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tech

Community plugin puts the Xbox Series dashboard on Steam Deck

A new plugin called Decky Xbox Dashboard swaps Steam Deck's Home screen for an Xbox Series-style interface, built by a community developer named kromossomom.

By Hattie Heatsink, Hardware & Chips Editor ·

Edited by Dot Matrix, Editor-in-Chief

A handheld console with a tile-based home screen sits on a wooden desk beside a boxed zip file icon.
A handheld gaming device running a console-style home screen. Illustration generated by AI. Illustration generated by AI.

The physical hardware is untouched, but the screen you see on a Steam Deck can now look very different. A plugin called Decky Xbox Dashboard, made by a community developer who goes by kromossomom, replaces Steam’s Home interface with an Xbox Series-style dashboard. 1

Navigation follows the console pattern. LB and RB flip between tabs: My games & apps, Store, Community and System. 1 Hover over a game and press Y, and you get that game’s page, which shows compatibility, achievements and more. 1

The code lives on GitHub. 1 The author notes that Claude AI helped with development. 1

Installing takes a handful of steps. You need Decky Loader on your Deck first, then you download the zip from the plugin’s GitHub repository. 1 In Quick Access, go to Decky, then Settings, then General, and make sure Developer Mode is on. 1 Under the developer settings, choose Install plugin from ZIP and pick the file you downloaded. 1

Think of it like swapping the faceplate on a stereo: the guts stay the same, but every button feels different under your thumb. That is the one comparison I will allow myself.

The interface is where the Steam Deck has had the edge. Windows Central’s writer argues the Deck handles user experience better than Windows handhelds, and Windows 11 still needs work on that front. 1 He says he would love this on his Xbox Ally X for the simplicity of a console in his hands, but the plugin targets the Steam Deck. 1

Our read: This is a hobbyist project and it is aimed squarely at one device, so expect rough edges and no official support. Still, it shows how much people want a console-simple front end on a handheld. If Windows handhelds ever get a first-party equivalent, this is the bar it has to clear.

On the bench: if you own a Steam Deck and miss Xbox-style navigation, this is a free, zip-file experiment you can try in a few minutes, provided you are comfortable switching on Developer Mode.

Footnotes

  1. Windows Central, “Steam Deck gets an Xbox Series X|S dashboard UI with this community-made plugin”. Retrieved October 31, 2026. ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6 ↩7 ↩8 ↩9 ↩10

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