Simple Fix for the KWallet Popup on Steam Deck Desktop Mode

If you’re using your Steam Deck in desktop mode, you may have encountered the annoying KWallet popup after waking your device from sleep or when launching your browsers. The culprit is the KDE Wallet service, which occasionally insists on prompting for a password. Today, I’ll walk you through a straightforward fix that has worked for many Steam Deck users by disabling KWallet via the `kwalletrc` file.

What’s Happening?

Some users report that after switching to desktop mode, an unwanted popup appears asking for KWallet authentication. While some suggest installing the KWallet application to resolve the issue, this guide is for those who’d prefer to bypass KWallet entirely—especially if you don’t need its features.

The Fix

The solution is simple: modify or create the `kwalletrc` configuration file to disable KWallet.

Script to disable KWallet popup on Steam Deck by updating the kwalletrc file.

CONFIG_DIR="$HOME/.config" TARGET_FILE="$CONFIG_DIR/kwalletrc" BACKUP_FILE="$CONFIG_DIR/kwinrc"

echo "Starting the KWallet configuration update..."

if [ -f "$TARGET_FILE" ]; then echo "Found existing kwalletrc, updating its contents." else if [ -f "$BACKUP_FILE" ]; then echo "kwalletrc not found. Copying from kwinrc as a base." cp "$BACKUP_FILE" "$TARGET_FILE" else echo "No base file found. Creating a new kwalletrc." touch "$TARGET_FILE" fi fi

[Wallet] Enabled=false EOF

echo "kwalletrc has been updated. Please switch back to Gaming Mode and restart your Steam Deck for the changes to take effect." ```

After following either this automated method, the KWallet popup should no longer interrupt your desktop mode experience. If you need the KWallet functionality in the future, simply delete or modify the `kwalletrc` file.