Update** I had plex, brave browser and Alan Wake all opened at the same time in game mode. I changed the controller profile to web browser for brave and plex. Now the mouse moves, but scrolling doesn’t, and I can’t right or left click on anything. It’s like the two apps are frozen. As soon as I close the game and go back into these two apps, they work as intended. I am running native steamos on my desktop pc as well. I’ll try this same test on that tomorrow to see if I observe the same behavior on that as well as the steamdeck. If the same issue happens, i think it is software related. If it does not, it would be a steamdeck hardware (probably controller and therefore potentially controller software) limitation. My gut tells me I will have the same issue but perhaps not as I will be using an Xbox controller and a small keyboard / mouse combo. This still does not explain why keyboard / mouse profile won’t work at all but as soon as you close the game it works fine. Side note, I cannot wait until the new steam controller comes out.
Update** so I tried this out on my pc, it obviously works fine in desktop mode but not in gamemode. So the limitation seems to be here in gamemode. It now seems this feature request is changing from a controller profile request to if valve is able and or willing to look into this. As a pure guess, I’d say a resource limitation. It is interesting that a song playing in plex will continue, and I can move the mouse but that is it. I still can’t click on anything in the plex app while a game is also running. Everything seems frozen.
I experience similar issue in gamescope on Steam Deck. It seems to me that what happens is that visually the switch to the new/second app (lets call it B) is happening but the input is still focusing the old/first app (lets call it A). I can hear the UI sound effects of the A triggered by the controls while B is passively shown.
Another thing that I noticed is that if I go back to A and alter between borderless/fullscreen and/or change the resulotion it may fix the problem and subsequent switches to B may start working properly.
Btw I think that the input profiles are switching to the B profile (with the visual switch) and only the input focus is remaining on A.
It is more likely to happen with desktop apps and non-steam games.
Hey, I experienced the same when trying to use Discord during another game (songs of conquest).
Using discord alone I can use the mouse and keyboard layout fine.
But either starting discord while play soc, or even starting discord first and then soc, I can't use anything when I switch to the discord window. The game works fine though. (Should mention that I have it in gamepad controls.)
Layouts are still correct ones when checking, but they just don't seem to switch properly.
I'm surprised something like this is apparent at such a time, can it be it's a new behaviour?
Just chipping in on this, the issue is not exclusive to SteamOS but seems to explicitly be how steam handles multiple application switching in gamemode.
Desktop mode works as intended since app switching is handled by the desktop environment.
I'm getting the exact same symptoms on Bazzite using gamemode, anything non-steam seems to correctly switch over visually and in terms of input mapping but you can still see any cursor styling from the first game or application and inputs are passed to the first application.
Confirmed using new steam controller, a Bluetooth mouse + keyboard and a PS5 controller.
Bazzite 43 - F43.20260420
Kernel - 6.17.7-ba29.fc43.x86_64
Steam Version - 1784669098
I have tried the same. I have also concluded this issue is not "SteamOS" but something in game mode compositor. I assume this isn't an oversight and is probably by design for performance sake (Steamdeck in particular). I could be wrong as I do not know how the steam input architecture is designed. I know Valve does everything possible to cut down on fat/bloat that isn't needed but a dynamic approach would be nice in this case, to be able to run other apps in the background, which auto switching controller profiles and depending on how heavy it is, that will impact gaming performance accordingly.
Desktop mode, as you have said, does work as expected.
Nothing extracted yet.
I have plex added in steamos on steamdeck as a non-steam game that I have a keyboard / mouse controller profile set for. While keeping plex open, If I then open a game which uses the standard Xbox controller layout, if I switch to plex to change a song or something, the keyboard / mouse profile for plex doesn’t work. It’s almost like the game controller profile is dominant and steam wont auto switch profiles on the fly between multiple open apps/games. I am not sure if this is a bug or if this is a feature request. I know I might be in the minority here that would love to have this versatility, I just thought it would be a really cool thing to have especially with the steam machine coming out soon. Sure would make grind areas in certain games a little more manageable. It would also be cool to use this with a web browser and gaming for example. We could use a keyboard / mouse profile while in the browser app for game guides or something, and quickly switch back to our game.