Another round of Steam Client Beta updates are here with Steam Deck and Desktop PC seeing lots of improvements and bug fixes, and it's especially nice for people using Bluetooth on Steam Deck.
Steam Deck Specific changes:
Show battery information for connected Bluetooth devices under Settings->Bluetooth and in the Quick Access menu.
Added a per-device toggle to Settings->Bluetooth that controls whether a device is allowed to wake Steam Deck from sleep.
Fixed a bug that would cause the UI to show stale data for Bluetooth devices.
Doesn't this essentially integrate similar functionality to what one of the Decky plugins had been used for? Great that it's an official feature now, in any case.
Sort of, if you mean the controller tools one. I believe when that was working it would show battery percentage. The Bluetooth plugin does not. So this is more general.
It also brings the feature of waking the deck via Bluetooth which is super convenient if you use it docked.
I'm trying not to get my hopes up, but they have been making a lot of changes targeted at the docked experience lately, and I have a theory that is because they are getting close to announcing a Steam Deck Controller.
Wake via Bluetooth isn't new, the OLED model has always supported it (the LCD doesn't due to hardware). This just lets you disable it for specific devices that you don't want to wake the Deck.
Maybe, not all controllers work with the Deck's Bluetooth wake up. The controller specifically needs to support BLE (Bluetooth low energy) because that's what the deck uses while it's asleep. I know Xbox controllers support it, but I'm not sure if dualsense does.
Looks like it does, I can use the list of Bluetooth devices in the QAM to quick connect to Bluetooth devices that don't auto connect, and the controller's battery shows up in both the QAM device list and the full Bluetooth menu.
My stadia controllers don't support BLE and can't wake the deck, but I have a Bluetooth keyboard that can. Going to Bluetooth menu in settings and selecting the keyboard gives me an option to disable wake functionality for it.
So yeah, looks like I can uninstall all 3 Bluetooth Decky plugins I use.