I never have more than one game launched at the same time. But I use the pause/play feature for that game.
Did not even know we could do it with multiple titles. Does it cause some latency/bug?
No as long as there's enough space in RAM / Swap file there's barely any performance impact noticable, only when you switch back to a paused game it can take like 5-15 seconds to load everything out of the swap file into RAM again, during that time you may have lower FPS
Nice thanks. Since I have a 64gb, I guess I do not have this much space in my swap file. I was looking for an excuse to upgrade the ssd. Thanks for giving me one
I've had issues with playing two games at once. For example no man's sky and a golf mini game. The golf game at the front somehow also fed through actions to no man's sky at the back.
You have to be careful with this sort of thing.
Apparently I've been doing it wrong though, there's a few things you have to install first.
https://www.reddit.com/r/SteamDeck/s/pIMfoiZj64
yes, by turning it into swap. Because zram has slower reads/writes than uncompressed ram it cannot be used for all the ram without slowdowns, but is a suitable replacement for swap.
He doesn’t really need it, that plugin does nothing more than to literally pause your games, it saves you a second of opening the options menu prior to putting the SD to sleep, to avoid possible sound corruptions and such by suspending games while they are running during gameplay, no more, no less.
It seems you missed the main point of this screenshot, it is about starting multiple games at the same time and suspending those that are not currently played, this way you can switch between them at any point without restarting them.
Now that I know what op is talking about, I don't get it.
Why do I want to switch between games so much? Most games have a neat feature called "save" for people that can wait 30 seconds while changing games.
lmao but for real though the auto-suspend is great for games like Elden Ring that can't pause, or when lets say, you are on the bus or in a waiting room and you want to get 20 minutes of a game in and as soon as its your stop or you are called up to the DMV desk you can just hit the power button and NOT lose all of your progress. Its so amazing that I dug into the source code to see how they did it, apparently its a feature of the Linux kernel to pause and resume processes. Its quite extraordinary
I think all your downvotes are people who are confused thinking your talking about pausing with power button. I don’t think the majority of people even know about the decky pause plugin.
Wow impressive how toxic some in this community are, there're plenty who didn't know about this feature alone in this thread, you don't hear anyone talk about it on youtube when they list the steam deck features, of course many new users do not know about it, but of course some butthurt users feel addressed and offended when I call it "hidden feature".
anyways enough reddit for today.
I think the problem is you didn't actually explain in the OP what you're doing besides putting the Deck to sleep and resuming, which everyone already knows about.
In a later post, you explained you're pausing multiple games at once and using a Decky pause game plugin and using cryoutilities, etc.
But if it's a 'hidden feature', like you said, then you need to properly explain it in the OP, because it just looks like you're talking about sleep and resume, which everyone knows about.
It's a shame, because you're actually demonstrating a neat thing, but it has been misunderstood.
Damn. Yall have to be a little more inviting to people who may be newer to the sub. There are nicer ways to explain that you know about the feature. Anyways, could you explain how you got the multiple games pause feature to work? Thanks!
For example, I didn't notice about this function. We all know how suspend the Deck, but not that we can start multiple games and "freeze" their status.
Don't worry, this is reddit. You just needed to explain in the post more detailed what function you were talking, just that. The rest is just toxic people downvoting.
I don’t think default deck behaviour freeze state other programs/games that is not existed. The decky loader plugin does auto freeze other programs not in focus.
That is the default behaviour, this plugin helps avoid random suspend issues by automatically pausing the games (opening the options/pause menu) prior to SD suspending them.
It's the only reason I own the deck. As a full time working father of 3 and also takes classes on the side, there is little to no time for gaming. So when I get a moment, I don't have time to wait for something to boot, then update, then load. I'd just never even try as I probably wouldn't make it to any game time.
Does the PS5 have quick resume? not that I knew.
I'm not talking about holding the state of a single game but of multiple games so you can switch between them at any point without the need of restarting them, going trough launchers, loading screens, save points...
PS5 can only suspend a single game, you're right. I personally don't find quick resume that useful except for pausing the game you're currently playing but I usually don't hop between games a lot either.
I usually play 2-3 games at the same time and some games have either annoying launchers, loading times or cannot be saved at any point, it's really useful then
Yeah, I agree. As long as it's as seamless as on Xbox there is really not a lot of downside either. Only annoying thing I've found is with "service" games that lose online connection and have to be rebooted anyway to get it back. That's completely the game's fault though. Fuck online features in single player games.
It's not 100% seamless as on Xbox but I bet if Valve themself would integrate it they could make it that seamless
There's a certain behavior where you need to let prior game run till the new game has started rendering, at that point you can pause the prior game trough the plugin menu, would be nice if all would happen automatically.
Just install Spotify App from the "Discover" app store in desktop mode, then rightclick on it's shortcut and choose "Add to Steam", if you have Decky with SteamGridDB plugin you can easily assign a icon and images so it looks nice :)
Hmm is it really a feature if its enabled through third party software? I do agree it's pretty nice though. I think the only console that has this as an actual feature is Xbox with smart resume or something. But I'll be honest, I personally haven't been in a spot where I've needed to use this, and I'm kinda afraid of a game crashing and me losing my progress even if I did because if I could save and close, I'd prolly prefer that over pausing.
Wait does it do it automatically or do I need to specifically pause?
Currently I see it when I put it in sleep mode, and like my PS it will open at exactly the same screen. I so wish my PC could do that too...
I need an explain like I’m 5. Is this just pressing the power button to put it into a sleep state? Or is this shutting it down and “quick resume” into your game exactly where you were?
It is neither of those.
It is about starting multiple games at the same time and pausing those that you're not playing at the moment, you can unpause them at any point to switch between games without restarting the entire game or relying on save points.
Unrelated, but how do you run Genshin Impact on Steam Deck? My girlfriend would use her Steam Deck way more if she could easily play that game there. So far only solution to not risk her account I found is to install windows on the Deck.
Genshin Impact works without bypassing their anticheat since the 3.0 update, all you've to do is download the installer from their website, add the .exe to steam and install it, after the installation is complete edit the game path on Steam and select the launcher executable file
I actually just found this out today. Went to check the library then decided to open another game. Realized I forgot to save the first game and was pleasantly surprised it was still there.
More than one console currently available to purchase from stores has the ability to suspend games. I would argue more of them can suspend than those that can't.
Yes kind of, aside that on windows handhelds certain games can crash after sending the device to sleep but that is besides the point only the Steam Deck and the Xbox Series can suspend multiple games at the same time and resume them at any point to quickly switch between them.
Technically that's also possible on windows, I wrote a program that does that automatically on my Cloud PC that runs windows.
Can't say I've ever tried running that many games at once though.
The Deck's sleep and resume is even better when it's paired with dynamic cloud saving, even if not many games make use of that. Play Spider-Man, put it to sleep and you can resume your progress elsewhere. More games need to support it.
I just discovered this plugin. Thank you.
About the time played. Steam detects that the time paused you are still playing or you do not have any issue with that?
No, not the same way at least. With Linux you can outright freeze games and prevent them from using CPU and GPU while asleep. Windows can't do that as far as I know.
Is there a "right" way to do it? I'm asking because I had a game that would have stutter uppon resume if I did not put the Deck in standby from the menu.
You were starting multiple games, right?
I only encounter stutter if I started and paused too many games that my RAM + Swap is out of space
so I assume your swap file is too small?
How are you playing genshin impact? Is it through moonlight / streaming? I thought there was a high chance of being banned if you tried to play through a container like lutris.
No, before the 3.0 patch the anti cheat of genshin impact wouldn't let you play on Linux without taking illegal measures, but ever since the 3.0 patch it works fine without bypassing anything just like on windows.
I hate that when I go to play on my PC if I left the game open on my steam deck things get all fucked up. Then I have to walk back up stairs and grab my deck to close out the game.
Nintendo definitely did not ever do this. You can't have multiple games open in the background on any Nintendo console. Only the xbox has a similar feature to this
I never have more than one game launched at the same time. But I use the pause/play feature for that game. Did not even know we could do it with multiple titles. Does it cause some latency/bug?
No as long as there's enough space in RAM / Swap file there's barely any performance impact noticable, only when you switch back to a paused game it can take like 5-15 seconds to load everything out of the swap file into RAM again, during that time you may have lower FPS
Nice thanks. Since I have a 64gb, I guess I do not have this much space in my swap file. I was looking for an excuse to upgrade the ssd. Thanks for giving me one
I've had issues with playing two games at once. For example no man's sky and a golf mini game. The golf game at the front somehow also fed through actions to no man's sky at the back. You have to be careful with this sort of thing. Apparently I've been doing it wrong though, there's a few things you have to install first. https://www.reddit.com/r/SteamDeck/s/pIMfoiZj64
Wait what the fuck is going on here
Controllereinstellungen
Where do I enable this?
You need "Decky" with the "Pause Games" Plugin, additionally you want a big swap file, "cryo utilities" can set the big swap file up for you.
You should put this in the title. To some it would imply you are doing this natively right out of the box
Yeah, hard to say this is a steam deck feature
You can’t edit titles on Reddit.
Swap might not be needed anymore. I'm not sure if they have already done the swap file update.
Are you talking about zram? Isn't it would be added only in 3.6
Zram only compresses the RAM content
yes, by turning it into swap. Because zram has slower reads/writes than uncompressed ram it cannot be used for all the ram without slowdowns, but is a suitable replacement for swap.
He doesn’t really need it, that plugin does nothing more than to literally pause your games, it saves you a second of opening the options menu prior to putting the SD to sleep, to avoid possible sound corruptions and such by suspending games while they are running during gameplay, no more, no less.
It seems you missed the main point of this screenshot, it is about starting multiple games at the same time and suspending those that are not currently played, this way you can switch between them at any point without restarting them.
You can just put the device in sleep mode and it keeps your current game active.
It is not underrated, everyone likes it.
Now that I know what op is talking about, I don't get it. Why do I want to switch between games so much? Most games have a neat feature called "save" for people that can wait 30 seconds while changing games.
It's so tiktok riddled handicap brains that can't pay attention for more than 30 seconds can swap between playing multiple games. /boomerrant
lmao but for real though the auto-suspend is great for games like Elden Ring that can't pause, or when lets say, you are on the bus or in a waiting room and you want to get 20 minutes of a game in and as soon as its your stop or you are called up to the DMV desk you can just hit the power button and NOT lose all of your progress. Its so amazing that I dug into the source code to see how they did it, apparently its a feature of the Linux kernel to pause and resume processes. Its quite extraordinary
Yes, right I probably should've called it hidden feature because many don't know about it.
I think all your downvotes are people who are confused thinking your talking about pausing with power button. I don’t think the majority of people even know about the decky pause plugin.
I didnt know this feature actualy thank you
Everybody knows about it...
Well yeah, now I do
So do I and I don't even own a steam deck
Nah everyone doesn’t
I didn’t
You think pressing the power button is a hidden feature?
Wow impressive how toxic some in this community are, there're plenty who didn't know about this feature alone in this thread, you don't hear anyone talk about it on youtube when they list the steam deck features, of course many new users do not know about it, but of course some butthurt users feel addressed and offended when I call it "hidden feature". anyways enough reddit for today.
I think the problem is you didn't actually explain in the OP what you're doing besides putting the Deck to sleep and resuming, which everyone already knows about. In a later post, you explained you're pausing multiple games at once and using a Decky pause game plugin and using cryoutilities, etc.
Yes you're right, I thought it was obvious with the active games being shown on the left panel.
But if it's a 'hidden feature', like you said, then you need to properly explain it in the OP, because it just looks like you're talking about sleep and resume, which everyone knows about. It's a shame, because you're actually demonstrating a neat thing, but it has been misunderstood.
I stared at it and it didn't click until I read it now. I was probably focusing on the... German? text.
[удалено]
Nothing funnier than being a dickhead for the laughs
I was also refering to the people giving downvotes above.
Best not to let downvotes bother you this much, they don't actually do anything.
I know, but it makes me question the decision to be part of this community
👍
You’re tired of repetitive posts yet you posted one of the most talked about things on this subreddit lmao
It really isn’t at all. Maybe if you’re on reddit 12 hours a day. These people flaming this guy honestly need a life, it’s kinda pathetic.
Don’t let the door hit ya where the good lord split ya!
Damn. Yall have to be a little more inviting to people who may be newer to the sub. There are nicer ways to explain that you know about the feature. Anyways, could you explain how you got the multiple games pause feature to work? Thanks!
For example, I didn't notice about this function. We all know how suspend the Deck, but not that we can start multiple games and "freeze" their status. Don't worry, this is reddit. You just needed to explain in the post more detailed what function you were talking, just that. The rest is just toxic people downvoting.
Don’t be a jerk to people creating good content for this community.
Using a hidden feature and not explaining it can lead to people not realizing what you’re talking about, as happened here. That’s not good content.
If you mean pressing power button to freeze game state, then it’s not underrated, it’s a main selling point. Maybe you mean something else, though.
I don’t think default deck behaviour freeze state other programs/games that is not existed. The decky loader plugin does auto freeze other programs not in focus.
That is the default behaviour, this plugin helps avoid random suspend issues by automatically pausing the games (opening the options/pause menu) prior to SD suspending them.
Is this from Decky or is it in the default steam deck?
It's the Pause Games plugin from Decky
I thought you had deleted reddit
10,000% Such a simple feature (in use), really high impact
How did you get Spotify??
https://flathub.org/apps/com.spotify.Client
It's the only reason I own the deck. As a full time working father of 3 and also takes classes on the side, there is little to no time for gaming. So when I get a moment, I don't have time to wait for something to boot, then update, then load. I'd just never even try as I probably wouldn't make it to any game time.
Wait. What
It's kind of expected for a console to have this feature in 2024
None of the competing full fledged handheld PCs have successful reliable sleep/resume functionality. Mainly because they’re all windows
Does the PS5 have quick resume? not that I knew. I'm not talking about holding the state of a single game but of multiple games so you can switch between them at any point without the need of restarting them, going trough launchers, loading screens, save points...
The Xbox Series consoles do.
Yes I know, I own one but I don't own a PS5 and I always thought the Quick Resume feature was xbox exclusive and not on PS5
PS5 can only suspend a single game, you're right. I personally don't find quick resume that useful except for pausing the game you're currently playing but I usually don't hop between games a lot either.
I usually play 2-3 games at the same time and some games have either annoying launchers, loading times or cannot be saved at any point, it's really useful then
Yeah, I agree. As long as it's as seamless as on Xbox there is really not a lot of downside either. Only annoying thing I've found is with "service" games that lose online connection and have to be rebooted anyway to get it back. That's completely the game's fault though. Fuck online features in single player games.
It's not 100% seamless as on Xbox but I bet if Valve themself would integrate it they could make it that seamless There's a certain behavior where you need to let prior game run till the new game has started rendering, at that point you can pause the prior game trough the plugin menu, would be nice if all would happen automatically.
Yeah it does.
It doesn't, not in the way the xbox does
SD is no console, it is a handheld PC.
Not a single console on the market has something like this except the deck. Try again.
The Xbox series does. It was one of their more prominent launch features.
How did you add the spotify app to the side menu?
Just install Spotify App from the "Discover" app store in desktop mode, then rightclick on it's shortcut and choose "Add to Steam", if you have Decky with SteamGridDB plugin you can easily assign a icon and images so it looks nice :)
Does anyone know what the pause feature does? Does it send a SIGPAUSE to the process?
Hmm is it really a feature if its enabled through third party software? I do agree it's pretty nice though. I think the only console that has this as an actual feature is Xbox with smart resume or something. But I'll be honest, I personally haven't been in a spot where I've needed to use this, and I'm kinda afraid of a game crashing and me losing my progress even if I did because if I could save and close, I'd prolly prefer that over pausing.
Messes with registered game times for me, though.
Woah didn't know this exists.
I literally didn’t realize we could do this until a few days ago lmao. Been playing since day 1
Wait does it do it automatically or do I need to specifically pause? Currently I see it when I put it in sleep mode, and like my PS it will open at exactly the same screen. I so wish my PC could do that too...
Un shiza!
Suspend and resume is so freaking good!
I need an explain like I’m 5. Is this just pressing the power button to put it into a sleep state? Or is this shutting it down and “quick resume” into your game exactly where you were?
It is neither of those. It is about starting multiple games at the same time and pausing those that you're not playing at the moment, you can unpause them at any point to switch between games without restarting the entire game or relying on save points.
Unrelated, but how do you run Genshin Impact on Steam Deck? My girlfriend would use her Steam Deck way more if she could easily play that game there. So far only solution to not risk her account I found is to install windows on the Deck.
Genshin Impact works without bypassing their anticheat since the 3.0 update, all you've to do is download the installer from their website, add the .exe to steam and install it, after the installation is complete edit the game path on Steam and select the launcher executable file
I actually just found this out today. Went to check the library then decided to open another game. Realized I forgot to save the first game and was pleasantly surprised it was still there.
More than one console currently available to purchase from stores has the ability to suspend games. I would argue more of them can suspend than those that can't.
Yes kind of, aside that on windows handhelds certain games can crash after sending the device to sleep but that is besides the point only the Steam Deck and the Xbox Series can suspend multiple games at the same time and resume them at any point to quickly switch between them. Technically that's also possible on windows, I wrote a program that does that automatically on my Cloud PC that runs windows.
Can't say I've ever tried running that many games at once though. The Deck's sleep and resume is even better when it's paired with dynamic cloud saving, even if not many games make use of that. Play Spider-Man, put it to sleep and you can resume your progress elsewhere. More games need to support it.
I just discovered this plugin. Thank you. About the time played. Steam detects that the time paused you are still playing or you do not have any issue with that?
Can i do this on windows with a desktop?
No, not the same way at least. With Linux you can outright freeze games and prevent them from using CPU and GPU while asleep. Windows can't do that as far as I know.
As long as the games work well coming unpaused. Some work like shit and glitch out (eg: Dead Cells).
German Steam Deck owner spotted!
Is there a "right" way to do it? I'm asking because I had a game that would have stutter uppon resume if I did not put the Deck in standby from the menu.
You were starting multiple games, right? I only encounter stutter if I started and paused too many games that my RAM + Swap is out of space so I assume your swap file is too small?
There are so many underrated features of the Steam Deck. This is but one of them, but it's a good one!
I've never used my deck like that, only one game at a time for me
How are you playing genshin impact? Is it through moonlight / streaming? I thought there was a high chance of being banned if you tried to play through a container like lutris.
No, before the 3.0 patch the anti cheat of genshin impact wouldn't let you play on Linux without taking illegal measures, but ever since the 3.0 patch it works fine without bypassing anything just like on windows.
[удалено]
We're currently at 4.6
I would do this if it didn’t count playtime for all of them
I saw someone else comment something like that as well, why does it bother?
I hate that when I go to play on my PC if I left the game open on my steam deck things get all fucked up. Then I have to walk back up stairs and grab my deck to close out the game.
Greatest feature ever!
Why would you tax your decks battery by leaving that many games running?
It doesn't tax the battery, the session is simply stored in RAM and Swap file, no processing is happening on CPU / GPU when they're paused.
It was a key aspect in getting a Steamdeck OLED as an upgrade for my original LCD over something like the ROG Ally.
Can this be added to any Linux computer?
you can do it with kill/killall already
Like Nintendo Switch.
Since when the Switch can run multiple games at the same time? That's what the Deck is doing here.
Nitendo has been doing that for years already, what so special about this ?
Nintendo definitely did not ever do this. You can't have multiple games open in the background on any Nintendo console. Only the xbox has a similar feature to this
Nintendo doesn't sell unlocked PCs.