I need to keep the display on the whole time and considering how slow my internet connection is, it is a lot. I am surprised that there is no option to download the games while in standby or sleep mode.
I know that the Deck lowers the brightness but it seems to be awfully ineffective and of course I am also worried about display burn in.
I haven’t done this myself, but I assume you can turn off the display in Desktop Mode. I assume somewhere in the “normal” Linux settings there will be the usual Turn Screen Off after … and Go To Sleep after … You could just set the screen to turn off after 5 mins, then set sleep to never and that should do it.
Clever, would this affect the game mode?
No.
Those features are part of the desktop environment, which doesn’t run at all in game mode.
In desktop mode there is an easier way for the last part - click the battery icon in the taskbar, then click “temporarily don’t sleep”. Screen brightness can also be set in the same area
No quick solution for turning the screen off though AFAIK…
Edit: rephrasing post
It’s good that people have provided workarounds, but it IS kinda nuts that this hasn’t been solved yet. It’s been an issue since day one, it’s not like it makes much sense to leave any version of the Deck with the screen on and full power consumption just so it can download scheduled patches or big games.
I plug my deck into a dock, which naturally turns the screen off as it switches to the TV.
However for the OLED deck there are two plugins (Magic Black and Reshade deck) that will let you turn the screen off while the deck is awake.
There’s a decky plugin that let’s you toggle an OLED black screen with a two button shortcut.
Highly recommend.
