A brilliant new app makes your Xbox Ally look cleaner with proper Steam artwork

For those who have an Xbox Ally or Ally X, or even just the standard ASUS ROG Ally, you’ll notice that when integrating games from Steam into the Xbox App, the experience leaves a lot to be desired, with game artwork not matching up with games installed via the Xbox App, instead offering either dummy artwork or just the games app icon which does make them stick out and not in a good way.

Fortunately, SteamGridDB fixes this. An app available for free via the Microsoft Store will automatically apply proper game artwork to their respective titles when searching through your game library on the Xbox Ally, Xbox Ally X, and other devices that have the Xbox App, like the Lenovo Legion Go 2.

The app was only released yesterday and was spotted by the website rogallylife first, as far as I can tell, and is developed by “lirrik” on GitHub.

How to install SteamGridDB for Xbox and apply custom artwork

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Settings > Privacy & security > File system

Let apps access your file system > SteamGridDB for Xbox > Toggle On

Getting SteamGridDB for Xbox up and running only takes a minute, but there’s one important permissions step the app needs before it can touch the Xbox app’s artwork files. Follow this flow and you’ll have clean, consistent game tiles across Steam, GOG, Epic, and more.

Install the SteamGridDB for Xbox app

Grab the widget directly from the Microsoft Store:

Microsoft Store page: https://apps.microsoft.com/detail/9pkqx0rjc32v

GitHub (for transparency and updates): https://github.com/lirrik/steamgriddb-xbox

Install it like any other Game Bar widget.

Enable file system access (required)

Because Game Bar widgets live inside a sandbox and don’t get normal folder pickers, the developer had to request special permission from Microsoft. You’ll need to toggle this manually.

Here’s the path:

• Open Settings
• Go to Privacy & security
• Select File system
• Under “Let apps access your file system”, find SteamGridDB for Xbox
• Toggle it On

Choose artwork for each game

The widget handles stores differently:

• Steam and GOG: Auto-detection works immediately. You’ll see proper artwork appear for each title with no extra steps.
• Epic Games Store and Ubisoft Connect: Search for these manually by typing the game’s name into the widget. It’ll pull artwork from SteamGridDB instantly.
• Battle.net: Not supported. Battle.net stores art differently and the Xbox app doesn’t expose those images in a usable format.

Apply the artwork

Select a game, pick the artwork you like, and the widget replaces the Xbox app’s image in seconds.

Restart the Xbox app (optional but helpful)

The Xbox app usually updates the artwork instantly, but if you don’t see the new image right away, give the app a quick restart and everything should refresh.

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Without SteamGridDB

With SteamGridDB

Now of course it's not perfect and as far as I can tell you do have to manually apply the artwork to each game but it is a huge step up from the default artwork you currently get when a game is added to the Xbox app via Steam.

FAQ

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