PC can send files to Steamdeck, but PC can't receive files from Steamdeck.

Hello, I’m seeking a bit of help.

I want to sync duckstation’s (play station emulator) memory card folder to my PC. I’m trying to sync the default memory card folder that duckstation generates, which has this path in the steam deck:

/home/deck/.var/app/org.DuckStation/config/DuckStation/memcards

It already holds a file of a memory card.

When I share the folder from Syncthing to my PC, the Syncthing client says “Up to date” but the folder in my PC has nothing in it, and the client also says that it has 0 files.

Both ends are set up to “send and receive”.

If I put random files in the folder from my PC, Syncthing seems to recognize them, but the steam deck memory card folder doesn’t seem to receive anything, and I can’t find them anywhere.

When I put random files on the steam deck end, Syncthing is unable to recognize them and thus sends nothing to my PC.

This only seems to happen with these subfolders, also tried the save states folder at this path resulting in the same issue:

/home/deck/.var/app/org.DuckStation/config/DuckStation/states

Is there a folder property I need to tweak? Or this .var folders are forbidden somehow?

I did this process with a different emulator with a more or less similar path (it lacked the .var and the org. folders)

Thank you in advance.

You didn’t mention how Syncthing is installed on your Steamdeck, so I’m guessing it’s likely to be via Flathub.

Each Flatpak app runs in a security sandbox, which by default doesn’t allow access to any other Flatpak app’s files.

It looks like your DuckStation installation is also a Flatpak, so Syncthing isn’t able to access DuckStation’s app files until you reconfigure Flatpak to allow it.

Search the web and/or this forum for posts regarding “flatpak” security.

Thank you for your help, gadget.

I tried my best to understand the documentation, but for the life of me I was totally unable to reconfigure flatpak; but at the very least I could learn that flatpaks are made this way to avoid them mingling together in their own ecosystems and prevent issues.

I ended up uninstalling flatpak version of Synching and just downloaded the linux executable from the website, since it’s not a flatpak it seems to access other flatpak folders with no problems.

The inconvenience is that it won’t run on it’s own either in desktop or gaming mode; adding it to autostart application helps only for desktop mode. I tried writing some script with systemctl commands to make it run in gaming mode but it didn’t work at all Dx

It’s good enough, to go desktop mode to sync after a game session. I’ll leave this comment if someone else non-linux savvy can make use of this partial lousy solution.

Thanks again.

Flatpak offers a lot of options for setting permissions and other rules for apps, but if you’re fine with giving whichever one of the Syncthing Flatpak packages you were using bulk access to your files…

After installing Syncthing via Flatpak, list all installed (system-level) Flatpak apps:

flatpak list

If you installed it into the local user repository, check the user-level list:

flatpak list --user

Then grant Syncthing access to storage outside of its Flatpak app directory using the following command syntax:

flatpak override --user --filesystem=/path/to/a/folder <Application ID>

(Substitute the desired directory path for /path/to/a/folder and the “Application ID” for <Application ID> as shown in the app list from the earlier step.)

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