As you can imagine, there’s no guarantee that anything outside Steam Deck games list will run smoothly, but it’s possible nonetheless. Well, no wonder, as the device is technically a portable PC: which means that it’s possible to install third-party software on it, including video games. The device has specs that allow for playing titles you’d normally see on PC, what is quite impressive. Firstly, the arrangement of analog sticks is a bit different and the essential buttons are located in the upper part of the console, which are followed by a touchpad on each sides. Besides, the full application ID is not even visible in the dialog, and there is no way to easily grab it from there.Let’s start with the basics: if you’ve seen Gaben’s newest gadget, it looks very similar to Switch, there are some notable differences though. There is the application ID, but it would be insufficient to paste it in the Stream Deck configuration UI to start the app - it will do nothing. Right-clicking on the shortcut gives a clue for what I need to look for to do an application launch: But is there an alternative, that does not require me to deal with shortcuts? Right-clicking on the icon and creating a shortcut (it will default to Desktop) will easily allow me to point Stream Deck software to it and launch the application. What if we try a bit of a hack with shell:AppsFolder? I can’t even point the tool to a shortcut that launches a Windows Store application. Unlike your typical executable, Windows Store applications do not have an EXE file you can point Stream Deck to, and it won’t run shell commands out-of-the-box. This is a bit of a problem, because I use several apps in that category - Spotify, Trello, and Slack, to name a few. Apparently it can do everything but launch Windows Store applications. Literally with a click of a button I can kick off a bunch of automation.

I just recently got a Stream Deck - it’s a wonderful tool to automate some of the more boring (read: routine) tasks.

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