Steam Deck with Windows 10, trying to change default function key settings

[Nick B.[US]]

I bought a Steam Deck the other week and installed Windows 10 on it. To my dismay today I realized the Function Keys are set to the Windows default, meaning they work as accessory keys (i.e. volume mute, up, down, screen brightness, etc) and NOT as function keys (aka F1-F12) which normally would be changed in an underlying BIOS.

Valve's BIOS that comes with the Steam Deck doesn't seem to have any way of changing this either and of course I can't find anyone else who has wanted to connect a mouse and keyboard to the deck for stationary/conventional gameplay. I have quite a few games with too many keybinds to just put everything on the Deck's, and quite a lot of them use the function keys to do various things. I just hate having to press and hold the "fn" key at the same time trying to hit one of the F keys, it gets irritating fast. The bluetooth keyboard I have also doesn't have the F key toggle like some keyboards might.

I was wondering if anyone would know if I can change that setting as what is funny is, the Steam Deck is recognized by Windows as a laptop sort of thing, but without a Dell or other BIOS on it installed that would support such a thing, I have no way of changing the Function key defaults.

[Ritchstorm]

I am having the same issue too, mostly in desktop mode. I use the F keys more often than the brightness and media keys so it would be great if I could swap this around so I don't have to hold FN to get F keys.

[Prezidentas]

this seems like keyboard issue. if you use a keyboard which defaults to nonsense, you need to get a better one. laptops only have such option because it has built-in keyboard. having such option in the deck would make no sense.

[Nick B.[US]]

Oh I forget to go and either remove or comment on this again. I actually figured out my Keyboard does have a function key toggle. I was just a moron and didn't look closer at my keyboard at the time. After doing so later, I finally found where the key was...but it is in the weirdest spot. To the right of F12 and above the backspace key...

What I did find though is that no, there isn't any way to change this in the BIOS as the Steam Deck's BIOS has literally no config for it.

[Ritchstorm]

I have a keychron K10. In windows it works as expected.

[okcomputing]

I'm having this issue with my Apple Magic Keyboard.

I looked around in the settings in SteamOS's desktop mode, and there aren't any compatibility flags that would help.

I did find this discussion about a similar sounding issue, but I haven't been able to test the solution myself:
https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/121395/on-an-apple-keyboard-under-linux-how-do-i-make-the-function-keys-work-without-t