After seeing some folks noticing a comment I made elsewhere in this instance, I thought a full post would be best. For those who don’t know, the Steam Deck has a feature called Nested Desktop, which allows fast access to Desktop mode without needing to leave Game Mode or reboot into and out of modes.
To use this, go into desktop mode, open the menu and use the search function to look for “Nested Desktop”. Now right click and add that to Steam. When you boot into Game mode, you’ll see a new item added called Nested Desktop, which you can open to access desktop mode while still in game mode.
I found out about this almost a week ago and so far I use it most for referencing my digital game guides or searching NMS portal codes while still gaming. It’s pretty seamless and really opens up some nice options, like modding a game and being able to boot it faster while having Game mode controls available.
It’s fairly common to share the same home dir throughout multiple desktop environments, which is essentially what nested desktop is – just a way to launch a Plasma desktop inside an existing desktop. This isn’t like a flatpak or another isolation mechanism.