Willy

@Kypetzl

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Willy @Kypetzl4/10/2023, 1:03 AM

Tom (tired of the computer)@masklayer

Jessica @ticky4/10/2023, 12:50 AM

Steam Deck and the Apple Studio Display

For some reason, the Steam Deck doesn't properly handle the Apple Studio Display by default. It attempts, and fails, to use it at 5K resolution, but just ends up blinking the backlight forever and never actually outputting a usable picture.

So, to make it play nice you need to force it to use a different resolution. Unfortunately, this isn't exactly trivial - even Valve's "external display safe mode" won't work properly.

It's possible that there are other monitors which have a similar issue, and this will hopefully help to have documented in one place.

So, here's how I got it working:

Enable SSH on your Deck¹
1. Set a password for your desktop user with passwd
2. sudo systemctl start sshd
Install Homebrew using the instructions on brew.sh
Install tmux:
brew install tmux
Start tmux from your Steam Deck desktop: tmux
Connect to your Deck to your Apple Studio Display
SSH into your Deck and run tmux attach to connect to the session we started earlier
Run xrandr --output DisplayPort-0 --mode 3840x2160
Your Studio Display should now show part or all of your desktop!
Open ~/.config/gamescope/modes.cfg in a text editor
Find a line starting with Apple Computer Inc StudioDisplay: and edit it to read:
Apple Computer Inc StudioDisplay:3840x2160@60
Now when you restart into Gaming Mode it should run at 4K and therefore display correctly!

https://shendrick.net/Gaming/2022/05/30/sshonsteamdeck.html

#Apple Studio Display #Studio Display #steam deck #linux

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in reply to @ticky's post:

Plum @plumpan4/10/2023, 1:32 AM

wait why are we starting a tmux session and attaching to it to run xrand- OOOOHH you need to run it from the X session, which you would not be if you logged in via SSH. Smart!

Jessica @ticky4/10/2023, 1:33 AM

yeah I know it's display :0 at that point but I can't talk to it from SSH, if there's a cleaner way I am open to it!

Plum @plumpan4/10/2023, 1:35 AM

I literally wrote that stream of thought, was going to ask why and realized the reason halfway through. There might be a better way! I don't know of it.

I don't even have a deck I'm just deep enough into the linux sauce that reading all of this made sense x3

Let me go summon a linux nerd with a deck.

EDIT: Yeah they also said DISPLAY=:0 but did not test connectivity after running said command. Sounds like you already tried that and had issues. You're probably doing it the best way then! Can't say I've done much interacting with X from remote myself.

Does the apply display (I've typed it like this 3 times now, leaving it) only advertise being able to run 5k or something? Kinda curious why the two combined aren't smart enough to fall back to 4k.

Jessica @ticky4/10/2023, 3:33 AM

It advertises many supported resolutions, I think the Steam Deck just thinks it’s all working normally at 5K. I suspect a driver bug because on an earlier version of SteamOS it worked fine.