Depending on the game you’re playing, you may find yourself looking at a particularly gray box where the colorful and creative art should be on your Steam Deck. While the majority of titles that come directly from the Steam Store will have this, sideloaded games and apps will not. This is where this knowledge comes into play, especially if you’re not hoping to stare at a blank bit of kit for too long. While the Steam Deck does an excellent job of playing these games, it will not automatically add art for games that are not native to the platform, so let’s find out how to add our own art to these particular games.
How To Find And Add Art To Custom Games On Steam Deck
Let’s take a game like Pokemon Infinite Fusion, for example. Normally, this is a game that you would have to play on your phone or PC, but with a few simple steps, you can have it up and running on your Steam Deck. However, whenever you go to launch it, you just see a boring gray box. Let’s change that. There are only a few steps that you’ll need to do, and accessing this page on your Steam Deck will make it easier than ever.
- Access Desktop Mode
- Go onto your Internet Browser of choice.
- Visit SteamGridDB, which houses plenty of free, custom artwork
- Search for the game you’re looking for on the top search bar
- You can find banners, icons, and art to fill in the gray boxes on your Steam Deck
- Click on the photos you would like to use, and save them (I recommend making a folder on your desktop, so you know where they all are)
- Open Steam
- Find the game you would like to Add Custom Artwork to under Recent Games
- Right-click (Left Trigger) and select Manage
- Select “Set custom artwork”
- Find the artwork you have downloaded and add it
- After that, Left-click (Right Trigger) on the game to open the full page
- Go to the black banner on top
- Right-click (Left Trigger) and select either Set Custom Background or Set Custom Logo
- Add the correct artwork where it needs to go
- Exit Steam
- Go to Gaming Mode
- Go to Library
- Press R1 to access Non-Steam Games
- See your gorgeous new artwork on your new favorite game
Related: This Steam Deck Mod Changed My (Gaming) Life
Sometimes the artwork will not show up right away, but after playing the game for a bit, or another game for that matter, it should normally pop up. If, for some reason, it doesn’t, just repeat the steps to re-add the artwork you have already downloaded, and you should set everything to pop up and look great.
You can also do this for games that are in your Steam Library if you’re looking to give them an extra boost of color or just want to see something besides the generic art that sometimes pops up with games that aren’t fully compatible with the Deck. Maybe you want your Elden Ring to look more like an old Lord of the Rings book? You can make that happen.
If you’re looking for more helpful Steam Deck tips and tricks, go to the section below to find plenty of exciting new features you may not have even known existed.
