Playing music files on Steam Deck

Trouble finding local audio files to play in Audiosurf 2 on your Steam Deck? This is what's worked for me.

Intro

So if you're like me one of the games you were excited to play on the Steam Deck was Audiosurf so. So you finally get some music in the music directory in desktop mode and, hey, what gives? Audiosurf 2 can't find it. You comb through directories and can't find it either. And there seem to be Windows directories as well. How do you fix that?

Explanation

So to my understanding the build that currently runs on Steam Deck is not the native Linux build. Its the Windows build running a compatibility layer. Unfortunately this also means that Audiosurf 2 thinks its running on a Windows machine, hence the Windows directories appearing in the file explorer when you try to point to your own files. This gets in the way of Audiosurf 2 simply seeing the directory where your music is actually located. But if we can point to the real music directory at the fake one it should work, right?

The Solution

This guise is written under the assumption that you are using the default music directory to store your music and that Audiosurf 2 is installed on the internal drive. If you have either of these under different locations you'll need to change the commands to match.

In order to make Audiosurf 2 see our music where its supposed to we first need to go in to Desktop mode. Once there all you need to do is enter 2 commands in to the terminal (Konsole by default) and Audiosurf 2 will be able to see our music.

Firstly type:

rmdir /home/$USER/.steam/steam/steamapps/compatdata/235800/pfx/drive_c/users/steamuser/Music

Hit enter
Then:

ln -s $(realpath ~/Music) /home/$USER/.steam/steam/steamapps/compatdata/235800/pfx/drive_c/users/steamuser/

And hit enter!



That's it! You're done! You music should show up under "my music" and scanning for you music should check this directory first

Notes

This solution was adapted to one found on proton DB by user Basachi

https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/1816660956758744459/FD3BA8632D7C3B4415797DB699A214C07DD13E4A/?imw=256&&ima=fit&impolicy=Letterbox&imcolor=%23000000&letterbox=false

In both steps the number in the directory being entered in to the terminal is the Steam ID of Audiosurf 2 (235800)
This same solution should work with other games wanting to access "my music" so long as you change that number to the ID you can find on Steam DB

This guide should work for Linux users not on a Steam Deck but as I am personally inexperienced with the Linux your mileage may vary

If you keep your music in a different directory you could theoretically adapt the second instruction so that it points to your desired directory rather than the default one
But again, as I'm very inexperienced your mileage may vary

Acknowledgements

The Proton DB where a user posted a fix for the original Audiosurf which I adapted for this guide
https://www.protondb.com/app/12900

My friends Lun-4 and Josh who have helped me figure things out as I learn Linux with the deck