Valve has updated gamers on the progress of dual-boot support for the Steam Deck. Although the feature allowing for Windows and SteamOS to run simultaneously has been highly anticipated, its development was delayed due to the entire SteamOS team focusing on the release of the Steam Deck OLED version. Lawrence Yang, a Steam Deck designer, explained that achieving dual-boot support remains a priority and they plan to make headway on improving SteamOS within the next year. Currently, Steam Deck users can only dual-boot Windows and a standard Linux distribution, not SteamOS itself. Valve has signaled that dual-boot capabilities will become available with the complete version of SteamOS 3.

While SteamOS has received praise, its restrictions have posed limits for users wanting to access other game launchers or cloud services, which are not natively supported. Users can follow tutorials to install third-party apps, but the process can be cumbersome. In the meantime, Steam Deck owners who wish to use Windows exclusively can remove SteamOS, though they would need to reformat the drive to reinstall SteamOS later.