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Lepton: Steam's tool for running Android games on Linux
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this post was submitted on 16 Sep 2026
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I wonder how it deals with gapps and how it compares to waydroid
I think right now the main focus is actually running Oculus/Meta Quest native games on the Steam Frame - the Quest headsets run Android and the games are actually APKs. No GAPPs involved
I'm sure I everything will be working about as soon as the community gets ahold of it though
Yes but how will you get those APKs installed on the device and make them run properly?
I think devs will have to ship a build that does not have the extra DRM and whatnot that is required to run on Oculus devices. The beauty of Lepton is just that developers won't have to rewrite their game for a new architecture or anything. All they have to do (hypothetically) is export a new build of their project without the "include Oculus DRM" button checked. From what I understand, it's not the exact same situation as Proton, just similar in many regards.
So you think Valve is counting on Oculus devs uploading their games to Steam directly?
Don't all the games have to be uploaded to Steam by their rightful developer?
If someone wants to publish on Steam, yeah, probably. But if Lepton works like Proton, the game doesn't actually need to be distributed through Steam. For Proton, you can run basically any Windows executable file through Proton, even if you downloaded the file from somewhere other than Steam. I assume the plan is for Lepton to be able run basically any APK you throw at it regardless of where the APK came from. I just doubt that Lepton will bypass the Oculus DRM.
Cracked quest games exist already, there are side load redistributables which allow you to bypass meta authentication.
So sailing the high seas sounds like an option. But ideally, publishers who want the additional distribution but can't the arsed to make a new x86-64 version of their game for PCVR, could at least squirt out a new build that leaves off the Oculus DRM.
No? Only Steam games.
Ok to clarify, I mean if Occulus devs want to publish their games to Steam, they can. But Valve won't add anybody's games for them to Steam.
If you mean the Quest you can, once developer mode is enabled, run
adb install whatever.apkand it will show up in the UI of the OS.If you mean the Frame I tried them but didn't install anything. My bet though is that it is the ONE thing Valve actually use to make money, Steam, that will wrap Lepton just like it does with Proton now.
Yeah I was obviously not asking how to run Quest apps on the Quest, I was asking how to run Quest apps on the Frame.
I doubt Steam will provide an official way to piggyback on the Meta store, mostly for legal reasons. I imagine one will, like today, add external games to Steam and instead of using Proton will use Lepton.
It's possible to get all apks of Meta store by sailing the high seas.
The problem with running quest games outside of quest is actually that meta has a specialized vr version of android, that even people haven't figured out how to get their apps running on the pico (bytedance) android headsets. This is pretty crazy considering how easy it is to pirate on quest
Lepton is a fork of Waydroid.
That Valve has worked on in their own after forking it.
So it's nothing more then a layer for games to get shipped via steam sans Gapps integration.
I know that way to ride makes some steps towards faking Gapp or offering some Gapp compatibility, but relying on Play services is essentially a non-starter for me these days, so all of the best games I have for Android mobile would require finding cracked copies.
It's so strange that I got to skip essentially all piracy for a decade and a half in my gaming life, only to watch all of the platform operators except valve enshitify all at once and to an untenable degree