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feat(steamdeck): TV apps as Steam Game Mode tiles #1226

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lytedev wants to merge 2 commits from propose/steamdeck-tv-tiles into main
pull from: propose/steamdeck-tv-tiles
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lytedev commented 2026-09-25 16:46:48 -05:00
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https://claude.ai/code/session_0151nvUsqwL2BZWKs9dVxsia

See the commit message. 🤖 Generated with [Claude Code](https://claude.com/claude-code) https://claude.ai/code/session_0151nvUsqwL2BZWKs9dVxsia
feat(steamdeck): TV apps as Steam Game Mode tiles
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73f6d57503 
The living-room Deck boots into Steam Game Mode, which the family
already knows, but everything TV-shaped (Hearth, Jellyfin, streaming,
a browser) lived behind "Switch to Desktop" in niri. This puts them on
tiles in Game Mode instead, where Steam Input makes the controller
work in every app and the Steam button always leads home.

Tiles reach Steam through the Steam ROM Manager "Manual" parser, set
up once by hand in its GUI against
~/.local/share/steam-tv-tiles/manifests. Nix owns the tile list and
the launcher; SRM owns its parser settings and the shortcuts it
writes, and leaves every other shortcut alone.

Alternatives not taken:
- Writing shortcuts.vdf directly: Steam rewrites it from memory on
  exit, and the launch id behind steam://rungameid can no longer be
  computed ahead of time (ValveSoftware/steam-for-linux#9463).
- NonSteamLaunchers (Decky): an imperative SteamOS installer with a
  background rescan that would fight Nix.
- A custom launcher inside niri: rebuilds what Steam Input already
  gives for free.

Web tiles open the Zen primary profile rather than per-tile profiles
so they keep its hand-installed uBlock Origin and logins. YouTube uses
VacuumTube, the YouTube TV interface with a built-in ad blocker.

Tested so far: evaluated and built for steamdeck. A copy pointing at
the Zen the Deck already has installed was placed by hand at the same
paths, because deploying main to the Deck is a three-month nixpkgs
jump that needs a reboot, and the newer Zen from main would upgrade
the profile past what the installed Zen accepts.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_0151nvUsqwL2BZWKs9dVxsia
fix(steamdeck): start tiles from a static shell, YouTube in Zen
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cbbd071ee3 
Every tile died before its script ran. Steam launches shortcuts with
its overlay (gameoverlayrenderer.so) in LD_PRELOAD, that library needs
libGL.so.1, and the launcher's dynamically linked bash could not find
one, so ld.so exited 127. Reproduced on the Deck by setting the same
LD_PRELOAD by hand; with it empty the launcher ran.

Steam now starts a static bash, which has no ld.so to fail in, and it
clears LD_PRELOAD before starting the real launcher. The in-app Steam
overlay is lost with it; Game Mode's own menus are drawn by gamescope
and do not need it. The alternative, "LD_PRELOAD= %command%" in the
launch options, would have tied the fix to Steam's launch-option
syntax and required rerunning Steam ROM Manager.

YouTube becomes a Zen tile on youtube.com, like the other sites, in
place of VacuumTube, and the program-tile option goes with it.

Tile titles, the target path and the launch options are unchanged, so
the shortcuts Steam ROM Manager already wrote still match.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_0151nvUsqwL2BZWKs9dVxsia
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git fetch -u origin propose/steamdeck-tv-tiles:propose/steamdeck-tv-tiles
git switch propose/steamdeck-tv-tiles
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