StreamController is a brand-new open-source app for enabling and managing the Elgato Stream Deck on Linux
Many of us were using Stream Deck UI, which was a fork from a previous such app which was no longer being maintained. The devs decided to restart the initiative using a different coding language (Python), which would allow them to do a lot more.
So, what a surprise when I saw an announcement in the Discord chat that we should migrate to the new app called StreamController. Not only is it noticeably faster, but it also has support now for plugins, wallpapers, screensaver, as well as automatic page switching for Gnome and Hyprland (For example, you could see your favourite music albums when you open Spotify, your projects when you open VSCode, or your favorite websites in Firefox).
It is still in Beta and I installed the Flatpak version on Manjaro Linux, which is working just fine.
It has its own in-app Store for plugins and icon packs, so you are not installing these directly from Elgato. But there are already a number of useful plugins available such as Audio Control, Audio Switcher, Clocks, Counter Deck Controller, Gnome Window Calls, Media, OBS, OS, Pi-hole, HTTP requests, Speediest, Volume Mixer, and Weather.
Various of the plugins are supporting animation, so the OS one for CPU can display the live CPU percentage, or even show a graph that updates in the button display. The clock plugin will show the time as it updates. The volume level will show the volume percentage as it changes.
The OBS plugin correctly sends its button presses to the OBS app, when it is running with its standard server active. I was able to get all my main scenes working for zooming in around the screen, and to trigger the various hotkeys I have active inside OBS. There are still a few more features that likely need to be added to the OBS plugin.
There is only one icon pack right now in the store for Material Icons designed by Google (unofficial). But you can easily add Custom Assets such as your own JPG or PNG icons by just uploading them into the app. And of course, anyone else can contribute extra plugins and icon packs.
Overall, I’m really impressed with this app and can see why it needed a complete rewrite. It is already a lot of fun to use, so I’m looking forward to further enhancements over the coming months.
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