A simple Linux gaming shader cache cleaner with a GUI.

No terminal required after install — just click it in your app menu, pick what to nuke, confirm, done.

What it clears

• Mesa driver cache — RADV/ANV compiled shaders (~/.cache/mesa_shader_cache/)
• Steam shader pre-cache — Vulkan shaders downloaded by Steam (will re-download)
• DXVK state cache — D3D11→Vulkan pipeline cache (rebuilds on next launch with minor stutter)
• VKD3D-Proton pipeline cache — D3D12→Vulkan pipeline cache (same stutter caveat)
• OpenGL shader cache — Legacy GL cache, rarely needed for modern titles

UnShade reads your Steam libraryfolders.vdf to find all your Steam libraries automatically — no hardcoded paths, works on any machine.

Requirements

• zenity — for the checkbox dialog
• kdialog — for confirmation and error dialogs (KDE)
• steam — obviously

Both zenity and kdialog are pre-installed on Bazzite, Nobara, and most KDE-based distros.

Install

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/andy10115/UnShade/main/install.sh | bash

That's it. UnShade will appear in your app menu under Games/Utilities.

Steam Deck users: UnShade isn't a Decky plugin yet, but you can use the Quick Launch Decky plugin to call it directly. Make sure you "Show Hidden Files" and Point it at ~/.local/bin/unshade.sh. This will create a Non-Steam Game to invoke the script inside of Game Mode.

Uninstall

rm ~/.local/bin/unshade.sh
rm ~/.local/share/applications/unshade.desktop
rm ~/.local/share/icons/unshade.svg

Why

Clearing shader caches is a common debugging step on Linux — especially when chasing driver regressions, Proton updates, or Mesa upgrades. There was no dedicated GUI tool for it, so here we are.

Tested on

• Bazzite (KDE)
• Nobara
• CachyOS

License

MIT