By I’ve never been a huge fan of the old ways of getting Nexus Mods running on Steam Deck, but there’s now a much simpler route if you’ve already got Decky Loader installed: a plugin called Decky Nexus. It’s not on the Decky store yet, so here’s exactly how I set it up, plus what to expect once it’s running in game mode. It also works on the Steam Machine and other SteamOS devices, and you will need a Nexus Mods Premium account to use it.
Setting Up Decky Nexus
First I switched into desktop mode from the power menu and opened a browser to search for Decky Nexus, which has a full install guide on its page. From desktop mode, I opened the Konsole app from the start menu, then used the Steam and mouse shortcut to right-click and paste the install command, brought up the on-screen keyboard with Steam + X, and hit R2 for enter. You’ll need your sudo password for this step, so if you’ve never set one, sort that out first.
Running that command installs the Decky Nexus plugin and then asks you to log into Nexus Mods. In your Nexus Mods account, click your profile icon, go to Site Preferences, then API Keys, and scroll right to the bottom for the personal API key. Requesting it grants it instantly and copies it straight to your clipboard. Typing didn’t paste it in automatically in console mode for me, so I used the same right-click paste trick, brought the keyboard back up, and hit R2 for enter again to lock it in.
Once that’s done, you’re finished in desktop mode. Head back to the power menu, switch to game mode, and restart.
Installing Mods in Game Mode
Back in game mode, opening the Decky plugin menu now shows Nexus Mods in the right-hand panel. Click on it and you’ll get a generic menu unless you’re playing one of the currently supported games, of which there are around a dozen right now. On a supported game, it loads automatically and walks you through any prerequisites.
For Stardew Valley, for example, there’s just one prerequisite to install before you can open the mod browser and get going. If anything goes wrong, scrolling to the bottom of the mods menu gives you a reset option that uninstalls everything and puts the game back to a clean, vanilla state.
Cyberpunk 2077 Needs a Bit More Setup
Cyberpunk 2077 is a bigger job: it needs five separate mods or extensions installed before you can use mods properly, though Decky Nexus handles all of it automatically, including setting the right launch options. Cyberpunk also supports collections, Nexus Mods’ curated bundles that install a whole set of mods in one go for a more rounded experience out of the box.
One extra step for Cyberpunk is binding a key to open the tweaks menu, which means bringing up the on-screen keyboard to set it yourself. I made the mistake of binding mine to Shift+M, which also happened to minimize the game, so pick something a bit more out of the way if you’re doing this.
Once everything was installed, the game itself ran smoothly. The one snag was that after installing a collection, my controller and keyboard binds disappeared from the UI entirely, even though they still worked in practice, which was a bit of a pain until I remembered what they were. Worth keeping in mind that any mods you install can affect performance or introduce unintended gameplay effects, so go in with your eyes open. That aside, this is a genuinely much quicker and easier way to mod on Steam Deck than what we had before.