Valve rolls out the red carpet for its new Steam controller with battery warnings, gamepad quick-chat and—bonus!—remote download controls

It's that magical time of the month when Valve collates all the various drips and drops of updates it's put out as Steam client betas, and packages them into a great, honking, 100% official Steam client update. And a Steam Deck client update. Don't forget that.

As you might expect, there's a good amount of Steam Controller-flavoured stuff in the Steam client update for April 28. Most notably, both desktop Steam and Steam Deck now have a feature that pings you when the wireless controller you're using starts running low on battery, as well as a battery measure indicator at the top of Big Picture Mode.

Which will be handy insofar as it, you know, works. I've had bad luck with accurate wireless gamepad battery measurement on PC in the past, and even when it does work, the new Steam toast will only pop if you're playing a game where the overlay works properly.

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Admittedly, this nailbiting on my part might be me-specific. I play a lot of busted old stuff where the Steam overlay doesn't quite function right. If you exist in 2026, videogames-wise, you'll probably be fine.

Valve's also stuck your Steam chat stuff into the Big Picture quick access menu and created a set of quick chat options you can use when talking to pals. Hold the back button in a chat and a quick-select set of options—"Yes", "No", "Can't talk now", that kind of thing—will pop up and send with a quick flick of the right stick. Odds are you're using Discord anyway (though I've found Steam's social stuff to be perfectly adequate whenever I've used it) but, hey, it's the thought that counts.

Another little bonus, for our incoming house-full-of-Steam-devices future, is the addition of multi-device download management in the client. If you've got a game downloading on one machine on your network, you can check in and fiddle with it via the Steam client on another. Neat!

Over on Deck, well, it's a lot of the same stuff, but you can now easily boot to the device's KDE desktop from the Steam login screen now, and your Deck should be better able to handle captive WiFi login screens the next time you take it to a hotel or cafe.

Here are the full patch notes for both the desktop and Deck clients:

Steam Client Update - April 28th

General

• Added a low battery level toast for wireless gamepads. Battery notifications for Xbox controllers on Windows are temporarily disabled.
• Added System Report button to the Help section on Windows.
• Improved client performance when there are many unread account notifications pending.
• Fixed spell check not working in certain browser views.

Big Picture Mode

• Moved Steam chat into the quick access menu, making it easier to access while in-game.
• Introduced new quick chat feature for Steam Deck and Big Picture Mode.
  • When in a chat, press and hold the view button to bring up quick chat options.
  • Move thumbstick and release view button to send a quick chat.
  • Quick chats can be edited in Settings > Keyboard.
• Added a battery indicator to the header for wireless gamepads.
• Updated the Store main menu option to navigate to the Steam Store home page instead of the Great On Deck hub.
• Fixed the Voice chat tab of the quick access menu not being hidden after exiting all active voice chats.
• Fixed an issue with the "use the gamepadui overlay when a controller is connected" mode where desktopUI chat windows could open and block the Big Picture overlay.

Downloads

• Added Remote Downloads Management. This allows you to manage downloads on Remote Steam Clients from the downloads page.
  • The App Details page now has the same options and statuses for remote clients as the local client.
  • Both the local and remote clients must be updated to enable this feature.

Remote Play

• Enabled streaming while Remote Desktop is active on Windows.
• Added more flexible options to the Advanced Host Options for selecting primary display, resolution, refresh rate, etc. while streaming from a Windows computer. This will also allow setting whether HDR is enabled while streaming.
• Added support for the SudoVDA virtual display driver on Windows. If you have the SudoVDA driver installed and select this as your primary display in the Advanced Host Options, Steam will automatically create a virtual display to match the client display settings.
• Added support for streaming 7.1 surround sound.
• Added a workaround for an AMD driver bug causing stream corruption and lockups on Windows. This bug is also fixed in the latest AMD drivers, version 26.3.1.
• Added feedback if capture can't be started on the remote computer.
• Fixed launching with surround sound audio when streaming a game from the library.

Game Recording

• Fixed the instant clip shortcut not working for non-Steam games when using a gamepad.
• Fixed a bug which affected taking a screenshot from a game recording clip.

Cloud

• Fixed an issue which could lead to data loss when uninstalling, reinstalling, and playing a game without restarting the client in between.

Steam Input

• Revised controller settings to reduce clutter and to make them work better with gamepads.
• Fixed a case where radial menus would fail to dismiss after releasing the joystick on Steam Deck.
• Fixed a case where the controller calibration screen could fail to load the correct values the first time it is opened.

Windows

• Updated CPUID SDK used for CPU Temperature in in-game overlay performance monitor when enabled.

macOS

• Fixed soundtrack playback not working on Apple Silicon machines.

Steam Deck Client Update: April 28th

General

• Added a setting to enable 'Switch To Desktop' in the login screen. It can be found in System Settings.
• Added a low battery level toast for wireless gamepads.
• Added a battery indicator to the header for wireless gamepads.
• Updated the Store main menu option to navigate to the Steam Store home page instead of the Great On Deck hub.
• Improved compatibility with WiFi captive portals.
• Improved client performance when there are many unread account notifications pending.
• Fixed a case where opting into the 'Preview' channel could silently fail.
• Fixed subtle sizing issues with the Recently Played carousel.
• Fixed the Voice chat tab of the QAM not being hidden after exiting all active voice chats.
• Fixed spell check not working in certain browser views.

Chat

• Moved Steam chat into the quick access menu, making it easier to access while in-game.
• Introduced new quick chat feature for Steam Deck and Big Picture Mode.
  • When in a chat, press and hold the view button to bring up quick chat options.
  • Move thumbstick and release view button to send a quick chat.
  • Quick chats can be edited in Settings > Keyboard.
• Focus will no longer jump to room effect replay buttons when scrolling through chat history.
• Fixed a bug that would sometimes prevent chat history from loading when scrolling up.

Downloads

• Added Remote Downloads Management. This allows you to manage downloads on Remote Steam Clients from the downloads page. You can select different clients by pressing Y on the downloads page.
  • The App Details page now has the same options and statuses for remote clients as the local client.
  • Both the local and remote clients must be updated to enable this feature.

Game Recording

• Fixed the instant clip shortcut not working for non-Steam games when using a gamepad.
• Fixed a bug which affected taking a screenshot from a game recording clip.

Remote Play

• Added feedback if capture can't be started on the remote computer.

Cloud

• Fixed an issue which could lead to data loss when uninstalling, reinstalling, and playing a game without restarting the client in between.

Steam Input

• Revised controller settings to reduce clutter and to make them work better with gamepads.
• Changed controller settings to use a menu and details structure instead of tabs to list the connected controllers.
• Fixed a case where radial menus would fail to dismiss after releasing the joystick on Steam Deck.
• Fixed a case where the controller calibration screen could fail to load the correct values the first time it is opened.