Steam Deck's free update finally lets me use the Spice Girls as a boot-up video

Steam Deck on a desk, showing the home screen
(Image credit: Mr.Mikla - Shutterstock)

If you've wanted to have your Steam Deck boot up with something over than the handheld's logo, a beta update that's available to install will let you do that.

By going to Settings > System > Steam Update Channel > Beta, you can install this update that also changes the resolution when connected to an external display, saving you the hassle of doing this once your Steam Deck is plugged into one.

Enabling a different animation is a simple affair, where you drop a video into 'steamui/overrides/movies/' when in Desktop mode, and once the Steam Deck starts up, it will look for a video in this folder, and play it when the Deck next boots up.

Steam Spice

Of course, with it being the 25th anniversary of the Spiceworld album, you may want to feature the intro to one of the Spice Girls' songs, such as Who Do You Think You Are. Seeing that boot up would certainly spice up your Steam Deck with every boot.

Yet you could install others such as the boot-up videos for gaming consoles from the past. From PlayStation 1 to Xbox, there's a bunch you can download from this link and place into the folder that Valve's specified, and your Deck could play a mix of these and Spice Girls videos.

It speaks a lot about how Valve is keeping an eye on the community's innovative efforts, with YouTubers bringing out unofficial ways to do this previously. With this amount of customization, it only makes us wonder what else we'll be able to do by the time 2022 ends.

Daryl Baxter
Contributor

Daryl is a freelance writer and author of two books—The Making of Tomb Raider and 50 Years of Boss Fights. A third book, the follow up to ‘Tomb Raider’, comes out in 2026. Having worked at TechRadar previously as a software writer from 2021 to 2023, Daryl understands how software can benefit users, as well as having an interest in how accessibility features can benefit others.

With over a decade of experience, his work has been featured in Tom’s Guide, SUPERJUMP, Pocket Tactics, Radio Times, The Escapist, and more.