In this tutorial, we will be showing you how to install the Android container named Waydroid onto the Steam Deck.
Waydroid is an easy way of running Android on Linx operating systems such as the Steam Deck’s SteamOS. It achieves this by running Android within a container.
The advantage of Waydroid on your Steam Deck is that you can play games that were never ported from Android to Linux or Windows. Not all games will work but a fair few will.
While installing Waydroid can be painful, a GitHub user named ryanrudolfoba has done most of the heavy lifting and written an incredibly simple to use script.
One caveat to using Waydroid on your Deck is that you may be required to re-install it every time your Steam Deck is updated. This is due to certain files being overwritten during the update process.
Using a Script to Install Waydroid to the Steam Deck
Over the following steps, we will walk you through installing Waydroid to your Steam Deck. Thanks to the install script we are using, this process is relatively simple, but you will need to be happy using the terminal.
Additionally, these steps will be even easier if you have a keyboard, but it is possible to do everything using just your Deck.
Swapping to Desktop Mode
1. Before we can install the Waydroid Android container to your Steam Deck you will need to change to desktop mode.
To get to gaming mode, open the STEAM Menu by clicking “STEAM MENU” or pressing the STEAM button.
2. Now that the Steam menu is open, select the “Power” option.
3. After opening the Power menu, select the “Switch to Desktop” option.
Opening the Terminal
4. Once you have changed to the Steam Deck’s desktop mode, we can open the start menu.
We will be using this menu to open the terminal on your Deck.
5. Now that the start menu is open, hover over the “System” option (1.).
Next, you must select the “Konsole” application (2.) to open the terminal.
6. With the terminal open, we can finally install the Waydroid Android container to our Steam Deck.
Setting a Sudo Password to run the Waydroid Install Script
7. Before running the Waydroid install script, we must set a sudo password. This password allows us to perform administrative tasks within the terminal.
You can set a sudo password for your Steam Deck by using the following command. Remember that you can open the virtual keyboard on your Deck by pressing the X button.
passwd8. Type in the password you want to use to escalate to the super user. Make sure this is something that isn’t easy to guess.
New password:9. Now verify your password by typing in the password again.
Retype new password:10. Once you have successfully set a password, you should see the following message appear within the terminal.
passwd: password updated successfullyDownloading and Running the Waydroid Install Script on the Steam Deck
11. Before we can download and run the Waydroid install script on our Steam Deck, we must ensure we are in the home directory.
Changing to the home directory is as easy as using the following command.
cd ~/12. Now that you are in the correct directory, use the following command to clone the latest version of the Waydroid install script to your Steam Deck.
git clone https://github.com/ryanrudolfoba/steamos-waydroid-installer13. Once your Deck has cloned the latest version of the Android installer, you will want to change to the new directory.
You can change to this newly cloned install script by running the command below.
cd ~/steamos-waydroid-installer14. To run the Waydroid install script, we need to give it execute privileges using the following command.
If you want to learn more about this command, we have an article that explores the chmod command on Linux.
chmod +x steamos-waydroid-installer.sh15. Finally, run the Android Waydroid install script by typing in the following command.
This script will handle all the painful parts of installing and setting up Waydroid.
./steamos-waydroid-installer.sh16. You will now be prompted to enter the sudo password you set earlier. The script will need to run as an administrator to set up various components of Waydroid.
17. If everything has worked correctly you should see the text “Waydroid has been successfully installed!” appear in the terminal.
If, for some reason, the script didn’t work correctly, or you want to support the maintainer of the script, we recommend checking out the official GitHub page.
Returning to Gaming Mode
18. With the Waydroid Android container now installed on our Steam Deck, we can return to gaming mode.
The install script we used will have automatically added Waydroid as a non-steam game to our Deck’s library.
Returning to gaming mode is as simple as double-clicking the “Return to Gaming Mode” icon on the desktop.
Launching Waydroid on the Steam Deck
19. Now that you are back in gaming mode, you will want to open the library on your Steam Deck.
The easiest way to get to the library is to open the Steam menu and select the “Library” option.
20. Once in your library, change to the “NON-STEAM” tab (1.).
After changing tabs, you should see an entry labeled “Android_Waydroid“. Once you have found the entry, select it (2.).
21. You can launch the Waydroid Android container by clicking the “Play” button.
22. At this point you will now have Waydroid up and running on your Steam Deck. You can now use things like the Play Store to install compatible Android games.
If you want to find a list of already tested games to see what you can play, you can view the official Waydroid install script GitHub.
Conclusion
Hopefully, you will now have Waydroid running on your Steam Deck at this stage. This container solution makes running the Android operating system on your Deck much more straightforward.
While installing Waydroid can be a painful process, there is luckily a simple script that we can use that handles the entire process.
Please feel free to leave a comment below if you have had any issues with getting Waydroid installed on your Steam Deck. You can also file issues with the official GitHub.
If you found this tutorial to be helpful, we highly recommend checking out our many other Steam Deck tutorials.
