The Stream Deck is an extremely handy gadget that was made for streamers, but I can’t work without it. It’s got tons of customization and productivity options all packaged into a neat button box that does just about everything you need at the press of a button.
Elgato just announced its latest update to the Stream Deck software, and it can make you feel like you got a brand-new device without spending a dime. Whether you use a Stream Deck for streaming, productivity, or just to make your workflow smoother, you’ll love the new features Elgato has to offer.
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The Stream Deck now shows live weather
Finally, a reason to look at your desk before your phone.
This might seem minor, but Stream Deck’s new Weather plugin is surprisingly handy. It delivers real-time forecasts and live temperature updates right on your Stream Deck—no API keys, no accounts, just pure drag and drop goodness that we’ve come to expect from our Stream Decks.
The Weather action shows current conditions for any location on Earth. Just download the plugin from the Elgato Marketplace, set your city name or postal code, choose Fahrenheit or Celsius, and you’re good to go. You can tap a key to see today’s high and low, or if you’ve got a Stream Deck+, you can even twist the dial to scroll through hourly forecasts in three-hour increments.
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Usability improvements and bug fixes
The latest update fixes quirks and polishes the experience across the board
As is usually the case with a Stream Deck update, there are a ton of usability improvements and bug fixes packed with the new update as well. Elgato has also improved detection speed for connected Stream Deck devices when launching its software. Hidden icon packs don’t appear in the icon library out of the blue anymore.
The Open Application action now displays a green dot when the selected app is running, and you can configure it to either do nothing, close, or force quit the selected app when long-pressed. The company also finally quashed an annoying bug where the action ignored desktop shortcuts with arguments. The only quirk is that the green dot showing app activity disappears if you’re using custom icons.
There are plenty of other smaller improvements throughout the UI that improve the overall user experience. The device list in the profile menu is now alphabetically sorted, the software automatically selects the current device when importing a profile with multiple devices, and canceling profile imports doesn’t block future imports anymore.
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Improved system shortcuts
Control Windows features and system actions with zero friction
The new Stream Deck update also updated the Hotkey action with commonly used shortcuts, which you can set without needing to specify the exact hotkey. There are tons of editing, window management, and general commands listed, so you don’t need a keyboard shortcut cheatsheet every time you’re configuring a hotkey.
There are tons of Windows shortcuts that save me hours every week, and having them handy on my Stream Deck is a big advantage. You won’t find all of these in Elgato’s already comprehensive list of shortcuts, but you can always look up the keyboard shortcut and assign it manually, the one time you need to do it.
The Open Application action gets similar functionality. It now includes a searchable list of installed software, and it finally supports Windows Store apps like Spotify and Microsoft apps that come pre-installed on Windows. As mentioned before, you can also configure it to either do nothing, close, or force quit the selected app when long-pressed.
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Key Logic lets you do more with a single key
Three times the keys on your Stream Deck
One of the biggest additions in the latest Stream Deck update is Key Logic. This feature lets you assign as many as three different actions to the same key depending on whether you press it once, twice, or hold it. It works exactly like the Play/Pause button you see on most headphones, where tapping the button once, twice, or thrice switches between playing/pausing, next track, or previous track, respectively.
As you can probably guess, this massively expands what you can do on a single page of your Stream Deck. My Stream Deck Neo is already the perfect productivity companion, but with Key Logic, I can handle 12 different tasks using just eight buttons.
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Virtual Stream Decks for even more buttons
You’re not running out of buttons any time soon
If you’ve been wishing for more buttons on your Stream Deck, and Key Logic doesn’t cut it for you, Elgato just fixed your problem. If you already own a Stream Deck, you can now create unlimited virtual Stream Decks that appear on your screen if and when required.
Each Virtual Stream Deck supports up to an 8 x 8 grid, giving you 64 virtual keys per panel. Not only can you create multiple virtual panels and run them simultaneously, you can also summon them on demand with a hotkey—right at your cursor position.
While testing this feature, I created an eight-key panel that was a replica of the music control page on my physical Stream Deck. After figuring out a way to trigger that panel using one of the extra keys on my gaming mouse, I have now freed up an entire page on my Stream Deck Neo for more important shortcuts and discovered a brand-new way of controlling music on my PC.
There are a ton of customization options that you’ll appreciate as well. You can hide empty keys until you don’t need them, adjust the background opacity, and customize the whole panel to match your workflow. If you want it permanently pinned to a corner of your screen instead of appearing and disappearing when you need it, you can do that too.
Setting this feature up to utilize its full potential may be a bit of a chore, but if you’re someone like me who can use just about as many dedicated keys for different tasks, this is great news. It works pretty well, doesn’t get in your way, and honestly adds a ton of value to any Stream Deck purchase.
The Stream Deck gets better than ever
I don’t stream a lot, but the Stream Deck has changed how I work for sure. It’s not a cheap purchase, coming in at $129 for the base Stream Deck, but with these features, the $99 Stream Deck Neo and the $59 Stream Deck Mini become even better value propositions.
Whether you’re a streamer, content creator, or just someone looking to increase productivity at work, this latest update has features that’ll make your life easier. And the best part? All of this comes as a free software update.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have about a dozen more virtual Stream Decks to configure.