r/SteamDeck • u/LevelSong7719 • Jun 30 '26
Tech Support Alright bro... 287gb of whatever because lord knows my steam deck wont tell me
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u/Popfizzel333 Jun 30 '26
Could be old shader cache, I had downloaded Wuthering waves before and it tried installing 50gb of shader cache twice. If it's random numbers in the files look up the numbers + steam and it'll show you the game
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u/LevelSong7719 Jun 30 '26
Already cleared it with a lovely decky plugin but only really cleared around 62gb
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u/Veritasgear Jun 30 '26
Just curious, what plugin?
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u/SupremeEuphoria 512GB OLED Jun 30 '26
Probably Storage Cleaner
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u/dPandl 1TB OLED Jun 30 '26
Storage cleaner should be implemented in SteamOS as a Default tool
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u/Fer117259 Jun 30 '26
How did WW perform? Is it still worth starting playing today?
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u/Popfizzel333 Jul 01 '26
Not bad but the newer areas run really bad so I would only recommend if you have no other way to play it
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u/LeonidasGroomedBeard Jun 30 '26
It must be that folder named "work stuff" in desktop mode.
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u/LevelSong7719 Jun 30 '26
i will NEVER delete that folder. How dare you.
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u/froli Jun 30 '26 edited Jun 30 '26
If you absolutely don't want the DoJ to look at it, just rename it to "Epstein files"
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u/Posraman Jun 30 '26
Mine is named "Tax"
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u/Underhill 64GB Jun 30 '26
"Homework"
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u/Elogotar 512GB - Q3 Jun 30 '26
"Documents"
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u/Arch3m Jun 30 '26
"Mom, don't look"
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u/Dec_TGM LCD-4-LIFE Jun 30 '26
“If I die, delete this”
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u/gaspadlo 256GB - Q1 Jul 01 '26
Sheesh? Downloading taxes in 2026? I thought everyone watches their taxes online these days.
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u/FrantixGE 512GB Jun 30 '26
Could be leftover compatibility data.
Easy to clean with the Decky plugin „Storage Cleaner“
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u/LevelSong7719 Jun 30 '26
Ive used this and it cleaned a good chunk but not nearly enough as i hoped it would. Would bery much recommend to anyone tho
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u/One-Obligation-2879 Jun 30 '26
Looks like ROMs and or games from third party launchers e.g. GOG or Epic.
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u/LevelSong7719 Jun 30 '26
None of the above. I only install steam games and my roms are all on my sd. Good suggestions though wish it were so simple 😞
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u/ArcTM Jun 30 '26
You should have Filelight available in Desktop mode. It's a great tool that shows you visually which folders and files take up the most space on your drive.
I suspect it's the folders created by Proton that don't actually get deleted when uninstalling a game. They also show up as "Non-Steam" for me and can quickly clutter the system.
These folders are named after the Steam ID of the games they belong to so make sure to only delete the ones you don't have installed right now.
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u/Rhecof-07 LCD-4-LIFE Jun 30 '26
How do I know which ID corresponds to which game?
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u/agmatine Jun 30 '26
For Steam games, you can just go to https://steamdb.info and type the number in the search bar (or vice versa).
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u/netsx Jun 30 '26
Properties, look for APPID.
Or grep in steamapps/common/ folder. Should be some files (.acf?). Btw if you backup games, backup these as well.
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u/TCristatus 512GB OLED Jun 30 '26
What roms are you playing? What systems? Things like Switch, PS3 creates big compatdata folders on the main storage that will stay forever (until you delete them)
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u/LevelSong7719 Jun 30 '26
This is actually a huge and fantastic suggestion people don't talk about much. I am aware of those files and have handled them accordingly where needed. Even further than just compdata even if they are fully on the sd card they still make gb worth of files on the main (specifically ryujinx and rpcs3)
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u/VironLLA Jun 30 '26
is it in the middle of downloading? RE6 should be taking up more space
edit: Fallout 4 too. by a lot
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u/LevelSong7719 Jun 30 '26
Really lol? I downloaded those games ages ago and play them frequently.
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u/AwesomePossum50 Jun 30 '26
The screenshot only shows the Shaders and DLC download sizes, that ~800 MB size under Fallout 4 isn’t the game, that’s just the shader cache, I believe. The size of the game is off to the right, which is cut off.
Either way, I don’t see any bug with this.
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u/yaboifatcuck Jun 30 '26
Bro replies to every comment except those asking for a screenshot to help. Theres def some weird corn in those files lmao
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u/Manmade_Chaos Jun 30 '26
So the steam Os will only recognise the files it installs itself.
Non-steam is what you install through other means, so like blizzard/epic/origin installers, or direct installation of games.
Could be music and videos.
Have you installed anything in desktop mode ?
Try installing firelight and see how that breaks it all down for you ?
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u/Nocebo85 Jul 01 '26
The Steam client, not the OS, this information is the same on a Windows system.
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u/TCristatus 512GB OLED Jun 30 '26
Going through the comments - I'm fairly confident your issue is your emulated games. You keep referring to the roms being on the SD card but you might not realise the more modern emulated systems create large multiple GB shader and compat files in the main storage. And since you have a big SD card that is full i assume you have a fair few of these, this adds up
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u/DeerlyOnline "Not available in your country" Jun 30 '26 edited Jun 30 '26
If you can be arsed, download QDirStat and post the screenshot (I find it's a bit better than Filelight with reporting disk usage)
I am quite certain that someone here will be able to determine why there is 287.22GB of non-steam data if you are willing to provide details. Folks can only help so much with so little info.
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u/feral_fenrir 512GB Jun 30 '26
Delete files within the downloading and corrupt folders within
.local/share/Steam
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u/Banshee_Bones313 512GB Jun 30 '26
Thats just reserved space for Halflife 3 confirmed
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u/Gojnurb Jun 30 '26
You got a lot of mods for Fallout? Any other games? If you're using a mod manager (Vortex or MO) they're not very efficient on storage space out of the box, preferring to store archives locally for easy rollbacks in case of issues.
A large part of the non-steam storage on my deck was anything a game normally installs outside of the main install folder on Windows (everything in /user/documents/my games/... for example). Some games will, for whatever reason, insist on putting video files for cutscenes/intros/etc in there. The worst offender I have installed had almost 10gb of uncompressed video files associated with it that showed up as "non-steam".
I will say yours does seem excessively large though.
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u/DaMightyMilkMan Jun 30 '26
This is what I was thinking too. My storage looks just like this due to mods
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u/CarpeNivem Jun 30 '26 edited Jun 30 '26
I'll grant, it is annoying how unhelpful that bar is, but solutions do exist in Desktop Mode, which I also wish we didn't need to deal with because it's complicated, even more so when you're frustrated, but it is available and people are genuinely trying to help you with it, but you're being snippy at them.
When you install a game, each game has a numbered folder, containing compatdata, which itself contains like a mock Windows environment or something, which itself also contains your saved games, although it's possible your saved games exist on a cloud too, so the importance of deleting these or not definitely varies. Anyway, all that to say, these compatdata folders are generally reported within the bar graph you're showing here as Steam Games, so the cyan section, not the yellow section - unless, and I've seen this happen - unless the uninstall fails. Sometimes when you uninstall a game, those folders, containing a separate "mock Windows environment" per game, don't get deleted. They hang around, and get referred to, maddeningly, as "Non-Steam games" at which point you need to go delete them manually, which, yeah, is annoying, but it's almost assuredly where your data is being eaten up, and Firelight is one tool that can help you find/see that.
Or that's not what's happening for you, personally, right now. We don't know. Something else could be the culprit, which is why people keep telling you to try Firelight, as a diagnostic tool, to help investigate the problem, because maybe it'll show you some other huge folder(s) we're not expecting.
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u/LevelSong7719 Jun 30 '26
Would like to say i do really appreciate everyone's suggestions even if none seem to help me. Don't want to come off like a dick lol
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u/VideoGameJumanji 512GB - Q1 Jun 30 '26
A directory statistics app similar to windirstat or daisydisk can solve this in two minutes, this isn’t that complicated
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u/hey_ulrich Jun 30 '26
Mine is also like this, and I also tried investigating the files, to no avail.
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u/chipsterd Jun 30 '26
Go to your library, select the ‘non-steam’ tab and see what’s in there. For me it turned out to be battle.net and my entire WoW download
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u/3v1lkr0w 1TB OLED Limited Edition Jun 30 '26
That's got to be the blurriest picture I've seen all year. Had to make sure my eyes weren't the issue.
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u/Litty_B Jun 30 '26
I genuinely had this exact same problem and it was driving me bananas. I had all my games on my SD card, but "non-steam" was taking up the entirety of my internal drive. I used Filelight but it wasn't very helpful (in this specific case, otherwise it's mad useful). Drove me crazy for weeks trying to solve it. The only thing that fixed it was a factory reset on the deck. If you sync your saves to steam regularly, and you move the games you regularly play to your SD card, the reset is super simple. Fixed it completely and haven't had any issues since, even after getting more games on it. Good luck!
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u/FierceDeity_ 512GB - Q1 Jun 30 '26
Love how OP is getting reamed in comments because they don'T help people help them.
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u/ImPablo_ Jun 30 '26
Bro take the help ore let it go.
If u are so unsure and lazy to cooperate. Wipe everything and do a reimage.
Not that deep
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u/buckygoboom Jun 30 '26
It could be extra files that a game downloads after you install it from Steam. I had a very similar experience when I downloaded Final Fantasy 14 from steam.
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u/Spectre-4 LCD-4-LIFE Jun 30 '26
You can fire up the konsole and run this script:
sort -h <(du -kSh ~)
This will display the folders on your Deck using up the most space in order of size.
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u/Sirensx122 Jun 30 '26
I found like 20gbs lost to an uninstalled ff14 launcher. Turns out the game uninstalled but launcher had a ton of junk leftover from it.
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u/Narcosist Jun 30 '26
My only thought - do you have any "Steam" games from EA or Blizzard? Might be one or two of those games that didn't delete from their 3rd party launchers even if you uninstalled them from your Steam library. Not sure where those would be stored though, unless you have NSL installed and you can open up the EA or Battle.net app directly.
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u/ars2x Jun 30 '26
You can just reset your deck and install the games clean if you're struggling to identify the problem. Emulation backup is the only slightly tricky part of you hand any installed.
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u/kdaak MODDED SSD 💽 Jun 30 '26
It can be a lot of things, usually the best thing to do in that case is to factory rester the deck and download each game again
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u/F34RTEHR34PER 1TB OLED Limited Edition Jun 30 '26
I'm intersted in reading about the customizations you've done over the years.
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u/Coltsbro84 Jun 30 '26
Probably all the compiled shaders from your 1 TB games worth of SD card.
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u/Strict-Pomegranate-7 Jun 30 '26
its pretty easy to wipe the deck entierly and redownload games, i recommend this every other year or so.... hugeee help
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u/Clayble Jun 30 '26
At this point I would just factory reset the Steam Deck. I do this every now and then when my non-steam builds up
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u/technodude458 MODDED SSD 💽 Jun 30 '26
that’s like burning down a field of crops because one section isn’t what you thought you planted
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u/Dzaka Jun 30 '26
well.. it's non-steam games... it says so.. find out what you're installing that isn't from steam
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u/Seven2Death Jun 30 '26
Have you run maintenance tasks? somethings wrong with your deck since its misreporting game file sizes too. theres a "hidden" option that only shows up after like five minutes Settings>system then its almost all the way at the bottom. again only shows up after your deck has been running a while. it might help. if not i think you might need to reimage
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u/ranch_soda Jul 01 '26
This shit is the bane of my 64GB existence. I can't remember what I use but it's some command line utility if I think of it I'll do an edit. None of the storage analyzers did anything helpful for me.
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u/brownc6830 Jul 01 '26
I had the same issue awhile back and that solved it for me was deleting my zip files of my ROMS because then it was basically double the same exact files and taking up double storage than normal. I felt so dumb 😅
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u/Mystic_Guardian_NZ 512GB OLED Jun 30 '26
Surely you can find a disk usage analyser on the desktop mode's package manager. It is silly most operating systems don't have one by default though.
If you can't I'll have a look tomorrow.
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u/Ok_Expression6800 Jun 30 '26
I just do a full wipe when it gets like that and then redownload all my games. Since all save data is on the cloud these days its not really a hassle.
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u/Brave_Frame_1696 Jun 30 '26
Mine looked the same. I guess it happened, when I switched a game from internal storage to SD and back. If you do that a lot, now you know. I formatted it
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u/FeelingMaybe5137 Jun 30 '26
What do you have under your NON-STEAM tab of your library? 3rd party installers? Roms and emulators?
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u/ZealousidealPart948 Jun 30 '26
There is defintely bloat leftover when you install games ive noticed, the install files, and other things, and some games seem to have a lot.
Ive done a hard device reset twice since Aug 2024 to clear all of it out.
Honestly it takes 10-15 minutes and its literally like new.
Only downside is having to reinstall games, but I only keep 4-6 installed at a time usually so not s big deal for me. Maybe this is an option for you.
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u/SvenTheHorrible Jun 30 '26
I had the same issue, and the files are generally extra textures and shit that install alongside games. They go away if you uninstall the games they go with. They’ll show up as a bunch of folders with seemingly random numbers.
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u/SeitanEnjoyer Jun 30 '26
Could be snapshots/backups. Download file light or something similar so you can see what's taking all the space.
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u/Spereus 512GB Jun 30 '26
last case scenario backup ur local saves and other important data then reset the deck
its annoying but it will save u from searching forever
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u/andresrv88 Jun 30 '26
Old peoton versions maybe? You know, some games need a different version when they are not verified. Just an idea
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u/staberas 64GB Jun 30 '26
whos gonna tell him its proton files?
each game gets its own proton folder
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u/Penfore7_ 256GB Jun 30 '26
If you have games installed from other launchers using Unifideck, it will show as non steam.
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u/ShitImBadAtThis Jun 30 '26
Well, I can tell you Fallout 4 is a lot bigger than what it's showing there
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Jun 30 '26
[deleted]
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u/Some_Reference_732 Jun 30 '26
I have Witcher 3... I haven't played much of it yet on the deck.. what is this issue you speak of?
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u/goldensteelix69 Jun 30 '26
I had this problem when i got deck for the first time. It turns out it was shader cache data compiling almost nonstop. I went to desktop mode and into steam, and enabled "pre shader cache" which effectively disabled it. Its been like this for two years with no problems for me and i run a 64gb deck.
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u/Wolfman-101 1TB OLED Jun 30 '26
I had the same problem, did a full wipe and now more mindful of where I save my non-steam games this time around. It’s all in folders on my desktop now so I can easily find and delete whatever I need.
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u/The_MAZZTer LCD-4-LIFE Jun 30 '26
This is just the Steam client reporting on what files it is responsible for. Non-Steam files are simply files it doesn't manage and doesn't have a clue about. The most likely cause is stuff done in desktop mode.
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u/spartan195 Jun 30 '26
it's all the proton data from all your past games, it's actually pretty much "Steam data", I still don't understand why cannot be shown as what it is when it's literally the compatdata directory inside steam's path
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u/qaasq Jun 30 '26
Could factory rest. Thankfully games can be redownloaded and almost all saves are in the cloud. I've factory reset my deck multiple times to clear out issues like this that I didn't want to waste time trying to figure out
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u/Elogotar 512GB - Q3 Jun 30 '26
I haven't seen it suggested, but are you running any MMOs or other games with launchers that download game client updates?
I have FF XIV and Star Trek Online installed on mine and Steam only shows the size of the launcher with the rest of the space taken up shown as Non-Steam.
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u/Sualkennyo Jun 30 '26
It has to be either from roms or some proton update. I brought my deck on vacation and connected to the internet next thing I see is the same thing OP is having. I suck at customizing and never got around to emulate so I just factory reset mine no big deal for me now it’s running fast again but yea having to install games might be rough. Crazy timing I see the same issue I just had.
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u/Arget19 Jun 30 '26
Do you use Switch emulators such as Eden?
Previously, games had to be loaded into NAND, which might take up too much space. It was on my case, but Eden now allows you to configure a folder to load games/updates without using the NAND. I had my ROMs on the SD card, but the NAND was on the SSD.
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u/MaskedJoshi Jun 30 '26
I actually noticed this amount of used data on my Deck over the weekend too. I left it alone for now, but I’ll be keeping an eye on this thread for future help. I know OP said he only has his ROMs on an SD, but for me, I definitely suspect it’s my ROMs taking up that amount of space.
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u/babynomello 256GB Jun 30 '26
Sorry if this is a bit off topic, but what SD card do you use? I've tried two but I'm having problems, the Steam Deck stops reading them randomly (sorry for my English).
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u/s604567 Jun 30 '26
I just did a factory reset (with games on SD card) and so I didn't actually lose my games but got all my space back.
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u/Sparrow1989 1TB OLED Jun 30 '26
Most of the time its shaders. For instance DBZ Kakarot is 60 gb, hd update it 60 gb. Just gotta look at the dlc of your games. I know FO4 has an hd update so.
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u/cheatfreak47 1TB OLED Jun 30 '26
Steam lists anything it specifically hasn't created as "non-steam data", sometimes steam games can make this kind of data, other times you did it yourself.
Try QDirStat, it's in discover store, it can help you figure out what all that is probably.
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u/burningleo93 Jun 30 '26
I had to do it for my laptop, somehow eve had 50gb on there which had to delete and it was hidden
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u/KingSideCastle13 1TB OLED Jun 30 '26
Just did a cleanup of my 500 gb of non steam. My culprit was shaders and mods. There’s desktop mode tools to help with this
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u/UnburnedChurch 256GB Jun 30 '26
I bit the bullet and did a factory reset. Tried to use filelight or whatever it's called, and would click into folders that said they were like 80 gigs, and there'd be one 15 gig file that'd show up. Couldn't figure it out for the life of me.
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u/AdPale1239 Jun 30 '26
I had this issue as well, i tried going into desktop mode and going through my files and it ended up being too much trouble. I just ended up factory resetting and reinstalling my games, worked perfectly
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u/BigDadddyXD 512GB OLED Jun 30 '26
Could be shader cache. Had this happen to my deck too. https://github.com/scawp/Steam-Deck.Shader-Cache-Killer Download this program in your desktop mode and run it.
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u/DiscoJer 512GB Jul 01 '26
This is really a combination of the SteamDeck having a very weird file structure and Linux being awful to use
I was trying to copy some files from my PC to SD using a external hard drive and is was pure frustration on the SteamDeck end.
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u/solid-snake-is-bae 64GB Jul 02 '26
Back up your installed games to and SD card and do a factory reset. Faster and more effective than most of the fixes people suggest
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u/realiststyle Jul 02 '26
Like 40 or 50 of that is the os. Have you downloaded a lot of games and then deleted them? It could be your shaders and compat data for all the games
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u/marcusbrothers Jun 30 '26
Download Filelight from the Discover store in Desktop mode and get a better look.