Syncing game saves between your PC and Steam Deck automatically

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This method works in game mode, and without root access

If you’re like me, and happen to procure your games from places that do not offer cloud saves, such as on the high seas, you need a way to sync your saves in between your PC and Steam Deck. And it’s better if that way is automatic and needs no action on your behalf to function.

The best solution that I have found for this is Syncthing. It’s an app that lets you seamlessly sync groups of folders across however many PCs that you have connected together. It’s available a bunch of platforms, but since I prefer Linux over corporate trash like Windows, I use the Syncthing GTK app available on Flathub.

Whatever platform you use, download the version you need and get it set up how you prefer. On Linux, to use this as a service that will automagically start the daemon to sync files to/from your Steam Deck, you’ll need to create a syncthing.service file in ~/.config/systemd/user/ and paste the following into it.

[Unit]
Description=Syncthing

[Service]
Type=simple
ExecStart=flatpak run --command=syncthing me.kozec.syncthingtk
Restart=on-failure
RestartSec=1
SuccessExitStatus=3 4

[Install]
WantedBy=default.target

Now you need your Deck to start the Syncthing daemon every time the system launches, even when it’s in game mode. To do this, enable and start the deamon as a service by pasting the following into a terminal.

systemctl --user enable syncthing
systemctl --user start syncthing

And that’s all you need to do. Keep in mind, this works best if you tell the daemon to watch the filesystem for changes to synced folders, as opposed to having it check every 30 seconds like normal. Otherwise, if you keep it on the timed setting, you’ll need to let your Deck stay turned on for a minute after saving to make sure any changes are synced.

How I use this

My use case for this is a little different than yours might be, as I do not have my PC and Deck sync directly. Instead, I have them sync to my NAS, which in turn sends the files to the other system whenever it comes online. The reason I do it this way is so that I don’t have to have both systems online at the same time.

The Uncanny Observer