PSA: DeckyLoader almost bricked my Deck

[TentacleMayor]

I guess this is just to warn casual users away from DeckyLoader and especially with the NonSteamLaunchers plugin. It / they caused my Deck to error out when booting into Gaming Mode or Desktop Mode, with only a 1-second window to make a choice (to restart Decky or disable it until next boot) before it blackscreened. I used ChatGPT as an assistant to fix the error, though despite all our efforts to erase Decky, it still lives in my Deck and is functional in Gaming Mode (where I used it to uninstall NonSteamLaunchers). Thankfully my Deck isn't erroring out anymore, but consider this a warning. I'd love to attach my ChatGPT thread, but it doesn't support sharing threads with user images in them. I guess I could copy-paste if anyone is actually interested.

Also I found out that if you can't boot into SteamOS, there's no Factory Reset; you need a USB drive and USB-C hub, which is pretty shocking honestly if true.

[Mahjik]

Yes, SteamOS/Steam Client updates can and do break DeckyLoader from time to time. That's just something everyone who uses Decky should be aware. Even then you can have a Plugin that is causing a problem with a new SteamOS or Steam Client update but not DeckLoader itself.

[🌎Earth]

For me, when the Deck started up it popped up a screen immediately letting me know what the problem was; that it was Decky's fault and it gave me a list of options to click, like to try restarting decky, restart the deck, restart the deck without decky, etc. Selecting restart without decky worked fine.

[TentacleMayor]

Originally posted by 🌎Earth:

For me, when the Deck started up it popped up a screen immediately letting me know what the problem was; that it was Decky's fault and it gave me a list of options to click, like to try restarting decky, restart the deck, restart the deck without decky, etc. Selecting restart without decky worked fine.

Yeah that sounds like the one I got, except it would blackscreen almost instantly.

[Mahjik]

Originally posted by TentacleMayor:

Originally posted by 🌎Earth:

For me, when the Deck started up it popped up a screen immediately letting me know what the problem was; that it was Decky's fault and it gave me a list of options to click, like to try restarting decky, restart the deck, restart the deck without decky, etc. Selecting restart without decky worked fine.

Yeah that sounds like the one I got, except it would blackscreen almost instantly.

Yes, my Deck crashed (I couldn't select any of the options). I just rebooted, went into Desktop Mode and reinstalled Decky. It was just a 5 minute inconvenience.

[VΛCUUM]

this happened to me 5 times and the error disappeared..

[N]

just have to reinstall decky loader. i was able to fix it in 5 minutes

[Omarock]

That happened to me after SteamOS update, but I had way more than a 1 second window to switch to desktop mode. Updating decky through the installer fixed it.
Btw, if you're talking about the error screen with "An error occured while rendering this content", you can just press "disable decky until next boot" and you'll be able to use the deck and switch to desktop mode.