Rewire

Intercepts Steam's %command% launch option and replaces it with a configured command, per game.

About

Rewire is a Linux utility that hooks into Steam's %command% launch option mechanism and replaces the game executable with a user-configured command. It supports both Proton (Windows) games and native Linux games, intelligently preserving the Proton scaffolding when needed.

Features

• Per-game configuration — each game (by Steam App ID) gets its own section in the config file
• Proton-aware command rewriting — preserves reaper, steam-launch-wrapper, runtime entry points, and other launcher arguments while only swapping the target executable
• Native Linux game support — replaces the entire command with the configured replacement

Requirements

• Python >= 3.12

Installation

Arch Linux (via AUR)

yay -S rewire

Arch Linux (via Release)

Download the .pkg.tar.zst package from the Releases page and install it:

sudo pacman -U ./rewire-0.1.3-1-any.pkg.tar.zst

Debian / Ubuntu

Download the .deb package from the Releases page and install it:

sudo apt install ./rewire_0.1.3_all.deb

Fedora

Download the .rpm package from the Releases page and install it:

# Fedora
sudo dnf install ./rewire-0.1.3-1.noarch.rpm

Other systems

Download the standalone binary from the Releases page, make it executable and add it to your PATH:

chmod +x rewire
mkdir -p ~/.local/bin
mv rewire ~/.local/bin/
export PATH="$PATH:$HOME/.local/bin"

To make the PATH change permanent, add the export line to your shell config:

echo 'export PATH="$PATH:$HOME/.local/bin"' >> ~/.bashrc   # bash
echo 'export PATH="$PATH:$HOME/.local/bin"' >> ~/.zshrc    # zsh
fish_add_path ~/.local/bin                                 # fish

Configuration

Create the configuration file at ~/.config/rewire/rewire.conf:

[730]
command = /path/to/my/replacement

Each section corresponds to a Steam App ID. The command value is the replacement command that will be run in place of the game executable. There is no %command% placeholder — what you set is exactly what gets executed.

Usage

1. Open Steam and go to the game's properties
2. In Launch Options, set:

rewire %command%

3. Configure the replacement command in ~/.config/rewire/rewire.conf
4. Launch the game

License

GPL-3.0-or-later