Gaming Mode — Reference

Trigger configuration

[gaming_mode]
trigger = { key = "BTN_BASE", ms = 400 }

Field	Default	Description
key	"BTN_BASE"	Button to double-press. Any evdev key name. Set to "disabled" to turn off the trigger entirely.
ms	400	Maximum time between the two presses in milliseconds.

In pause/preview mode the double-click is still detected and writes last_action so the HUD preview can show the action — but Gaming Mode is not actually toggled and haptics do not fire.

Auto-detection

[gaming_mode]
auto_detect_steam_games = true   # default

When true, Gaming Mode activates automatically when a Steam game is detected as the focused window, and deactivates when focus moves away.

Detection uses two signals — either is sufficient:

• Steam Big Picture Mode — focused window has class "steam" and a caption containing "Big Picture" or "Big-Picture".
• Steam game process — the focused window's PID is a descendant of reaper, whose parent is steam. This is the process tree structure Steam uses for every launched game (native, Proton, Wine, bwrap, etc.). Makima walks /proc/{pid}/status upward from the focused PID — typically 3–7 files, under 1 ms.

Set to false to disable. Gaming Mode can then only be toggled via the double-click trigger or IPC.

Haptic feedback

haptic_on fires when Gaming Mode turns on; haptic_off fires when it turns off. Both have sensible built-in defaults and do not need to be set in the config.

For the pulse chain format and all available fields, see Haptic Feedback.

IPC commands

echo "gaming_mode enable"  | socat - UNIX-CONNECT:$XDG_RUNTIME_DIR/makima-control.sock
echo "gaming_mode disable" | socat - UNIX-CONNECT:$XDG_RUNTIME_DIR/makima-control.sock

See IPC for the full command reference.

while_gaming bindings

By default, all bindings are suppressed while Gaming Mode is active. Bindings tagged while_gaming = true opt out of that suppression — they remain active in Gaming Mode and also continue to work normally in desktop use.

[commands]
BTN_THUMBL = { run = ["deckery-hud-toggle"], no_pause = true, while_gaming = true, label = "Toggle HUD" }

State export

Gaming Mode state is reflected in $XDG_RUNTIME_DIR/makima-state.json:

{
  "context": {
    "gaming_mode": true
  },
  "gaming_mode_trigger": {
    "key":   "BTN_BASE",
    "label": "Toggle Gaming Mode"
  }
}

gaming_mode_trigger is null when trigger = { key = "disabled" }.

See State JSON for the full schema.