[STEAM][DECK]Getting the most out of your Steam Controller: Grip Sense

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The threshold for activation is adjustable. You can make it so a very slight lift of the fingers will deactivate gyro; or you can make it so you almost need take your whole hand off the controller (like in the animation above). We outline more on how to do that later in this article.

While the original intent was for ratcheting (and it does work for that!) we have found a few other cool use cases, like using it to bring up a weapon wheel, map, or menu. You can lift your fingers off the controller, the weapon wheel will pop up, then you can make your selection and put your fingers back to lock it in. We'll show you how to do that too. 

How to assign Grip Sense to Gyro activation

Navigate to the layout editor for a game in the Steam App or in Big Picture Mode (we outline this in our blog post on the S

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). Once there, ensure Gyro is set to "Gyro to Mouse", then click on the Gyro Behavior settings gear

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How to use Grip Sense for weapon wheel/map/menu

In order to use Grip Sense like you would a "press and hold" button to bring up things like weapon wheels, menus, maps, etc, you need to access it a little bit differently.

Within the game of your choice, navigate to the Layout Editor (read more in our "

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" blog post). Once inside the layout editor, in the Buttons section, navigate down to the grip buttons.

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Adjusting the sensitivity

On the Grip Sensor Calibration page, you will see two sliders:

1. Grip Sensor Range - The further the slider is to the left, the closer your fingers need to be to the controller grips for them to be sensed. If you want slight lifts of the fingers to turn off the sensor, move it to the left. If you want to move your fingers substantially before deactivating the sensor, move it to the right. 

2. Flicker Guard Size (aka Hysteresis) - This makes the states (on vs off) a bit more sticky around your sensor range. The further this slider is to the right, the more sticky the sensor state is. Meaning, if the sensors are on and the slider is far to the right, you need to move your fingers further to turn them off. If you're looking for very snappy quick response, keep this low. If you're looking for very stable performance with no accidental activations, put it higher. 

As you adjust, the UI will provide real time feedback when the sensor is "on" (blue line on grips) vs "off"

Note: if you move the Grip Responsiveness slider all the way to the left, you may have issues with the grip sense flickering or responding to touch events on the trackpads or thumbstick. Moving it slightly to the right can help resolve this issue.

Learn more about Steam Controller on its

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, and keep an eye on the

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for other how-to guides and closer looks.

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