Your Steam Deck LED Is Blinking 3 Times? Here's What It Means

If you are a PC gamer and want to take your games on the go without spending money on a dedicated gaming laptop, you might want to invest in a Steam Deck. The console provides the most bang for your buck in the handheld console market, but you will inevitably have to stow it away. When you do, the console will tell you with a helpful — but admittedly confusing — LED signal.

Every Steam Deck has a mode called "battery storage mode" designed to keep the battery healthy when you don't plan to use the device for long periods. When this mode is activated, the power LED will blink three times. However, this applies only to LCD Steam Decks. OLED Steam Decks have a different signaling system: The LED will blink blue twice.

While battery storage can maintain the Steam Deck's battery for weeks or even months, it can only do so by essentially cutting the motherboard off from its battery at the BIOS level. As such, once you activate this mode, you can't wake the Steam Deck through normal means (i.e., pressing the power button). To resume playing on the device, plug it into a power supply, such as a wall outlet, then press the power button. It's annoying, but it keeps the battery nice and fresh. Plus, if you want to DIY repair the Steam Deck or, say, upgrade it with a display that increases screen resolution, you should activate battery storage mode beforehand to minimize risks.

Since battery storage mode is a BIOS-level system, you can't activate it from any normal Steam Deck menu. You have to jump into the console's BIOS menu to activate the feature.

If you want to turn on battery storage, you have to start by turning off your Steam Deck. Then, hold down the Volume+ button while pressing the power button. When the console boots, it should display the BIOS menu. Scroll until you find "Setup Utility" (you need to use the D-Pad on this menu), select it with the A button, and then navigate to "Power Menu." Once you select that menu, find and select "Battery storage mode." Confirm your choice, and the Steam Deck will power off. If you have done everything correctly, the power LED will blink three times on an LCD model or blink blue twice on an OLED model.

While you can stow a Steam Deck at any battery level with the battery storage mode, if you use the feature to make repairs safer, sites such as iFixit recommend charging or discharging the battery beforehand so it sits between 50-60%. Also, as a general rule, don't activate battery storage mode unless you plan to (or think you will) store the console for several weeks or perform your own repairs — a trans-Atlantic flight is not long enough to justify activating battery storage.