While the Steam Deck has become my primary gaming device, the dock not working has become my least favorite game to play. Fortunately, it’s only one of a small handful of issues I run into regularly with the Steam Deck. The official Steam Deck Docking Station not working is exceptionally frustrating because you usually run into the issue right when you’re about to tuck into a game.
My wife and I both enjoy our Steam Decks in handheld mode most of the time. Occasionally, usually when I’m doing something mindless like running Nightmare Dungeons on Diablo VI, I like to hook up to the television. For the most part, the process is pretty painless. Set the Steam Deck on the docking station, connect up the wire, switch the source on the TV.
From time to time, this simple process goes horribly awry. I’ve had it complain about the charger being slow in the past. Other times, it just won’t connect to the television until I disconnect and reconnect it. Recently, unplugging and plugging it back in, as well as doing a standard reboot would not fix the issue. In fact, I’m pretty sure the process made things worse, as went from trying to connect to not at all.
Steps to Get Your Steam Deck Dock Working Again
To get things working again, there was a bit of a dance. Pretty sure this ends up resetting some bit in memory on either the Steam Deck, or the official Steam Deck Docking Station that’s keeping things from working.
- Plug your Steam Deck into your Official Steam Deck Docking Station
- Make sure your Steam Deck and Dock are both up to date
- Reboot your Steam Deck into Desktop Mode
- Shut down the Steam Deck completely from Desktop Mode
- Patiently wait a minute or two, with the Steam Deck still docked
- Start up your Steam Deck, still docked
- As it’s booting up, your TV may briefly flash a mouse cursor on the screen
- Wait patiently
- Seriously, this gets quite suspenseful
- Finally, SteamOS should show up on your TV
At this point, your Steam Deck should be ready to play your favorite games on the big screen. Unsure if these steps will work with the unofficial Steam Deck docking stations that are on the market. Perhaps those don’t even run into issues of this nature.
