Got a load of Other Data on your Steam Deck and you don't know what it is or how to get rid of it? We have a great guide here for you to remove those unwanted files directly in game mode.
I've only got one game installed on the C drive here but I'm missing a huge 84 gigs worth of data now some of this will be third-party installers and games if you've installed them locally via desktop mode. But if you haven't been using third-party installers the chances are most of this will be Shader cache and left over installation files from uninstalling games.
You can quite easily reclaim a whole bunch of this and with little effort I quickly managed to reclaim over 20 gig so let's walk you through it.
First thing you're going to need to do is to switch over into desktop mode, go to the power menu and select switch to desktop.
Now open your favorite browser if, you don't have one installed then obviously you'll need to install edge or Chrome from the Discover store.
Now search for Shader cache killer s-c-a-w-p or click here: https://github.com/scawp/Steam-Deck.Shader-Cache-Killer
Scroll down through there and look for the section that says install via curl and then you want to copy everything from curl nothing before or after that bash section
curl -sSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/scawp/Steam-Deck.Shader-Cache-Killer/main/curl_install.sh | bash
Copy that to your clipboard and open up utilities and Konsole
In Konsole just right click and say paste and hit enter
Accept the prompts here because these are just some warnings because you're running external code and then you will be prompted for your Sudo password
If you haven't come across the Sudo password before you will need to set one in desktop mode for your user by going to start system settings and then users under personalization select change password if you've never set one then you'll be able to just change this password and set one and that'll be your Sudo password from now on it's not used for logins or anything it's only used for when you're installing things like this.
If you have forgotten what you set your Sudo to previously then check out our oh no what's my Sudo video which will help you to reset that without resetting your Steam Deck
Once you've entered your Sudo password just hit enter and that will finish installing.
That's all you need to do in the desktop mode you can leave here now or you can run the Shader cache killer from desktop mode but it does work from game mode.
This will appear in the non-steam section of your library so just head over to there and you'll see a new app called Zd shadercashkiller.sh run that and hit play Now.
By default you will not be able to navigate this it doesn't have controller configuration out of the box so what you will need to do is either use the Steam and the touchpad shortcut or to make life a lot easier just open up the Steam menu or controller settings for this and change your controller configuration for this app to Mouse only, this will make navigating a lot easier.
You'll be looking for the ones in the name that have either non-steam or missing, if they're unknown these could be third-party apps that you've installed so be careful although removing the Shader cache for these isn't a huge risk as it will just recompile them as they're needed.
If you do remove the Shader cache for games that you do actually need again they will just compile the next time you run so just be aware of that once you've selected the ones that you want to get rid of you can hit the delete selected down the bottom this will run through and delete all of the Shader cache and will take a little while and then it will quit out of the application, so don't be alarmed this is how it runs because it forces you to restart the app and update that Shader cache.
Shader Cache Killer does not only just kill Shader cache it does have the compact data option which is the storage files for where games are installed and if you hit the compact data button down at the bottom right, beware it does take around a minute or two and it'll look like it's stuck on the screen but it is actually compiling all the data it needs and you'll come back to a screen very similar to the Shader cache screen as before, but this time it's looking at the game files itself.
Again you want to be looking at either the unknown or the missing ones, so for games that you may have uninstalled there may be some files left over, however this seems to have been fixed in the latest updates so may be less relevant unless you have had your Steam Deck more than a few months.
Beware that if you have some of these games on external drives then these compact data files are probably required and may stop them working as well as the unknown ones, it may be some of the third-party apps that you've installed, so just beware and double-check those in the Steam apps folder if you're not sure what they are before you delete them as it may well stop them working.
Same process as before just select the ones that you definitely want rid of and then hit the delete selected button, this will kill off the compact data and as before this will close the app as well.
There you have it, you can now reclaim some of that unknown storage and let us know how much you reclaimed.