SteamOS 0.5.6 beta lets you right-click an Android .apk into your Steam Frame library
SteamOS 0.5.6 for Steam Frame adds .apk files to the right-click "add to steam" menu in Desktop mode, which puts an Android package on the same library shelf as a Steam game. Valve's patch notes say the build is for the Frame's Beta channel, and you opt into it under Settings > System > System Update Channel.
Valve's Steam Frame page carries nine short videos, one of them on the Wireless Adapter. Image: Valve
Android VR games run on the Frame inside Lepton, the container Valve open-sourced in September, so the change here is the route a package takes rather than what the headset can run. Valve does not say which .apk files work, and the notes say nothing about the Play Store.
Desktop mode is the Frame's own desktop environment rather than its VR dashboard, so this is a menu you reach from the desktop rather than from inside the VR interface. Sideloading an Android package onto a standalone headset normally takes a PC, a cable and a developer-mode tool, and the route Valve describes needs none of them.
What Lepton still lacks is hardware video decoding. Its one open public work item, filed on September 30, asks for Android apps to reach the Frame's Iris decoder through MediaCodec, and Valve closed an outside patch for it as a duplicate of that item on October 14.
Valve switches off the Frame's mDNS announcements
The same build disables avahi-daemon publishing mDNS, which Valve says was "causing polluting frame-XXXX.local mDNS mappings, and in some cases delaying shutdown". mDNS is how a device claims a .local name on the network it is attached to, so a Frame has been introducing itself to everything on the Wi-Fi under a name of that shape.
Valve scopes the consequence to those mappings and a slow shutdown, and calls it neither a security nor a privacy fix. The build also improves how the performance overlay reports battery and memory usage, and makes connecting through the Steam Frame Wireless Adapter work "in some situations it previously could not".
Echo cancellation arrives for external microphones
The audio change is echo cancellation and noise suppression for external microphones, so it covers a microphone you plug in rather than the ones built into the headset. Those built-in microphones had their own problem at launch, and Valve's first Frame update fixed a garbled one in September.
Echo cancellation is what stops the far end of a voice chat hearing itself when the sound comes out of speakers instead of headphones. Valve lists no setting for either feature, so both read as on by default on the beta channel.
The Frame's version numbers jump from 0.4 to 0.5.6
Valve's own Frame announcements run 0.3.0 on September 17, then 0.4.1, 0.4.2, 0.4.3, 0.4.4 and a 0.4.5 beta through to October 7, then SteamOS 0.4 as the general release on October 8. Valve's own list of Frame releases holds nothing numbered 0.5.0 to 0.5.5, and it does not explain the gap.
Everything here is Beta channel only, and Valve says these features "are still being tested". The chroma fix in the 0.4.5 beta reached every headset as part of the general 0.4 release a day later, which is the shape to expect if 0.5.6 holds up.
