enricobuehlerandClaude Opus 5
6de78213ee
The stats overlay was the visible half of a general problem: nine of the client's settings had a row here and twenty didn't, so a Deck that never sees a desktop could not reach its own decoder, chroma, HDR, audio layout, echo cancellation, touch or mouse model, scroll direction, auto-wake, or either audio endpoint. Everything the store holds is here now — except the two things a plugin backend genuinely cannot answer, named in `backend.ts` so the next reader doesn't go looking: which physical pad is player 1 (SDL's live device list lives in the client process, and no CLI enumerates it) and the session's remembered window size, which is not a preference. Thirty rows is too many to scroll past on a thumbstick, so they are split across a `SidebarNavigation` — the left-rail-of-categories layout SteamOS's own Settings uses, and the one Deck users already know. Every page fits on screen without scrolling, which is the point: the rail is the index, so nothing is more than one hop away. The categories, their order and the wording of the rows are the console settings screen's — it is the other settings editor reachable without leaving Gaming Mode, and two different orders for one store is how people stop trusting either. It shows them as one steppable list because it has no pointer and no room for a rail; here they become the rail's pages. The six pages take one shared settings object rather than each holding state, so a change on one is visible on the others the moment you switch. Three more rules: - A dependent setting is INDENTED under what it depends on and DISABLED, never hidden: mic device and echo cancellation under the microphone, controller type under forwarding. The console dims those rows for the same reason, and a row that vanishes as you toggle the one above it is a moving target for a thumbstick. The device row at the foot of Audio is rendered even while it reads, for that reason. - A picker with nothing to pick doesn't appear: the GPU row shows up only where the enumeration found more than one adapter, so it is absent on a Deck and present on a Bazzite desktop with a dGPU. - A setting that behaves differently HERE says so in its own description rather than being dropped. Capture system shortcuts holds nothing back under gamescope; fullscreen-on-stream can't lose to a launch that always passes `--fullscreen`; the client's library toggle isn't this plugin's browser. Each says which. The device pickers are real, not stubs: `list_devices` reads `--list-adapters` and `--list-audio` off the SESSION binary, the same two enumerations the GTK shell shells out for because it links no Vulkan itself. It is cached for the life of the backend (that call inits Vulkan and PipeWire) with an explicit Refresh for the headset you just plugged in, and a failure — a client too old to ship the session binary — leaves the pickers on Automatic and says so instead of claiming you have no devices. `_parse_audio_endpoints` is split out and unit-tested with the malformed lines that must never reach a picker. Two smaller honesty fixes fall out of building it. A Dropdown can only display a value that is one of its options, and this store has four other writers — so a stored value the table doesn't list is carried as its own entry rather than rendering blank or, worse, showing a different value than the stream will use. And a stored audio endpoint that isn't currently connected keeps a "(not connected)" entry, the way the Linux picker keeps "(not detected)", instead of silently re-pointing the next stream at the default. The Settings tab's wrapper deliberately stops being a scroll area: a SidebarNavigation given an indefinite height to fill collapses its rail, so the pane hands it the full height and keeps its hands off the overflow, and the footer inset moves inside the pages. The docs claimed nine things about this plugin that are no longer true, and three about the console home that stopped being true when its own row set grew on 2026-07-31 (4:4:4, echo cancellation, auto-wake and the library toggle are all there in `screens/settings.rs`). Both corrected. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
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Punktfunk — Steam Deck plugin (Decky)
Stream to your Steam Deck without ever leaving Gaming Mode. This
Decky Loader plugin adds a Punktfunk panel to the Quick Access Menu
(the … button): discover hosts on your network, pair with a PIN, tweak stream settings, and launch
a fullscreen, gamescope-focused stream — all from the couch, gamepad-navigable.
The video itself is the native GTK4 Linux client (the io.unom.Punktfunk flatpak); the plugin
discovers, pairs, configures, and launches it the right way so gamescope fullscreens it — the same
Steam-shortcut trick MoonDeck uses. Because it's built from real Steam UI primitives (@decky/ui),
the panel looks and feels native to Gaming Mode.
What it does
- Discover — browses the LAN over mDNS for Punktfunk hosts, in both the QAM panel and a fullscreen page; each host row opens a details view (address, pairing policy, certificate fingerprint to cross-check against the host's log).
- Pair — for a host that requires it, a gamepad-navigable PIN keypad runs the SPAKE2 pairing ceremony headlessly, then remembers the host so future streams connect silently.
- Stream — launches fullscreen via a branded "Punktfunk" Steam shortcut so gamescope focuses it.
- Games — each host row has a games button that opens its library picker: pin titles as one-tap "Stream " rows in the QAM (jump straight into e.g. Playnite on the host), or "Open library on screen" to launch the client's controller-driven, console-style library browser (aurora backdrop + poster coverflow; A plays, B returns to Gaming Mode). Pins survive plugin reinstalls (stored next to the client's config) and follow a host across IP changes (matched by certificate fingerprint).
- Settings — the client's whole settings store, written to its config. Laid out like SteamOS's
own Settings: a left rail of categories (
SidebarNavigation), one page each, so no page needs scrolling. The categories and their order are the console settings screen's — Stream (resolution / refresh / render scale / bitrate / compositor), Video (codec / decoder / GPU / HDR / 4:4:4), Audio (channels / output + mic device / echo cancellation), Controllers, Touch & mouse, Interface (stats overlay / auto-wake / library / fullscreen). The device pickers are populated from the session binary (--list-adapters/--list-audio); the GPU row appears only where there is more than one adapter. - About — plugin version, an explicit "Check for updates" button, the setup-guide link, and a force-stop for a wedged stream client.
To leave a stream: the in-client controller chord (L1 + R1 + Start + Select), or close the "game" from the Steam overlay — either returns you to Gaming Mode.
Install on the Deck
You need Decky Loader and the io.unom.Punktfunk flatpak
(packaging/flatpak) installed on the Deck — SteamOS /usr is
read-only, so the flatpak (which bundles libadwaita/SDL3) is the canonical client. Discovery uses
avahi-browse, which ships on SteamOS/Bazzite.
Recommended — install from URL (published by CI): in Decky → Settings → Developer Mode → Install Plugin from URL, paste:
https://unom.io/pf-decky
(short link for https://git.unom.io/api/packages/unom/generic/punktfunk-decky/latest/punktfunk.zip;
for a pinned version use https://git.unom.io/api/packages/unom/generic/punktfunk-decky/<version>/punktfunk.zip
directly). The plugin then self-updates without
the Decky store — when a newer build exists, an Update button appears and drives Decky
Loader's own (SHA-256-verified) install. Installs and updates can take a couple of minutes on some
networks: Decky's installer also contacts its plugin store first, which may be slow or blackholed
before the actual download proceeds.
Updating the client
The plugin also reports — and where it can, installs — updates for the client it launches. What is possible depends on how that client was installed, and the About tab names the install kind so the answer is never a mystery:
| Install | Update |
|---|---|
| Flatpak (the usual Deck client) | One tap. flatpak update --user io.unom.Punktfunk — a per-user install, which is why sudo flatpak update never touches it. |
| .deb / .rpm (and rpm-ostree, which stages for the next reboot) | One tap, after an explicit opt-in: sudo usermod -aG punktfunk-update $USER. The tap starts a fixed, parameterless root oneshot (punktfunk-client-update.service) through polkit — nothing about the request is attacker-influenceable, and the payload comes from your distro's own signed repositories. |
| pacman | Same, plus the root-owned PACMAN_FULL_SYSUPGRADE=1 in /etc/punktfunk/update.conf — a partial upgrade is against Arch doctrine, so the only thing the helper will run is a full pacman -Syu. |
| sysext, nix, a source build | The plugin shows the command and stops. There is no feed behind those installs, and a button that can only fail is worse than one honest line. |
Whether a newer client exists is the client's own answer (punktfunk-client --check-update),
read from the Ed25519-signed per-channel manifest the host's update check already trusts —
PUNKTFUNK_UPDATE_CHECK=0 disables the check, PUNKTFUNK_UPDATE_APPLY=0 keeps the check but
never offers to install. A client too old to have that mode is reported as such rather than as
up to date.
Build & sideload (development)
cd clients/decky
pnpm install
pnpm build # rollup → dist/index.js
pnpm run package # → out/punktfunk/ + out/punktfunk-v<ver>.zip
DECK=deck@<deck-ip> pnpm run deploy # rsync → /tmp, sudo-install into the root-owned plugins dir, restart loader
~/homebrew/plugins/ is root-owned (the loader runs as root), so deploy.sh stages to a temp dir
then sudo-installs and restarts the loader — set DECKPASS=… to run it non-interactively. A loader
restart is required for an out-of-band install to appear.
Architecture
| File | Role |
|---|---|
src/index.tsx |
Plugin entry: the QAM panel + route registration. |
src/page.tsx |
The /punktfunk fullscreen page — Hosts (with per-host details) / Settings / About tabs. |
src/settings.tsx · src/pair.tsx |
The settings screen (a SidebarNavigation of six category pages over one shared settings object); the gamepad-navigable PIN-pairing modal. |
src/library.tsx |
The per-host game picker (pin/unpin, "Open library on screen") + the pinned-game launch helper. |
src/hostmgmt.tsx |
Add / edit host dialogs — mutate the shared known-hosts store (client-known-hosts.json) via the flatpak client's headless modes, so a host saved here shows up in the desktop client too. |
src/ui.tsx |
Shared UI primitives for the fullscreen page + modals (right-aligned row actions, consistent Field layout). |
src/hooks.ts · src/boundary.tsx |
Shared discovery/update/pins hooks + actions; the render error boundary. |
src/steam.ts |
Steam-shortcut launch (AddShortcut / SetAppLaunchOptions / RunGame) — the focus-correct stream start. The shortcut's exe is /bin/sh with the wrapper passed as an argument, so the script never needs an exec bit (Decky's zip extraction drops it and the root-owned plugins dir can't be chmodded by the unprivileged backend). Launch extras ride env-prefix tokens: PF_LAUNCH=<id> (pinned game) / PF_BROWSE=1 + PF_MGMT=<port> (on-screen library); ids are validated space/quote-free at pin AND launch time. |
src/backend.ts |
Typed callable bridges to main.py. |
bin/punktfunkrun.sh |
The launch wrapper the Steam shortcut runs (so the window is focusable); maps PF_LAUNCH/PF_BROWSE/PF_MGMT to --launch/--browse/--mgmt. An older flatpak ignores the flags harmlessly (plain stream / hosts page). |
main.py |
Backend: discover (via avahi-browse) / pair / library (headless flatpak --library, TSV) / pins store (decky-pinned.json) / settings / kill_stream / check_update (with an explicit CA-bundle search — Decky's embedded Python has no usable default TLS roots on SteamOS). |
scripts/test-backend.py |
Stdlib-only checks for the backend's pure parsers (TSV, error classes, avahi TXT) + the pins round trip. |
plugin.json · update.json |
Decky manifest; CI-baked update channel. |
Limitations / next steps
- No manual "add host by IP" entry yet (discovery is mDNS-only).
- No in-stream overlay inside the plugin — the client owns the session once launched.
- Pairing needs the operator to arm pairing on the host so it shows the PIN; the plugin can't arm it remotely.
Related
- Documentation — Steam Deck setup guide
- Linux client — the app this plugin launches
- Project README — the host, the other clients, and how it all fits together