Why Is SideQuest Shipping a Flatpak Now? So It Can Run on a Steam Deck and a Steam Frame

A Flatpak is a self contained Linux application bundle. It carries its own dependencies and installs into user space, which is how desktop software gets onto a Steam Deck without losing a fight with SteamOS, where the root filesystem is read only and gets replaced on update. SideQuest started shipping Flatpaks on October 6.

Two of them. SideQuest-1.4.0-x86_64.flatpak at 86.8 MB, and SideQuest-1.4.0-aarch64.flatpak at 80.9 MB. Version 1.3.1, released five days earlier, has no Flatpak assets at all.

The release notes say who they are for: "Run SideQuest directly on Steam Deck, Steam Frame, and other compatible Linux devices with the new Flatpak builds." The aarch64 build is the one worth noticing. ARM64 is what the Steam Frame runs, which is the entire reason Valve needed the translation layers that ship with it. A sideloading tool for Quest headsets now has a native build for Valve's headset.

The update is a week older than the coverage

If you read about this yesterday, you read about an October 6 release. GitHub timestamps v1.4.0 at 17:45 UTC that day. The write ups that went around this week trace back to a Reddit post by SideQuest founder Shane Harris, not to a new build.

The releases page is public and every version carries a timestamp, so the sequence is easy to follow.

What 1.4.0 changed

The headline is a cable going away. In SideQuest's words: "Sign in with Meta and connect over Bluetooth and Wi-Fi to install SideQuest without a USB cable."

Here is what that is doing. Every sideloading tool talks to your headset over ADB, the Android Debug Bridge, which is the command channel that pushes an APK onto an Android device. It is the same plumbing underneath running Half-Life 2 standalone on a Quest 3, or underneath anything else that never went through a store. Getting ADB running on a Quest has always been the tedious part: plug in a cable, authorize the connection, and before any of that, turn on developer mode. SideQuest now brings up wireless ADB itself after you sign in with Meta and let it pair over Bluetooth. Road to VR, reporting Harris's post, says the developer account and organization steps are gone too. SideQuest's own release notes do not make that claim, so treat the cable as the confirmed part.

The rest of 1.4.0 is unglamorous and welcome. Grouped multi file installations, so an APK and its OBB go in together. Install progress visible from any tab. Connection priority and per device settings profiles. A permissions review before install, with already granted permissions skipped. Expanded Android support, so you can drive the whole thing from a phone.

Then 1.4.1, six hours later

v1.4.0 is stamped 17:45 UTC on October 6. v1.4.1 is stamped 23:45 the same evening.

Its notes run three lines: "Improved device setup reliability and Android compatibility," "Improved wireless debugging initialization and recovery," and "Clearer setup errors and troubleshooting details." All three are about the feature that had just shipped. A wireless pairing path meets a far messier spread of headsets, routers and phones in public than it does in testing, and a same evening patch is what that looks like when the fix is quick.

The Steam part landed in September

Installing Steam VR ports from inside the headset got attached to this week's coverage, but it arrived in v1.3.0 on September 30: "Added Steam game-file downloads for supported VR ports, available on desktop and directly inside the headset." The same release added shortcuts for sideloaded apps in the main Quest library, which is what removes the trip through Unknown Sources. v1.3.1 followed on October 1 with shortcut setup from the desktop app and custom shortcut icons.

That is nine releases between September 1 and October 6, on top of the ground up 1.0 rebuild that shipped August 31, from the same outfit that picked up the Altspace name in July and is rebuilding it for a fall launch. Whatever else is true, the pace is real.

GitHub publishes a download count per asset, which makes the uptake easy to check. As of Wednesday morning the v1.4.1 Windows installer sits at 25,621. The aarch64 Flatpak sits at 150. The x86_64 Flatpak sits at 77. Add v1.4.0 in and the Flatpaks total 242 downloads against more than 27,000 for the Windows installer.

So almost nobody is running this on a Deck yet. The builds are a week old and unmentioned on the download page, and the capability is the point rather than the count.

One thing to know before you go looking. SideQuest's own Get SideQuest page still offers Windows, macOS and Linux downloads and still tells you to "Set up from your browser with a USB cable." The Flatpaks are on the releases page, not the download page, and the wireless route is not written up there yet. The code moved first. The documentation has not caught up.