Playing, and HOME over a game

A on a game plays it, and one game runs at a time. Over a running game, HOME on your controller opens the dock, and holding HOME goes back to Universe.

Launching

The game’s poster stays up until its window shows. B lets the game load behind Universe instead. A game whose runner isn’t installed yet offers Install and play, and a launch that fails says why. Playing a second game asks to quit the first.

The dock

The buttons, left to right:

• Resume closes the dock.
• Home brings Universe up, the game behind it.
• Quit closes the game after asking. Unsaved progress is lost.
• Game, drawn with the game’s art, opens the game’s details, journal, recordings or sessions.
• Screenshot takes a screenshot.
• Controllers lists your controllers.
• Achievements, when the game has some.
• Performance holds MangoHud, the frame rate limit and scaling, and Pause on HOME.
• Sound holds Volume, where A mutes, and Output, the sound device.
• System, on a machine Universe can tune such as a Steam Deck, holds the Performance rows for this game.

Left and Right walk the row, and Up and Down move through an open card. B closes the card, then the dock. Down from the row shows the game’s screenshots, this session’s first.

HOME

• Over the game, HOME opens the dock. With Universe on screen, it goes back to the game.
• Held over the game, it goes straight to Universe’s Home, where A on the game’s tile returns to it.
• With no game running, it opens the focused game’s game menu.
• With another app in front, it brings Universe to the front.

A keyboard has no HOME key, so the dock needs a controller.

Pause on HOME

Pause on HOME, on by default, freezes the game while the dock or Universe covers it. Turn it off for a game that must keep running, such as online play: the game then reads every button you press in the dock.

The dock’s switch sets it for the running game, and Y there for every game without its own. Game defaults holds the default.

Screenshots

Turn on the Screenshots feature first, in Settings › Features (Screenshots). Then press Screenshot or X in the dock, or a pad button with the Screenshot macro (some pads have one).

MangoHud, the frame rate limit and scaling

Apart from Pause on HOME, the Performance card changes the running game until it ends. To keep a value, set it in the game’s Game settings (Gamescope, HDR and frame rate).

• MangoHud shows or hides the overlay.
• FPS limit caps the frame rate, and None lifts the cap.
• Filter sets how the picture is scaled to your screen, and Sharpness how sharp FSR and NIS make it.

Controllers

Controllers lists each controller with its charge. A on one reconnects it, as the focused row says: Universe drops the pad and connects it again. A Bluetooth pad that doesn’t come back has switched itself off: press its PS or HOME button. Unplug a pad on a cable and plug it back in. Find controllers looks again for a pad that isn’t listed.

Controller settings brings Universe up on Settings › Controller, the game behind it, to test the pad or set up its buttons.

Quitting

Save in the game before you quit: whether it saves on the way out is up to the game. If it crashes, a message points to its log under Sessions and logs on its page.

Where the dock works

The dock needs gamescope. It works over a game started from Big Screen full screen in its own gamescope, as it starts by default. Without gamescope, or in a window, HOME brings Universe’s window up instead, and a game frozen by Pause on HOME stays frozen until you resume it from Universe. An add-on theme gets no dock. Under Steam’s Game Mode, HOME is Steam’s.

It also works over a game started from Universe Desktop in gamescope. There it has no Pause on HOME, and Home brings Universe Desktop’s window up.

The PS5 look has its own Control Center over a game, and the Switch 2 look none: see Looks.