leave the deck docked
Battery self discharge is measured in days at worst, more typically weeks or months. It should not be dropping 5% over the course of an hour or so even if the device is a bit warm. Plus having it plugged in should start charging again once the battery starts dropping too low.
Sparky1337 hasn't said anything about how long it had been plugged in before he saw it at 95%, so I was kinda assuming he was leaving it plugged in overnight, or leaving it docked for long amounts of time.