First time posting on Steam, not sure if this should go under General Discussion or Bug Report. If this has already been posted somewhere, I for the life of me could not find it over the course of multiple days.

A few days ago I came across an issue I was having with my Steam Deck, where no matter what controller layout I select it would stick to the default configuration. I scoured the internet, tried everything I could, ultimately re-imaging Steam OS with no success. I even contacted Valve support, who had no solution for me.

So I am posting this because I found a fix. Or at least one that worked for me. Your mileage may vary, but if you're also having problems applying controller layouts, give this a shot.


-Press the "Steam" button and scroll down to "Settings".
-Scroll down to the very bottom to "Developer"
-Scroll down to the bottom again, under the "Steam Input" section.
-Enable both "Steam Input Layout Dev Mode" and "Steam Input API Config Author Mode".

That's all! You should be able to apply controller layouts now.

I am uncertain whether or not it was only one or both options that fixed the problem, as I was at a point of just flipping swotches to see if anything happened. And I frankly don't want to, for fear of messing something up.

I hope this helps spare somebody from the frustration I and seemingly many others went through.