Decky Loader Custom Installation Path

Decky Loader is a homebrew plugin launcher for the Steam Deck that users install and manage third-party plugins beyond SteamOS functionality. The setup doesn’t offer a custom install path, so everything ends up in /home/deck/homebrew.

I need this app and all its binaries in a specific folder—not just to keep things clean, but for convenience later on. After spending some time looking at the code, I figured out how to make it work and started my second experiment with a factory reset. (Note: The first experiment is mentioned later in this post.)

Setting up

I want to mirror the Windows directory structure, where programs are stored in Program Files and software in their respective folders. To do this, I switched to Desktop Mode, then create an Applications folder in /home/deck and a subfolder within it called Decky.

Next, I downloaded decky_installer.desktop from Decky.xyz into Decky. I then opened the installer with KWrite to retrieve the GitHub URL for user_install_script.sh.

Editing the files

This is the part I reassigned the paths.

File: decky_installer.desktop
Line 04: Exec=sh -c ‘bash home/deck/Applications/Decky/user_install_script.sh’

File: user_install_script.sh
Line 67: HOMEBREW_FOLDER=”${USER_DIR}/Applications/Decky“
Line 70: if [[ -f “${USER_DIR}/Applications/Decky/services/PluginLoader” ]] ; then

That’s it. I saved both files and proceeded with installing Decky Loader as usual.

Installing Decky Loader

Decky now has plugins, services, and settings folders, which points to a successful install—but is it running?

In my first experiment, I accidentally broke Decky Loader by renaming the homebrew folder to Homebrew. While downloading a plugin in Gaming Mode, the progress bar froze before reaching 100%. In Desktop Mode, a separate homebrew folder appeared next to the capitalised one, and it couldn’t be deleted. I wasn’t aware that case sensitivity matters in Linux.

The issues didn’t occur in this second experiment.

This wasn’t just a tweak

The pro is that pointing the new path to the right folder lets Decky Loader run from the SD card. If the device gets factory reset again, everything works off the bat by simply running the modded installer.

But prolonged heat from the device could wear down my SD card. Also, apps are traditionally stored internally, not externally—so having only Decky Loader in the SD card feels pointless, and a pursuit of convenience that ends in a fatal trade-off isn’t worth it.

To conclude, I went with the original setup. If I need a fresh slate, I’ll back up the Applications folder to the SD card, run Factory Reset (which I did again for confirmation), restore the backup into the internal drive, and run the modded decky_installer.desktop. To know it’s working, I’ll reboot the device and see if my favourite Love, Death & Robots boot animation appears—and it did.