How to use Stream Deck for Sim Racing / iRacing

I’m a sim racer and amateur racer with a passion for Motorsport, good racecraft and the technical and setup aspect of sim racing.

One of the things I find more than a little cumbersome about sim racing is the constant back and forth between apps and settings, mostly using the mouse or my keyboard. We all know the drill; boot your PC, open Crew Chief, open Discord, start iRacing, and so on. These actions require mouse interaction, keyboard presses or hotkey combinations. And, they are cumbersome.

I’m a keen fan of button boxes for sim racing, but button boxes are game controllers and typically only solve in-app problems. Evolution dictates we should all be in search of the next improvement, and to me, anything with an LCD backlit screen with buttons on it deserves a closer look.

I first wrote this back in 2021, and since then the Stream Deck has quietly become one of the better-value things you can bolt onto a rig. 2026 brought the biggest shift yet: after Corsair bought Fanatec, there’s now a free official Fanatec Stream Deck plugin that drives the Tuning Menu directly, plus the Corsair Xeneon Edge touchscreen sold through the Fanatec store. I’ll get to both. First, the basics.

What is Stream Deck?

The Stream Deck is produced by Elgato. It’s a customisable button module intended for the live-streaming community, and the classic version features 15 LCD keys for doing useful things on the fly, like switching scenes, launching apps, running clips, overlays and adjusting audio in real-time. There’s now a whole family of them at different sizes, which I’ll come to in a second.

For what you get, the standard 15-key MK.2 at around £150 is a great deal:

My Stream Deck mounted to my 8020 profile rig with a magnetic mobile phone holder

The Stream Deck application comes ready with actions for common multimedia apps, Twitch, Youtube, X-Split and more.

You can see the list of actions and software integrations along the right-hand side of the Stream Deck app:

Elgato Stream Deck XL with a sim racing button layout — The current Stream Deck XL running a sim-leaning layout. The same software drives every model in the range. *Image: Elgato.*

The 2026 Stream Deck lineup, and which one for sim racing

When I first wrote this, there was really only one Stream Deck worth talking about. Now there are several, and the sizing actually matters for a rig where space behind the wheel is tight. The Mini is too small to be worth it for sim racing in my view, but the rest each make sense for a different setup.

Stream Deck Neo (8 keys, ~£100) – the budget pick. Two switchable pages effectively give you 16 buttons, and there’s a small info bar along the bottom. Plenty if you just want launch buttons and a handful of pit macros.
Stream Deck MK.2 (15 keys, ~£150) – the one I run, and still the default for most people. Fifteen keys covers a startup folder plus a full pit-stop set without paging.
Stream Deck + (8 keys + 4 rotary dials + touch strip, ~£200) – the interesting one for sim racing. The dials are what change the game: you can map brake bias, traction control and ABS to them and adjust on the move without diving into a menu. If I were buying again, this is the one I’d look hardest at.
Stream Deck XL (32 keys, ~£230) – overkill for most, but if you run multiple cars and sims and want every macro visible at once without paging, the extra real estate earns its keep.

One thing worth flagging if you’re following an older guide: Elgato moved the plugin and icon store to the web-based Elgato Marketplace, so the old in-app store screenshots you’ll see floating around don’t match the current software. The hardware logic above hasn’t changed though.

Loading products...

The big one: Fanatec’s official Stream Deck plugin

This is the biggest change since I first wrote this guide, and on a Fanatec rig it’s the reason a Stream Deck is now worth having even if you never stream a frame. Corsair bought Fanatec in 2025 – I suspect the first of several moves that pull Fanatec, Elgato and Corsair hardware together – and one of the early results is an official Fanatec Stream Deck plugin. It’s free, you grab it from the Elgato Marketplace, and it does far more than fire keyboard macros at the game.

What it gives you is direct control of the Fanatec Tuning Menu from the deck. So FFB strength, the natural damper, the drift mode setting and the rest become buttons you can change mid-session without taking a hand off the wheel to thumb through the on-base menu. It can also pull live telemetry through, so a key can show fuel, tyre temps or a flag state rather than sitting there as a static icon. I haven’t lived with it for a full season yet, so treat my read as early, but on paper it turns the deck from a launcher into something closer to a pit engineer’s panel. Worth being clear on one thing, because there’s some confusion about it: there is no Fanatec-branded Stream Deck box. The hardware is still Elgato’s; what’s new from Fanatec is this plugin (and the Corsair screen further down).

Getting it running is roughly this:

Install the Elgato Stream Deck software (Windows) if you haven’t already.
Install the Fanatec PC app and make sure your base is on current firmware.
Open the Elgato Marketplace, search for the Fanatec plugin, and add it.
Drag the Fanatec tuning and telemetry actions onto your keys and assign which menu item each one controls.

It’s PC only, same as the Fanatec app itself. If you’re on console there’s no equivalent, which is worth knowing before you spend.

Live telemetry with SimHub

If you don’t run Fanatec, or you want this working across every sim rather than one brand’s hardware, the route most people take now is the SimHub Stream Deck plugin. I already run SimHub for my dash and shaker, so adding the deck integration was the obvious next step.

The thing that makes it worth the faff over plain hotkeys is that it’s two-way. A button can change its own state from what the game is doing: the pit limiter key lights up when the limiter is on, a tyre key can flip colour when the fronts are still cold, a flag key can react to a yellow. You map it all in SimHub’s Stream Deck section and point each key at a telemetry property. It’s fiddlier to set up than a single macro, and I’d be lying if I said SimHub never frustrates me when it loses a sim on an alt-tab, but once a profile is built it just sits there and works.

Stream Deck for the sim

You don’t need to be interested in live streaming to have a use for a Stream Deck. And that’s because Stream Deck can do something button boxes do not: launch apps, open website links and execute hotkeys.

This is what caught my eye about the device when I first discovered it via Chris Haye’s video. As I mentioned earlier, I find the startup procedure in my rig a bit cumbersome. So I ordered one and set about thinking about the processes I wanted to make more streamlined:

Start iRacing
Start Discord
Open Crew Chief
Open Simhub
Open the Heusinkveld SmartControl app
ALT-TAB out of iRacing in full screen

Inside iRacing, there are a few functions that are particular to endurance racing and special events that I had to use the keyword for, and didn’t want to map to my Cube Controls OMP GT Pro (I do use the funky switch to navigate the black box and could incrementally change fuel, tyre pressures and so on; it’s just pretty cumbersome still!). Here’s the stuff I want to smooth out:

Clear/uncheck fuel and tyres for race start
Increment / Decrement fuelling ready for the next pit stop
Select fast repair
Mute Discord
Switch camera views for spotting

The cool thing about Stream Deck is that you can create “folders” to group sets of functions, so I could have a startup folder to select and boot apps, a folder for my Porsche 911 GTE and so on. But today we’re just going to look at how I’ve assigned those buttons.

Here it is, completed:

My Stream Deck layout for Endurance racing in iRacing

Something to get you started

Chris Haye has helpfully created this zip file full of icons to get you started. You can design your own, or hunt elsewhere on the internet for alternatives, but for me, this will do to get going.

Download these icons here:

It’s also wise to consider what it is you’d like to map to your buttons!

How to create a iRacing hotkey shortcut with Stream Deck

Let’s say I want to create a Fast Repair button, just in case there’s a problem during a race. Helpfully, you can check or uncheck Fast Repair with the chat macro, #FR$. Put simply if you were to type #FR$ in iRacing chat, the Fast Repair check box would become checked.

Here’s a quick list of macros in iRacing (thanks EDracing) that perform useful tasks:

#clear$ – uncheck all pit options
#cleartires$ – uncheck all tyres only
#fr$ – Fast repair on
#fuel +1l$ – increase one litre of fuel for refuel
#fuel -1l$ – decrease one litre of fuel for refuel

So, to create a button that does something like this, you’ll need to head to iRacing’s options screen first:

My chat commands while setting up Stream Deck

Note that (1) is the hotkey for uncheck all pit options, (2) unchecks tyres and so on. (6) is fast repair.

Now we’re ready to create a hotkey in Stream Deck. Opening the app, we’ll look at the step by step to produce a working button.

Firstly, select the button you’d like to set up:

Button selected (blue) ready to drag an action from the right

Next, we’ll drag the hotkey action into the button from the list of actions on the right:

You’ll notice the hotkey command appears at the bottom of the screen with a title and “Hotkey: click to assign”.

You can give your hotkey a title if you wish (the text will appear at the bottom of the button by default), and assign the chat hotkey for #FR$, which was (6). You’re all but done after that, except for assigning an icon to the button – browse for one by clicking the little arrow on your button graphic (bottom left corner).

Using this approach, it’s easy to set hotkeys based on my macros list. I quickly learned that while you can uncheck tyres with #cleartires$, checking them again wasn’t working. That’s why in my chat options you’ll see I’ve used #-cleartires$ – which checks the replace tyres box!

Procedure to manage fuel and tyres in iRacing:

uncheck fuel/tyres with a #clear$ command
If I want to add fuel in the next pitstop #fuel +1l$ / #fuel -1l$ is used to increase/decrease fuel. This automatically re-selects the fuel checkbox
If I want tyres at the next stop, I use #-cleartires$ to re-select the replace tyres checkbox

To launch an app like Discord in Stream Deck

Launching an app in Stream Deck is easy, provided you know the correct location of the .exe file. Not the shortcut!

Use the open file location in Windows taskbar search — Use the “open file location” in Windows taskbar search

Then, click “open file location”. This opens the location of the shortcut:

Next, right mouse button click on the shortcut and open file location again:

You will open a directory location that looks like this: \\Local\Discord

Navigate to \\Local\Discordapp-0.0.309 and find Discord.exe

Finally, drag the exe over to the button you’d like to assign in Stream Deck. Here’s a how-to from Spotii on Youtube:

Hopefully, this is enough for you to get going on your own, but if you have any questions – drop me a line – in the meantime here’s my completed layout in the app:

My profile for Stream Deck

Mounting it to your rig

For years my own answer to this was low-tech and you can see it in the photo above: a magnetic phone holder clamped to the 8020 profile, deck stuck to it. It still works fine and costs almost nothing. If you want something more solid, there are proper options now.

Fanatec sell a GT cockpit accessory mount that takes a deck directly, and they publish 3D-print files if you’ve got a printer. For an aluminium-profile rig there are dedicated brackets and faceplate enclosures from the likes of Apex Sim Racing and Sim-Lab that bolt onto the extrusion with T-nuts. RaceBox also do a VESA 75 carbon-fibre panel around $59 that bolts to the front of a Fanatec, Simagic or Simucube base, which is a tidy way to get the deck up near the wheel rather than off to the side.

Stream Deck vs a screen vs a real button box

The deck isn’t the only way to solve this, and it’s worth being honest about where it loses. Three roads, really.

A Stream Deck gives you tactile keys with dynamic icons, and with the Stream Deck + you get rotaries for the adjustable stuff. A touchscreen like the Corsair Xeneon Edge (a 14.5-inch panel Fanatec now sell for exactly this job) goes the other way: it’s a huge customisable dashboard you can fill with SimHub widgets and on-screen buttons, lovely to look at, but flat glass with no feel. And a hardware button box like the Bavarian SimTec DDU keeps physical toggles and encoders with proper detents.

The split that actually decides it for most people is VR. If you race in a headset, you can’t see a Stream Deck’s labels or a touchscreen at all, so muscle memory on physical switches wins and a real button box is the safer buy. If you’re on triples or a single screen, the deck’s visual feedback is a genuine advantage rather than a thing you can’t look at. I cover the tactile side in the button box guide, and the screen-as-dashboard route in the sim racing dashboard guide if you want to weigh those up properly.