It is news to me that people feel this strongly about steam big picture mode.
this post was submitted on 19 Jun 2025
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I actually love BPM, but the button to enter is right next to the steamvr button so I usually pull a "this little maneuver is gonna cost us a minute" whenever I misclick and it's often when I'm late for a VR social event.
On the windows xbox controller, the huge raised button in the middle turns on big picture mode. I'm not aware of any way to disable that button. It's a huge pain in the ass if you accidentally touch it and get yanked out of whatever you were doing.
You can absolutely turn that off in steam settings.
Where did they add the option? It certainly wasn't there last time I tried to figure it out, though that was admittedly a long time ago.
Seems like it is a little more convoluted than I recalled. I thought you just turned off focus steam, but if you go to controller, test inputs, and then reconfigure the inputs from there, you can just skip the guide button setup so that it doesn't do anything when pressed.
Worked like a charm! Thanks!
I love this latest feature of steam where if I press the xbox button in a game (windows store game, not even steam) instead of opening the game bar, steam pops up and goes "hey did you want to open big picture?" Like no mother fucker, I've told you 30 times now, stop it.
You could have changed your mind though. Are you sure you didn't change your mind?
I have never even heard of steam big picture mode.
It's about a decade old but it's the couch version of Steam, completely navigable with a controller. If you've ever seen a Steam Deck, that's just Big Picture Mode.
I believe Steam Deck got a completely new interface that also later replaced the old Big Picture mode. It also of course has a more complex setup, since it's not running in a desktop environment, but that's more about the overlay and running games.
Desktop mode is good.
Big Picture Mode is good.
Why it's so easy to accidentally switch between the two makes no fucking sense.
Why it's easy is because the window control buttons are slightly different on steam then on every other window on the PC, putting the big picture mode button right behind where the minimize button usually is. Why Valve did this? No fucking clue.
Steam big picture mode enjoyer here, I generally just use it on my steam deck though. I get the vr misclick thing as I never use VR but I’ve never accidentally opened it
Why would you need to use big picture mode on your steam deck when its entire gaming UI is designed for it?
I mean the gaming UI is big picture mode, essentially, that’s what I’m referring to
Ah, I did not think those two things were the same. Doesn't the Steamdeck UI have different features than big picture mode?
No, it's exactly the same.
Big picture mode can do the power control and gpu throttling and stuff? That's dope. I gotta check that out when I get home.
No, but that is also not a function of Big Picture Mode exclusively, that's a function of Gamescope, Steam, and Linux as well.
I run Linux at home lately. I guess I'm just confused now because they don't sound the same anymore. But it's not that important. Have a good day!
If you run Linux and Gamescope then yes, you can do that, although it's probably not super useful to throttle a desktop processor.
Less power is less power! I undervolted my 9070XT to use significantly less power, but only lose around 2% performance. I guess I'll have to look into Big Picture Mode, haven't used it in years. I had been waiting for SteamOS for desktop to use those kinds of features seamlessly as on the steamdeck. Awesome!
You won't be able to undervolt your GPU from Big Picture Mode. You can't do that on Steam Deck either, you can only lower the TDP of the APU.
I didn't say that I would do that from Big Picture Mode, I was saying I already do that. I have a steam deck and am familiar with its capabilities, thanks!
for REAL. all my homies hate steam big picture
edit: I mean on PC when you're not using a controller, it definitely has a use.
though tbh I don't think the UI design is that great tbh. The switches homepage is better imo
I love big picture mode for my use case - my living room PC boots it automatically for couch gaming with a controller. That being said, the button to launch it from the steam desktop client is very poorly positioned and I also understand the complaints about the Xbox button causing it to launch.
I've gotten better about not accidentally activating Big Picture mode, but I agree it's all too easy to do it carelessly!
Big picture mode is great, how easy it is to start it up accidentally isn't
I do this so much by accident in desktop mode on the Steamdeck with a Steam controller. I dunno why big picture mode is apparently bound to pressing the Steam button on the controller (not every time, just sometimes!), but why is it even bound to anything when I've just switched intentionally to desktop mode? Why would I switch away from gaming mode just to enable big picture? What's the use case that they're catering to here by making it so easy to accidentally be in this situation?
Anyhow, pretty amazing that this minor annoyance is almost the only thing to complain about with my Steamdeck experience. Best gaming console I've ever had.
Alt + Enter to exit big picture mode.
Neat, I never knew that
What is big picture mode?
Makes steam full screen and fully usable with just a controller
Thanks!
Big picture mode runs like shit on my computer, it takes like 3 minutes for it to fully open before I can even close it
Back on my potato computer days I knew it as "turn steam into a PowerPoint presentation" button
Yup. If I want to turn off my controller I have to hit what would be the Xbox button on an Xbox controller, and that also opens BPM. Really annoying.
My thing is I wish there was an easy way to get out of BPM. The few times I've accidentally switched to it, it takes me at least twice as long to find out where the button to switch back is
Edit: whenever I go to the power button on the sidebar in BPM, it never gives me an option to exit, just to turn off my PC completely.
BOO!!!!!!!!!!
Big picture mode is amazing, I have my living room PC boot straight to big picture mode.
Honestly, I just want steam to sync my settings between computers (best they can). That would be... Game changing.
I dunno how common a use case that would be. I've a laptop that makes a great job of Dwarf Fortress but gets a bit hot and choppy when doing 3D, and a gaming desktop for 'everything else'. I certainly don't want those settings synchronised. My friends with Steam Decks like the cloud saves but need to set lower settings than their 'main computers'. Strikes me as unusual to have multiple machines with roughly equal capability, unless you're an internet cafe from the 90's and have multiplayer Doom set up.
I think you misunderstood what I desire, I'm not saying to sync game settings. I merely want configurations such as "disable the advert pop-up" and "turn off Xbox controller xbox button launches big picture mode" (whatever it's called in the actual settings) to sync across my devices. Heck add a toggle and a page that let's people decide what to sync completely optionally. I'd still love it. Lol
First time I did it I thought I seriously fucked up
I've had this happen maybe 3 times in my life. Skill issue fr