A minimal TTY "Steam Machine" launcher that runs Steam Big Picture inside gamescope on a chosen monitor, with configurable internal resolution (including 4:3 / 16:10 stretch) and saved per-user settings.
I’m actively looking for testers, especially on hardware different from mine.
Use Discussions for hardware-specific quirks, tuning, and “is this a bug or my setup?” debugging.
Start here: Welcome to "smtty" Discussions
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Steam cannot be running in any other session or smtty will fail.
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Make sure “Enable GPU accelerated rendering in web views” is enabled in Steam, or Steam notifications can cover the entire screen with a black image when running under gamescope.
- This issue only shows up when running a stretched/custom aspect session (4:3, 16:10, etc.), not native 1:1 inner=outer sessions.
- On my setup, the game only consistently re-grabs raw mouse input if the mouse is moving while I close the Steam Big Picture overlay.
- If I close the overlay with the mouse perfectly still, the game often fails to re-grab the cursor and the camera/aim can feel stuck or pinned to an edge.
- Current workaround: jiggle the mouse while opening and closing the Steam Big Picture overlay so the game can re-grab the cursor.
I made an issue on this ValveSoftware/gamescope#2042
- When running gamescope, clipboard integration with the desktop session is one-way: you can copy from the gamescope session to the desktop, but you cannot copy from the desktop into the gamescope session (no desktop → gamescope paste).
- For Steam messaging, use a browser on your normal desktop session and open:
https://steamcommunity.com/chat - For convenience, you can create a dedicated Steam Chat launcher. Example
.desktopfile (Firefox profile) in my awtarchy repo:
firefox-steam-chat.desktop
Watch the demonstration video: (already outdated...lol)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8dZZAY5GDE