Steam Deck Finally Gets Audio Drivers for Windows

The gaming company Valve is still improving Windows support on the new Steam Deck. For the first time, real audio drivers are now available in an update to run Windows on the handheld and use the speakers. Last month, Valve released a major update to SteamOS to bring official Windows 11 support for the Steam Deck. Before that, support for Windows 10 was already available.

But one thing was missing for users who wanted to run Windows on Valve’s handheld console: the audio drivers. Valve had already explained this in March when the Windows driver packages were finally released and promised to remedy the situation. It took a few weeks, but now an update is available again.

The release of official audio drivers for the Steam Deck means those who tinker with Windows on their consoles can now take full advantage of the built-in speakers and audio jack. Previously, the only audio output on the Steam Deck with Windows was via Bluetooth.

Still without dual boot

While the Steam Deck now basically provides all the necessary drivers to run Windows 11 and 10, the SteamOS replacement is not user-friendly and not well thought out in any way. The Steam Deck doesn’t officially support dual-boot, so you’ll need to erase the console’s disk before installing Windows. Valve is working on that and promises to fix it in the future with the release of SteamOS 3.

New downloads available

Not every Steam Deck user is interested in swapping SteamOS for Windows, so Valve is obviously more interested in improving SteamOS than the alternative. The current Windows drivers for the Steam Deck are available from the official steam support site ready to download.