HippOS ships Steam as a first-class system in EmulationStation. Your installed Steam games appear alongside your emulator library, launch from a controller, and return you to EmulationStation when you quit. No desktop session, no mode-switching.

How it works

On each boot, HippOS reads your Steam manifests and generates a launcher entry for every installed game. Each entry is a small file in /userdata/roms/steam/ that holds the Steam app ID. When you select a game from EmulationStation, HippOS launches Steam with that app ID directly — Steam opens in gamepad UI mode and starts the game.

When you quit Steam, HippOS re-runs the sync so any games you installed during that session appear in your library immediately on the next visit to the Steam system.

Big Picture and Deck mode

Selecting the Steam entry in EmulationStation without a specific game launches Steam in Big Picture mode. If you have a Steam Deck or prefer the Deck UI, you can enable Deck mode in HippOS settings — this switches Steam to its full gamepad interface.

Overlays

MangoHud and vkBasalt work with Steam games. Toggle them in HippOS settings and they apply to every Steam launch without touching any per-game configuration.

Your Steam data lives in /userdata

Steam installs games to /userdata/.steam/ by default. That directory is on the @userdata subvolume, so your Steam library survives OS updates exactly like your ROMs and saves do.