SCopy guide: an easy way to copy clips to your PC or phone

This SCopy guide walks you through installing and using SCopy, a small plugin I’ve made for getting your recordings, screenshots and videos off your device without any cables. It works on the Steam Deck, the Steam Frame and the Steam Machine, and you use it from a web browser on your PC, Mac or phone on the same Wi-Fi.

It’s one of my own projects and it’s in Beta, so it works, but a few things may still change. There’s nothing to install on the other device and it doesn’t need root. Below I’ll go through what it shares, how to install it on each device, and how to use it day to day.

What SCopy does

SCopy is a free, open-source app that turns your device into a small file page for your home network. On the Steam Frame it’s a tab in the SteamVR dashboard, and on the Steam Deck and Steam Machine it’s a Decky Loader plugin in the Quick Access menu. When you start sharing, it gives you an address and a PIN, and any browser on the same Wi-Fi can play, view, download or delete your files.

It shares these folders, and the page has a filter for each one:

SFRecorder recordings from ~/Videos/SFRecorder.
Steam screenshots, named by game.
Steam Game Recording background recordings and clips, turned into MP4s you can play and download.
Your Videos and Pictures folders (~/Videos and ~/Pictures), one folder level down.
Older framecorder recordings from ~/Videos/framecorder, including its clips folder.

If you used FrameCopy before, SCopy is the same tool with a new name. Installing or updating SCopy replaces FrameCopy and keeps its settings and remembered computers, so you don’t need to remove anything first.

Installing SCopy on a Steam Frame

You can do all of this from the headset, with no Desktop Mode and no PC needed. Take it one step at a time.

Turn on Developer Mode. On the Frame, open Settings, go to General and switch on Developer Mode. This unlocks the web browser and Konsole on the headset.
Open the web browser. Press the plus (+) menu on the Steam Frame’s bottom bar and open the web browser from there.
Copy the install line from the README. Go to the SCopy page on GitHub and scroll down to Install on a Steam Frame. Tap GitHub’s copy button (the copy icon) on the command block, and the whole line is copied for you. That’s much safer than typing it, as one typo will stop it working.
Open Konsole. Go back to the same plus (+) menu on the bottom bar and open Konsole, the terminal app.
Paste the line into Konsole. Select the Konsole window with the pointer view, then press Paste in the top right of Konsole. The install line appears at the prompt.
Press Enter. Open the keyboard from the option under the Konsole window and press Enter to run the line.
Wait for “Done.” You’ll see progress lines starting with ==>, such as “Installing to…”, “Setting up Python environment” and “Installing background service”. When it prints Done, open the SteamVR dashboard and you’ll find a new SCopy tab.

For reference, here’s the install line. Running the same line again later updates SCopy.

cd ~ && (git clone https://github.com/MWGIH/SCopy.git || git -C SCopy pull) && SCopy/install.sh

SCopy guide: installing on a Steam Deck or Steam Machine

On the Steam Deck and Steam Machine, SCopy is a Decky Loader plugin, so you’ll need Decky Loader installed first. If you followed my DeckyMultiFrameGen guide, you already have it. The easiest way in is straight from a URL:

Open Decky. Press the … (Quick Access) button and select the Decky plug icon.
Turn on Developer mode. Open Decky’s settings with the cog icon and switch on Developer mode.
Install from the URL. Open Developer, choose Install plugin from URL and enter this address:

https://github.com/MWGIH/SCopy/releases/download/decky-latest/SCopy.zip

SCopy then shows up in your Decky plugin list. To update it later, install from the same URL again.

If the URL doesn’t work, use the zip instead:

Download SCopy.zip. In Desktop Mode, open the browser and download SCopy.zip from the releases page, or copy it into the Downloads folder from another computer.
Install the zip. In Decky’s Developer settings, choose Install plugin from ZIP and pick SCopy.zip. Don’t unzip it first.

Using SCopy

On the Steam Frame, open the SteamVR dashboard and select the SCopy tab. On the Steam Deck or Steam Machine, press the … (Quick Access) button and open SCopy under the Decky plug icon. Then:

Press Start sharing. SCopy shows an address and a 4-digit PIN.
Open the address on your PC or phone. Type the address into any browser on the same Wi-Fi and enter the PIN. Leave Remember this computer ticked and that browser won’t ask for the PIN again, even after SCopy restarts.
Play, download, zip or delete. Click a video to play it or a picture to view it, or download it. Tick several files to download them together as one zip. You can delete files too, and it always asks first.
Press Stop sharing when you’re done. If you forget, it stops by itself after 30 minutes without use. On the Frame, sharing keeps going if you leave VR, until you stop it or it times out.

Steam’s own screenshots, recordings and clips can be deleted as well, after a warning. Steam keeps its own list of them, so it may show a deleted one as missing until it refreshes.

Forgetting remembered computers: to make one computer ask for the PIN again, press Forget this computer on the web page. To forget every PC and phone at once, press Forget PCs in SCopy itself. A computer is remembered per address, so the .local address and the IP address each ask for the PIN once.

Updating and uninstalling

On the Steam Deck and the Steam Frame, you can now update SCopy straight from the plugin: open the SCopy page and press the Check updates button at the bottom. If you’d rather update manually, that still works too. On the Steam Frame, run the install line again in Konsole, and on the Steam Deck, install from the same URL again. On the Steam Machine, update by installing from the same URL again. To remove SCopy, the Steam Frame’s SCopy tab has an Uninstall button that you press twice to confirm, and on the Steam Deck and Steam Machine you uninstall it from Decky. Uninstalling never touches your recordings.

Good to know

Home Wi-Fi only. SCopy uses plain HTTP and a PIN. That’s fine on your home network, but don’t turn it on over public Wi-Fi.
What shows up. Only videos (.mp4, .mkv, .webm, .mov) and pictures (.jpg, .png, .webp) are listed. A recording that’s still being written appears once it finishes.
Steam Game Recording. Steam saves each recording as lots of small pieces. SCopy joins them into one MP4 as you play or download it, without using extra space. A recording that’s still going appears 30 seconds after it stops.
Thumbnails need ffmpeg. Video previews need ffmpeg on the device. Without it, the page still works fine, it just shows no video previews.
If the address doesn’t open. SCopy shows two addresses. If the .local one doesn’t load, use the one with the numbers (the IP address).
Settings. To share a different recordings folder, change the port (8642 by default) or share only the recordings folder, create ~/.config/scopy/config.ini. The README has the details.

Is SCopy worth installing?

If you take a lot of screenshots or clips and you’re tired of digging through Desktop Mode or plugging in a cable to get them onto your PC, SCopy makes that a lot quicker. It isn’t flashy, it just does one job: put your files in a browser so you can grab them. It’s free, open source and in Beta, so update it now and then and report any problems on GitHub. If you have a Steam Frame, my SFrameOverlay guide covers another small tool of mine that installs the same way. That’s it for this SCopy guide, so give SCopy a try and let me know how you get on.