Steam Deck OS Update 3.6.19 is Here and it has a bit of Everything

October 24, 2024
| Tags: General
| Author David Hollingsworth

Steam Deck OS Update 3.6.19 has dropped and it features a pretty good selection of updates for everyone.

Ahead of its release down under, Steam Deck OS Update 3.6.19 has been released for everyone. It’s a pretty good update, including a number of updates and changes for both the LCD and OLED builds of the Steam Deck. Do you want third-party SSDs to work on Steam Deck, you got it. Want new graphics drivers to improve gameplay, you got it. Better battery life for the LCD model under low load, you guessed it. It’s a meaty update and we’ve summarised some of the key points below, with a link to the full patch notes after.

Steam Deck OS Update 3.6.19

Graphics driver improvements
support for third-party SSDs
Balanced display colours
fixes for spurious power LED blinking
Original LCD Steam Deck gains OLED’s overclocking controls in BIOS
Improved microSD card reliability, especially for certain SanDisk models
Fixes for black screen issue when switching between Desktop Mode and Gaming Mode
LCD Steam Deck gets up to 10% better battery life under light load conditions
Suggested graphics performance improvements don’t boost FPS but improve stability
Notable UI responsiveness improvement
Game Recording fixes were applied, but full functionality is still in the Beta branch
Update is available now for all Stable branch users

It’s a really good update, and fair to say a standout is the love that the LCD model is getting still. It has become so normal for a tech company to just abandon an old product the second a new one is released, so it’s really refreshing to see Valve actually add value to the older model of Steam Deck.

If you want to read the full patch notes you can do some on the Steam page. The update is available to download now across the Steam Deck models.

David has written for games media outlets for the last ten years. With his first major esports role being with Esports News UK covering mostly UK League of Legends. David is also a member of the British Esports Association and is an advisor to them on World of Warcraft Esports. More recently David has worked for Esports Insider and Red Bull as an esports journalist.

David later became Editor at ESTNN and now leads the current team.