Posts from February 2025
PWAs on the Steam Deck
I wanted to try using Navidrome on my Steam Deck, but couldn’t find a good client. I realized I’d love to just use the web interface, but using Chrome for this is a pain. Then I remembered there’s a way to ‘install’ PWAs with Firefox, which would let me run any major web app (e.g. Spotify, Youtube, etc) right on the deck as though it was an actual app. Here’s how I made it work.
All I wanted to do was play music on my Steam Deck.
To be honest, I’m not 100% sure this will actually be useful to me in the long term, but it seemed like a fun thing to try, you know?
I hunted and hunted for an application that would work nicely on the deck and would integrate with my Navidrome installation, but nothing satisfied. The closest I got was Supersonic, but it didn’t play nicely with Gamescope
Eventually I concluded that my best bet would be to just run the Navidrome web application, but doing that with Chrome in gaming mode was clunky and a bit unsatisfying.
Then I remembered an experiment I ran a while back running web applications as a PWA with Firefox, and a light bulb went off.
Now, to be clear, this whole thing is a little silly, but it was fun and it worked well, so I figured I’d write it up just in case a) I needed it later, or b) someone else might want to give this a try.
Continue reading...Zen + Flatpak + KeePassXC
I switched to using Zen via flatpak as my primary browser, and then remembered that getting a sandboxed browser working with a native KeePassXC is FUN. Then I found a workaround so I’m re-documenting it here with additional details that are required by my feeble brain.
First off, a critical security caveat: These instructions bust open the flatpak sandbox by giving Zen (or Firefox–you can adapt these same instructions to work with any FF-based browser) the ability to run executables on the host system.
Now, in my case, the alternative is running a native version of the browser via tarball or AppImage, so for me it’s six of one and a half dozen of the other. But you have been warned!
Secondly, I should note these instructions are specifically for getting a flatpak version of Zen (or Firefox) working with a native KeePassXC installation. If your KeePassXC install is also a flatpak, you’re gonna have to look elsewhere (I tend to use native packages as much as possible and only fall back on Flatpak when I have no other option).
With that disclaimer out of the way, here’s the instructions I lifted from this Github comment, but with a bit more exposition to make various assumptions in that comment explicit.
Continue reading...