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Knowing how much I love vibrant and beautiful popping colors, this Steam Deck plugin flew right under my radar. Around 11 days ago, ShadowApex released vibrantCrankshaft, a plugin to be used with Crankshaft to allow you to increase the saturation of your screen on the Steam Deck.

This is based on the original plugin called vibrantDeck which was made for a different plugin manager called Decky Loader. But seeing as how I have been using Crankshaft since SDHQ released our own plugin for it (and it is glorious), it has been our way to go. For all the non-believers though, here is a small example of what this can do:

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Yes, this is Tunic and the screenshots were taken seconds apart with a single change to 1 setting. From my testing, this also has almost 0 impact on performance or stability for the game too. And yes, this works for ALL GAMES. So, what are we waiting for? Let's get to it!

Note: We are showing this in Game Mode only. This may work in Desktop mode, though we have not tested it yet.

Installing Crankshaft

Luckily, we have actually already created a guide about it and some recommended plugins to get. Check out our guide to installing Crankshaft first, and then when done, let's get back to getting the new plugin.

Getting vibrantCrankshaft

Now that Crankshaft is installed, now we have to get the vibrancy changing wonder plugin.

First, tap your "Steam" button and scroll down to "Plugins" which should have the Crankshaft logo next to it. Once that is clicked, go to "Get Plugins" and scroll all the way down. There you will see "vibrantCrankshaft". Go ahead and click "Install" and once done, keep pressing B to go back.

vibrantCrankshaft Steam Deck plugin

That's it! It is now installed and ready to be used.

Using vibrantCrankshaft

To use and access this, all you have to do is go to your quick access menu and scroll down to the bottom cog wheel. Once selected, you will see this menu:

VibrantCrankshaftOptions

There are only 2 options here. The top one is setting a per-game profile, which will automatically log the specific Saturation setting you set it to for a game. The bottom slider is...well setting the saturation. That's really it!

I have found that Saturation of 160-200 tends to be the best. It brightens up the colors, but doesn't oversaturate it to where it hurts your eyes. All the screenshots are taken at a saturation level of 180.

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Gorgeous...isn't it? Not only that, but this also works over the SteamUI too!

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And that is it guys! Just a small plugin that can dramatically enhance the colors on your Steam Deck's screen. For something so small, I feel it makes a crazy amount of difference! What do you guys think? Let us know below!

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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