by In this quick guide, we will be showing you how to add, switch or remove users on your Steam Deck.
The Steam Deck is a great user for numerous reasons, and one of those is that it comes with baked-in support for multiple users.
The ability to add or switch users is excellent when you want to share your Steam Deck with family members or friends. They can easily swap to their own personal account in a few short clicks.
Settings are saved for each user, meaning everyone can configure the Deck to their liking.
Of course, to have multiple accounts on the Steam Deck, each user must have their own Steam account. This allows achievements and cloud saves to be separated.
It is possible even to share games between users on the same Steam Deck. For this to work, you must enable family sharing and have that user added to your family.
Over the following sections, you will learn how to add, switch, and remove accounts on your Steam Deck.
Adding a New User on the Steam Deck
In this section, we will walk you through the process of adding an account to your Steam Deck. All you need handy at this point is the account you want to add.
1. We must get to the change accounts screen to add a new user to the Steam Deck.
Start by opening up the STEAM Menu by pressing the STEAM button or clicking “STEAM Menu” in the bottom-left corner.
2. Next, navigate to the “Power” screen by clicking the “Power” option.
3. Within this menu, you can select the “Change Account” option.
4. The Steam Deck will warn you about how active games will be closed when you change your account.
To proceed with adding a new account to your Steam Deck, click the “Confirm” button.
5. To begin adding a new account to your Deck, click the “Add Account” option.
6. You will now be greeted with the sign-in screen. Fill out the details for your account or use the QR code to log in to your account.
After logging in, this account will be automatically added to your Steam Deck, and you can swap to it on the fly.
Switching Users on the Steam Deck
With multiple accounts on your Steam Deck, you will want to know how to switch between them. In the following steps, we will walk you through the simple steps to switch accounts.
1. To change to a different account on your Steam Deck, you will want first to open the STEAM MENU.
Open this menu by tapping the STEAM button on your Deck.
2. After opening the Steam Menu you will want to switch to the Power menu.
This menu has more options than just things that control the power of your Steam Deck.
3. Now that you are in the Power menu, select the “Change Account” option.
4. Before you are taken to the change account screen, you will see a warning that any games that are running will be closed.
To proceed with changing to a different account on your Steam Deck, click the “Confirm” button.
5. You can now select the user you want to swap to on your Steam Deck.
Removing a User from the Steam Deck
This section will show you how to remove a user from your Steam Deck. Removing a user will delete all of their saved data from your Deck so make sure where possible they have been using cloud saves.
1. To remove a user from your Steam Deck, you must swap to the “Change Account” screen.
You can navigate to this screen by opening up the STEAM Menu. To open the STEAM Menu, press the STEAM button or click “STEAM MENU” in the bottom-left corner.
2. Your next step is to swap to the “Power” menu. This should be at the bottom of the Steam Menu.
3. At this stage, you will want to select the “Change Account” option to swap to the user-select screen.
4. Before getting to the “Change Account” screen, you must select the “Confirm” option. This message warns you that any games you are running will be closed.
5. Now that you have the Steam Deck change account screen open, you will want to select the account you want to remove.
Once you have selected an account, press the X button on your Deck to open the remove dialog.
6. Once you have selected an account for removal, you must click the “Remove Account” option.
If you have changed your mind about deleting this account from your Steam Deck, click “Cancel“.
7. Below, you can see that we only have a single account on our Steam Deck.
Conclusion
Hopefully, at this stage, you will now have a good understanding of how to add, swap, or remove accounts on your Steam Deck.
The ability to have multiple accounts on your Steam Deck is incredibly useful, especially when sharing the device with friends and family members.
Best of all, as you have seen, this functionality is built quite nicely into the operating system and can be used in just a few short clicks.
Please feel free to leave a comment below if you have any questions about using multiple accounts on your Deck.
If you found this tutorial to be helpful, we highly recommend checking out our numerous other Steam Deck guides.
