After years of incremental updates, Steam Big Picture mode finally gets its long-awaited overhaul Valve announced Thursday that a new interface for Big Picture mode, the same one used in Steam Deck, is available for testing. Valve announced Thursday that a new interface for Big Picture mode, the same one used in Steam Deck, is available for testing. Valve wrote, "This update has been long overdue and we are very excited to begin gathering feedback from the community."

Steam Deck launched in February along with SteamOS 3, which is essentially an entirely new version of the game-focused operating system Valve has been working on for years. the original version of SteamOS was a living room PC destined launched with Steam Machines and was built on top of a version of Linux called Debian; SteamOS 3 was replaced by Arch Linux, which allowed Valve to develop more quickly.

Valve's plan had always been to carry over the user interface work done for Steam Deck to the desktop Big Picture mode, but this year the priority was clearly to get Deck into shape.

Big Picture mode still works well enough for living room gaming, but the look hasn't changed much since its launch in 2012; the only way to access Steam's powerful controller configuration tools is through Big Picture The new interface is a welcome update, as it is the only way to access Steam's powerful controller configuration tools.

Here is a summary of the changes made by Valve:

This update is accessible to anyone using the Steam Client beta (Steam Settings > Accounts > Join Beta). However, to use this update, you must create a Steam shortcut on your desktop and add -gamepadui to the target field, as shown in the image below.

Valve is collecting feedback and bug reports on the Steam Big Picture discussion forum.