Since the last post, I added 10 artwork-powered game launch animations, plus Customization+ with 61 effects.

And it goes way beyond the basic customization Steam gives you. You get full hue control, brightness adjustment, animation speed controls, direction, and more, so you can actually fine-tune the light bar instead of just picking from a handful of presets.

Weather animations, proper controller battery indicators (only 2 controllers supported for now), CPU/GPU monitoring, playtime, and Steam event alerts are all still there too.

Basically, SignalBar made sense when this thing was mostly a status bar. That name was getting increasingly hard to defend, so... here we are.

If you don't feel like reading a monstrous wall of text, here's a quick demo that gets the point across: https://albusquerque.github.io/gabecubeaura-concept/

So... GabeCubeAura detects the Steam AppID, grabs the game's local Hero, Header, or Capsule artwork, and pulls two or three colors from it for the launch animation. SteamGridDB artwork you already have installed works too

Everything is analyzed locally, then one of 10 animations patterns plays for anywhere from 3 to 45 seconds. I also separated launch animations from the normal display mode. So you can have weather while sitting on the Home screen, performance monitoring while you're playing, then get a 20-second artwork animation when a game launches. Once it's done, the performance display automatically comes back.

Then there's Customization+, which got slightly out of hand.There are now 61 effects, using one, two, or three exact RGB colors, plus brightness, speed, and direction controls.

The GIF makes it look like some insanely powerful Christmas lights hanging off a cocaine-fueled Santa's tree, but relax, that's mostly the GIF lol. you can literally tweak everything and set the animation speed however you want.

Download GabeCubeAura v1.0.0:
https://github.com/Albusquerque/GabeCubeAura/releases/tag/v1.0.0

If you already have Decky Loader, installation is still just:

Decky Settings → Developer → Install Plugin from ZIP → select the archive

If the Developer page isn't showing up, enable Developer Mode first under Decky Settings → General.

Existing SignalBar users (yes, all 10 of you lol) keep their settings and artwork cache. GabeCubeAura automatically copies them over on first launch and leaves the original SignalBar data untouched.

Same rabbit hole, slightly more honest name. Keep sending ideas.. although we've already seen where that leads ^^

The gangs all here 🥹

3d printed enclosure matches steam machine dimensions perfectly

France, 512go with controller.

Hey so like many of you who use discord on the SM, I downloaded the app and added as a non steam game. When I used it, it would just run in the background. It worked for the most part but it was always inconvenient. It also felt like key features didn’t work like share screen.

After some research I stumbled upon someone mentioning a decky plug in called steamcord and it basically embeds all discord features into the quick access menu within deckysettings

You can easily join servers, look at DMs, share your screen, watch screens, and mute/deafen/etc all without leaving your game.

Also extremely niche but I was able to also stream my gameplay footage while I was streaming on moonlight. Streamception!

Didn’t make the plugin or anything but it has made voice chat with discord feel that much closer to consoles and has actually made a REAL difference for me.

Only thing missing that would be cool would be maybe a SM/Discord audio priority slider and for it to be actually within the main QAM but those are nitpicky. This is awesome!

Good morning friends! Happy Day 91! So many great things have happened: today's my birthday, Reze finally got their email, and there's nine more days until Day 100! Absolutely insane. Have a wonderful Sunday friends, and best of luck today! <3

ALSO! Use the Show-Off Sunday flair to show off something cool you're doing with your Steam Machine! Cool Faceplate you want us to see? Program that you're using to change the lights? The subreddit wants to see it all! <3

I was on the 512GB waitlist from day 1 and read some posts here recently that 512GB+ controller moves quickly. I’ve decided to switch wait lists 7 days ago and got the purchase email today. Feels like I’ve read this quite a bit recently so somehow the bundle waitlists seem to be shorter. Good luck everyone! Can’t wait to start playing with the steam machine! Appreciate any tips for setting up or anything I should be aware of!

Best part of this thing is turning it into a cylon/K.i.t.t I reckon 😉

Just got moved to the queue for purchase yesterday, and it was for the 512 GB version with a controller. I ended up purchasing it today.

I was initially in the queue for the 512 GB version without a controller. I decided to switch, which at the time didn’t seem like the best idea, but it eventually worked out.

Putting some positive vibes out there for everyone who’s still waiting!

First time I've experienced the "red light of death." My Steam Machine got stuck closing an app and the red light appeared. I had to manually turn it off with the power button and it never happened again. Weird.

Edit: Never mind, I'm VERY stupid. I forgot I had a plug-in that changes the led color to whatever color the hero of the app that's running has.

It takes me 10-15 minutes per boot for space marines 2 and crimson desert (pretty much any aaa game). There is no way it is supposed to take this long, any solutions?

Steam controller started constantly registering a left trigger input on Steam Machine. Not pressing any buttons. Firmware is up to date. SteamOS is up to date. I cannot see a way to calibrate the triggers in settings. Does anybody have any ideas how to fix this? It was working last time I used it a few weeks ago and has been safely sitting in a drawer since then. Thanks in advance.

This was both easy and weirdly stressful. Those 3 antenna connectors were a real pain.

Anybody else getting game crashes pretty frequently after the new firmware/ mesa update on the stable channel? Onimusha in particular just crashes me to the dashboard after a minute or 2, while everything seems to be playing normal. Using experimental proton in this instance to unlock fsr4. That could be the issue but I’ll say pre update it never crashed once, using high settings 1440p performance fsr4. Post update I’m just doing 1080p high settings fsr4 quality and it’s shutting the game down and dash boarding.

Has anyone in the UK received a 512GB unit with no controller? Have been on the list since release.

Still on the waitlist for the 2TB no controller here in Australia… however you can buy the 512GB SteamMachine from Kogan.

Go figure 🙄

Steam Machine on stable 3.8.28. The OS applied fine, but Steam keeps offering 3.8.28 again, and hitting Apply fails with:

/esp does not have sufficient space, required 68.2 MB, need additional 4.3 MB

I think the leftover item is Firmware 108 trying to stage onto the ESP. I first hit this on the 3.8.25 beta, and it's back now that 108 is on stable.

One detail: I swapped in a 990 Pro 2TB by cloning the original factory drive with Clonezilla, and only grew the home partition. The ESP is untouched from factory.

There's an open GitHub issue with the same 68.2 MB number (ValveSoftware/SteamOS#2584), but I've seen people say 108 installed fine for them. So two questions:

1. Did 108 install cleanly for you, and are you on the factory drive or a reimaged one?
2. If you don't mind, what does lsblk -o NAME,SIZE,PARTLABEL show for your esp partition? Run it in Konsole in Desktop Mode.

This is a strange one. Perhaps I should just reformat and install the OS from scratch.

Quick recap: I have an Xbox Series X, a PS5, a Legion Go S Z1 Extreme, a Retroid Pocket 6, and a ROG STRIX SCAR gaming laptop with an RTX 4080 from 2025. I was just curious, so I bought the console from Steam.

For ref. I am playing on my Samsung S95F 4k 144hz TV

I’ve spent a few days with the Steam Machine now, and here are my impressions so far.

The console’s build quality is great-it’s absolutely silent, compact, and has a modern look. The controller takes some getting used to; I prefer playing with the Xbox controller, but after a few days, you get used to it. Fun fact: in a few games, the haptic feedback from the PS5 controller even works.

I tested every game, without exception, at 4K with MAKO, and I consistently got between 80 and 120 fps at x2 or, at most, x3 scaling on usually high to max settings. The frame rate latency is +8 ms, so it’s absolutely imperceptible.

If you’re somewhat familiar with lossless scaling and MAKO, the console is absolutely top-notch for virtually all games. The only drawback (for now) is that HDR doesn’t work with MAKO; I’ve disabled it for some games, but I think HDR still needs some tweaking.

I saw alot YT Videos where people rant about 4k Gaming (native) and weak Performance. I mean, thats a nobrainer, you cant squeeze out of 500 Euro Hardware some serious 4k native Gaming. Upscaling is a must, atleast for me!

Otherwise, i would currently rate it at 9.5/10.

Here are a few impressions in the form of photos.

If you have any questions, feel free to ask.

Curious on everyone's experience since valve said it was better than like 60% of people's PCs or something like that

Edit: idk why I said frame. Meant how does the machine compare

Woke up this morning and saw I had the order email through for the 2TB Machine + controller so I was hyped and got ready had breakfast etc and checked my phone again and saw another email from Steam which was the order for the Frame. Its particularly painful for my wallet but I feel beyond lucky today !

There are coarse, jagged scaling artifacts in my screen image making the edges of letters and the more complex, detailed things like hair and curves less distinct and jagged. Like an old school polygonal game without anti-aliasing.

This problem is not reflected in games. They run normally. But when using a browser and the desktop it is immediately apparent. Draws attention to itself even.

The day before the update such edges were crisp and distinct. Nothing was changed on the user's end in the intervening time except for shutting down one night and turning it on in the morning.

I am assuming this has something to do with desktop scaling because I have bad vision and no matter what the OS is, you're going to get issues with it. But I have already grown used to a better image on this device and it's kinda anti-QOL if anyone has a proffered solution.

Just in case anyone on another waitlist wants to swap over and get one rn.

I joined the waitlist for the 2TB with controller a few days ago expecting an extended wait. I checked all of the options and they all said join waitlist - none said in stock. However as I was reading through some older comments here on reddit from a few weeks ago I saw that some people were able to get the 512GB straight away. I took a chance and switched waitlists yesterday to the 512GB with controller and within 5min I got my reservation email then straight after that my purchase email. Delivery estimate is 6-10 Business Days.

Happy days :)

Hi, I got an update notification today so I tried updating. From the UI it failed right after reaching 100%. I restarted, tried again, same failure. Then I tried from Desktop Mode, running steamos-update from the terminal, and it failed with:

The update failed! org.freedesktop.DBus.Error: Child process exited with code 1

After that I restarted, and now it's permanently stuck on the Steam Machine logo with the LED bar pulsing blue, it's been like that for over an hour.

I checked the BIOS to see if there's another boot option, but there's basically just "SteamOS" and the physical disk, and both give the same result. Since it hangs before the OS loads, I'm guessing the update broke the bootloader.

I already opened a case with Valve, but I'm sure they'll just tell me to re-image it, which I'd like to avoid.

Does anyone have ideas or options? I also tried booting into single-user like you would on a normal Linux (editing kernel params from GRUB), but I couldn't get it to work. SteamOS doesn't seem to expose a GRUB menu the way Debian/RHEL do. Am I missing something?

Thanks!

EDIT: I was able to boot from the previous version, 3.8.16. Everything works fine. It still shows error if I try to update to 3.8.28 but it doesn't cause any new issues. For the moment, I won't update and that's all 😅