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Valve is one of the few companies I have seen that cares so much for its hardware and software that it consistently releases updates that improve the quality and bugs that users report. SteamOS, the operating system that is used on the Steam Deck, has been updated accordingly as well, and it usually brings some incredible updates like color saturation/temperature changes, performance improvements, driver updates, and more. And it's possible we could be seeing a new update coming soon, thanks to a new SteamOS version appearing on one of the Deck's update channels.

The current SteamOS Stable version is 3.5.19, and for most of the lifespan of SteamOS 3.5, the SteamOS "Main" beta branch had the upcoming 3.6 update. The "Main" channel is a very early version of SteamOS, even more experimental than the "Beta" channel, so seeing the update there meant Valve is working on it for a future release. It gave us the ability to test it, too, though there are a ton of bugs that can impede usability. It isn't recommended to use this channel, but it's awesome to have the option. Recently, however, there has been a little change, and now, the "Main" channel shows version number 3.7.

To get to the "Main" channel, you need to go to your Developer Settings and enable the "Show Advanced Update Channels" option. Then, you go back to the "System Settings" and change the "OS Update Channel" to "Main.

SteamOS37

There hasn't been much documentation as to what has changed with SteamOS 3.6, though there are reports of better performance in some games, but seeing 3.7 show up could indicate that 3.6 will be pushed out into the "Beta" channel soon, inching it closer to a full stable release.

While I don't believe 3.6 will make as big of a splash as SteamOS 3.5 did, it will still be a significant update. Driver and performance updates are a given, but I have also been told by Fan the Deck that there may be some other great improvements, like Mura corrections and swapfiles changing over to ZRAM. There will likely be more than just these changes, but we don't have more information on this just yet.

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Noah Kupetsky
A lover of gaming since 4, Noah has grown up with a love and passion for the industry. From there, he started to travel a lot and develop a joy for handheld and PC gaming. When the Steam Deck released, it just all clicked.
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