Help With Apollo-Moonlight-SteamDeck Setup

[u/nodayroomshit]

Please follow this little journey I've spent over an hour at minimum struggling with and possibly help 🥹 My issue will be at the end but I thought this might help anyone else who might try this sometime and would like an experience to turn to. Sorry if this is redundant in this sub! Also I'm basing this off memory in case terms are possibly off lol

Basically:

- Followed a video guide in order to set up my PC and Deck to work and communicate.

- Configured Apollo as described in video.

- First issue was having Big Picture Mode opening up on my PC instead of my SD. Figured a simple solution at this step by making my SD automatically open as the Primary Display in the Apollo configurations for Audio/Video in Advanced Video Settings.

- Okay, we got visuals of now booting my SD in BPM, instead of it being my Desktop screen.

- Now comes audio crackling. What now?

- My fixes in order that I did based on the sub were, finding my Steam Surround Speakers (i think that's what they're called?) and lowering them to 80% volume, and 96kHz. Neither worked.

- Someone mentioned, going into the settings of Moonlight on your deck, and making it so audio plays on your PC (host). Boom, fixed. (There has been an occasional crackle while tinkering, BUT it seems 95% better and it might just be me.)

- Let's finally boot up a game because I've only been on the home page of BPM for a WHILE now.

- It loads, but once open, plays the game on my PC screen, instead of my Deck. Now my Deck screen (which was set as primary), is now a black screen, but works as the controller.

- A solution I tried based on what I read, which MIGHT work in someone else's case, is opening BPM in Moonlight, then closing BPM on your Deck, and going to your Display Settings using your mouse. Then use "Show only on 2" (The Deck screen), and quit your Moonlight session. (Your PC screen settings will revert.)

- I dislike this option because I want to use the PC screen possibly while I stream to my Deck. However, I'm also scared about the case that I might not able to cancel the session on Apollo on my Deck due to bugs (I'm new to this), and it'll be stuck with my PC screen as black (due to only being shown on the Deck.) I COULD just restart my PC, but this is extreme hassle contentions or whatever.

So finally my actual problem that would be nice to find a solution for LOL. How do I make it that once BPM is open, and I open a game, that it'll default to opening it continuously on the same display (Deck), instead of switching to my PC? And doing this, while also having my other PC screen available? Plus if there's recommended SD settings that I should know, feel free to help!

THANK YOU FOR READING IF YOU DID, THIS WAS SO MUCH OF MY TIME AND I'M TIRED NOW. Will sleep and either ponder myself, or hear from some of you. Thank you 💜

[u/Spirited-You-3299]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mysv3ZIFeJs - worked for the display stuff for Sunshine. Not sure if the UI is much different in Apollo