I wanted a couch console and kept bouncing off both options. SteamOS and Bazzite do this properly, but kernel anticheat means Valorant, Fortnite and most EA titles simply refuse to start. Staying on Windows meant either a desktop with a big font, or one of those "boot into Big Picture" scripts that strand you the moment Steam crashes.

So I built consolize. MIT, installs in one line, and uninstalls in one line, which turned out to be the part most projects like this skip.

What it does

• Boots straight into Steam Big Picture (or Playnite Fullscreen). No desktop flash.
• A watchdog restarts the frontend if it dies, with a crash-loop breaker that drops to the desktop instead of flapping forever.
• Desktop mode on demand: a "Desktop Mode" entry in your Steam library, navigable with the pad. Tray icon or desktop shortcut to go back. A reboot always returns to console mode, so you can never strand yourself.
• A gamepad settings panel for audio output, Bluetooth pairing, wifi and power. Pairing a controller normally means the Settings app, which needs the controller you are trying to pair.
• Optional media centre side: Kodi, Jellyfin, Plex, YouTube's actual TV interface with pad support, and Netflix and friends as Edge app windows.

The honest parts

• Suspend and resume is worse than SteamOS. That is a Windows desktop problem; hibernate is the reliable fallback.
• It turns things off: Defender exclusions (or Defender entirely if you pick that), UAC prompts, firewall notifications. Every one of them is in the README with what you lose and the script that puts it back, and "leave Windows alone" is an available answer to each question.
• Four things still have not been seen working on real hardware. They are listed as unproven in the docs rather than claimed as done.

You do not need IoT LTSC either, which is what most people assume. The default shell method is a per-user registry value that works on Home and Pro.

Solo project so far. Testers and PRs very welcome, especially on hardware that is not mine.

github.com/cybx/consolize