Non-Steam games don't launch in foreground when there's another game running

steamclosed Need RetestDistro Family: SteamOSnon-Steam application

ValveSoftware/steam-for-linux#11078 · opened 2024-07-08 by AkazaRenn · updated 2025-05-27 · 3 comments · github

AAkazaRenn 2024-07-08 github

To reproduce:

Start a game (I used Hollow Knight)
From overlay, get back to Steam home screen
Start a non-Steam game (Firefox for example)
Observe that we are jumping back to Hollow Knight

This is incorrect behavior, we are supposed to enter Firefox once it's launched.

The environment I tested on was Steam Deck OLED 512 GB, running SteamOS 3.6.8 in Game Mode.

RRodoMa92 2024-07-19 github

Can confirm, this is quite easy to reproduce. Additionally, it seems that Steam has issues of detecting which application is in foreground if you open more non Steam applications, and if you are using different perfomance profiles per application you can find yourself the Deck playing games with a 4 W profile dedicated to the browser and force you to reselect the launched application in the SteamUI. Quite annoying.

Wwynn1212 2025-04-27 github

Can confirm this behaviour has been fixed on latest steam deck client stable channel.

AAkazaRenn 2025-05-27 github

Fixed on my side

Nothing extracted yet.