SteamVR offers a rich set of customizable settings to the user. To ensure that a game will run well out-of-the-box, a developer can suggest tailored default user settings for their game on Steam Frame, including the refresh rate or the display resolution that should be optimal for the experience. A user can further refine these settings in VR Settings -> Video -> Per-Application Video Settings. A user can also use Reset to Default to restore the default settings suggested for this game.

The method for suggesting these default settings is identical regardless of which platform runtime (Proton, Lepton, native) or VR runtime (OpenVR, OpenXR) the application is built for. Developers can include a file named vrpreferences.json at the root of their game package and SteamVR will read this file and automatically create the corresponding per-application default values for relevant settings.
The file must contain a dictionary named steam_frame and one or more of the following entries:

Name	Value / Type	Corresponding Video -> Per-Application Video Settings menu entry	Behavior when not specified
preferResolution	<integer>, width component	Resolution Per Eye	Use 1728x1728
preferMinRefreshRate	<integer>	Frame Limit / Refresh Rate Override	Use 72 Hz
preferHalfFramerate	true, false	Frame Limit / Throttling Behavior	No throttling
preferMotionSmoothingMode	"off", "on", "alwaysOn"	Motion Smoothing	Use global setting under Video -> Motion Smoothing

A developer can add, remove or change these suggested defaults though a game update, and as long as the user did not modify the settings through VR Settings -> Video -> Per-Application Video Settings, the updated defaults will be used. If a user has overridden a setting, their override will continue to be used until they use Reset to Default.

Example vrpreferences.json:


This example file suggests:

• A default resolution of 2160x2160
  
• A default display refresh rate of 90 Hz
  
• A default frame throttling to 1/2 (Frame Limit to 45 FPS)
  
• A default override to disable Motion Smoothing

To validate that the vrpreferences.json is picked up by SteamVR, the vrserver.txt log file can be searched:


Parsing errors will be reported in this log, for example:


To fully validate that all preferences are being picked up, use VR Settings -> Video -> Per-Application Video Settings, press Reset to Default and check the defaulted settings against the specified preferences.