Thursday, June 15th 2023
Valve Releases Major Steam Desktop Client Update
Hello! We're excited to announce that we've just shipped a new version of the Steam Client to everyone. This update includes all the new Steam Desktop features that have been tested and fine-tuned in the beta branch. Before we get into the details, we want to thank our beta testers really quick - we couldn't have shipped without all of your invaluable feedback and bug reports!
New framework, new foundation
The most impactful changes in this update aren't immediately visible; much of the work went into changing how we share code across the Steam Desktop Client, Big Picture mode, and Steam Deck. These changes also means quicker implementation and iteration of new features. For example, many of the features in this update (like Notes in the overlay) are simultaneously shipping on Steam Deck because of the shared codebase.
Steam gets a fresh coat of paint
This update also brings targeted visual and usability improvements across Steam - we've gone through and updated dialogs, menus, fonts, and colors. The main Steam header and footer, Settings, and the Screenshot Manager are just a few examples of spots with refreshed UI.
Richer, more useful notifications
Steam notifications have been updated and improved to be more useful to you. The green bell only lights up when there's truly something new for you. The tray view is limited to new notifications, and there's a "View all" page with a historical view. We've also added new notifications specific settings, so you can control the notifications you'll see, and where you'll see them.
Redesigned in-game overlay
We've completely overhauled the in-game overlay (accessible via Shift+Tab while in-game). It's got a brand-new user interface, adding new utility and allowing for more customizability. There is a new toolbar, giving you access to anything you may need in the middle of a game - friends chat, achievements progress, guides, discussions, a browser, and more.
We've picked a few overlay windows to show by default, and you can pick and personalize the pieces of content you'd like to see in your own overlay - settings are saved between games.
Introducing Notes
The new Notes feature lets you jot down notes about the game that you're currently playing. It comes with rich text formatting, the ability to paste images, multiple notes per game, and can even be used in offline mode. These notes are saved per game and are synced across to any other PCs (or Steam Decks!) you are logged into. They are also accessible outside the in-game overlay, on the game details page.
Pin to game
We've also added the ability to pin windows from the overlay, so that they can appear on top of the game - while in-game. The opacity level of these windows is adjustable, and only the contents of the window will be pinned, excluding the title bar and other extraneous UI. This new functionality is available for Notes, Guides, Discussions, Achievements, and the web browser. This feature is perfect for keeping track of progress or guides while in-game, or for multi-tasking maniacs who love to have a movie on in the background while they game.
And more...
And that's not all! The overlay now includes a Game Overview panel: your one-stop shop to see what's going on with the game since you last played it. It shows what achievements you have in progress, which friends are also playing, top guides, news, and more. In addition, the browser, achievements, and screenshot manager windows have been updated (both in the overlay and in the desktop client).
The controller experience has been improved as well. The updated controller configurator from Steam Deck is now part of the overlay when a gamepad is connected, and virtual menus can now be used while gaming on Desktop.
Mac and Linux
The technical work in this update makes it possible to enable hardware acceleration for the Mac & Linux versions of Steam, bringing them up to par with Windows. You should see snappier animations, scrolling and more responsive UI.
That's about it. You can see all of the updates and improvements in the full patch notes. As always, we love to hear from you so please let us know what you want to see next.
Sources:
Steam Community News #1, Steam Community News #2
New framework, new foundation
The most impactful changes in this update aren't immediately visible; much of the work went into changing how we share code across the Steam Desktop Client, Big Picture mode, and Steam Deck. These changes also means quicker implementation and iteration of new features. For example, many of the features in this update (like Notes in the overlay) are simultaneously shipping on Steam Deck because of the shared codebase.
Steam gets a fresh coat of paint
This update also brings targeted visual and usability improvements across Steam - we've gone through and updated dialogs, menus, fonts, and colors. The main Steam header and footer, Settings, and the Screenshot Manager are just a few examples of spots with refreshed UI.
Steam notifications have been updated and improved to be more useful to you. The green bell only lights up when there's truly something new for you. The tray view is limited to new notifications, and there's a "View all" page with a historical view. We've also added new notifications specific settings, so you can control the notifications you'll see, and where you'll see them.
We've completely overhauled the in-game overlay (accessible via Shift+Tab while in-game). It's got a brand-new user interface, adding new utility and allowing for more customizability. There is a new toolbar, giving you access to anything you may need in the middle of a game - friends chat, achievements progress, guides, discussions, a browser, and more.
We've picked a few overlay windows to show by default, and you can pick and personalize the pieces of content you'd like to see in your own overlay - settings are saved between games.
The new Notes feature lets you jot down notes about the game that you're currently playing. It comes with rich text formatting, the ability to paste images, multiple notes per game, and can even be used in offline mode. These notes are saved per game and are synced across to any other PCs (or Steam Decks!) you are logged into. They are also accessible outside the in-game overlay, on the game details page.
We've also added the ability to pin windows from the overlay, so that they can appear on top of the game - while in-game. The opacity level of these windows is adjustable, and only the contents of the window will be pinned, excluding the title bar and other extraneous UI. This new functionality is available for Notes, Guides, Discussions, Achievements, and the web browser. This feature is perfect for keeping track of progress or guides while in-game, or for multi-tasking maniacs who love to have a movie on in the background while they game.
And that's not all! The overlay now includes a Game Overview panel: your one-stop shop to see what's going on with the game since you last played it. It shows what achievements you have in progress, which friends are also playing, top guides, news, and more. In addition, the browser, achievements, and screenshot manager windows have been updated (both in the overlay and in the desktop client).
Mac and Linux
The technical work in this update makes it possible to enable hardware acceleration for the Mac & Linux versions of Steam, bringing them up to par with Windows. You should see snappier animations, scrolling and more responsive UI.
That's about it. You can see all of the updates and improvements in the full patch notes. As always, we love to hear from you so please let us know what you want to see next.
34 Comments on Valve Releases Major Steam Desktop Client Update
Plus, the interface scaling is trash now. With Steam text scaling ON, the text is too big and the Store page is off center (because of that dumb left side menu), and with it OFF, the text is way too small.
Update. Did more testing, looks like the new scaling options is the culprit of the major power usage. With Steam scaling off, it's back to low 50W.
Cause Ill be in game, get a message from a buddy on steam, alt tab, start to type then the cursor disappears and then I have to reselect the chat box to type again.
also, can we install an adblock on the browser yet?
You still can't disable the "WHAT'S NEW" which is 50/50 update news and advertising and it's still the default view EVERY DAMN TIME YOU OPEN YOUR LIBRARY.
I don't care what other feature bloat and utter nonsense Valve bakes into Steam, but it's a games library utility first and foremost and the library function of Steam is getting worse every update.
Interestingly disabling scaling made no difference for me visually, and luckily for me on 1440p the UI is only slightly bigger than before. I will keep it off though given your feedback on resource usage.
I can see why it consumes more processing cycles as they have added a lot of animation to the UI, the notification bell keeps moving for instance. They have likely moved to a framework that works cross platform as well which almost certainly have increased the framework size. But it doesnt feel laggy so they havent done that bad a job I think, I have seen far worse major updates, and I look forward to using the notes feature. :)
It is forcing a whats new box at the top of my library though which I think takes way too much room, so will give them feedback on that.
If not, I guess I'll continue not to use Steam.
All you babies crying about the footprint of Steam like its 2005. It's 2023 where we regularly have 2TB+ storage, 16, 32, 64GB of system memory, 6-24 core cpus.
but "OMG! steam uses 500MB of my system memory! its the end of the world!"
If I have to be subject to a central digital rights arrangement, then I just want to authenticate and move on. It's got nothing to do disk space or memory usage. Retards...
steam icon - settings - and it's glitched lol - edit closed steam and power draw dropped 20-30W lol
getting worse than epic
- The "What's New" area is tailored to the games you own, and more specifically granular to the games you've played recently or have installed. What this usually manifests into is being told about new patches. If you reinstalled Half-Life 2 last week to try a mod and the section tells you about a Half-Life 2 update happening today, that's fair game and is precisely what a games library utility function would look like. Especially the part where it wouldn't have told you about the update if you had left it uninstalled.
- If at any time you don't like something you see - as I did with frequent updates to free games (Black Desert Online being an egregious example) - you can hover the update, click the dropdown menu and select "Show Less from <Game Title>" and it goes onto your custom allowlist/denylist.
- There's a one-click option to globally turn off anything in What's New that isn't a product update. One click.
How much a default view bothers someone is very subjective, granted.I can factually say however that the games library has never required mandatory custom Collections to be visible.
The shelf doesn't disappear unless it's completely empty and the number of things that will pop onto it with more than a few games installed is insane. I gave up individually clicking "show less from" years ago. It doesn't seem to sync across devices properly and what developers consider an "update" is at the discretion of the developers, who obviously classify adding DLC, new season passes and purchaseables as "a new update" to the game, and therefore advertising, in my opinion. Is it also a game update? Yes - but it's still advertising!
I've lost count of how often I have to reset this option because it's magically turned itself off again with an update, change of IP, or fresh Steam install on a new device. Probably well over a hundred times at this point. I have never, ever voluntarily turned it off. It was one of the first things I ever enabled after Valve added it in response to the community backlash when they forced "What's new" on people and prevented them from defaulting to the games library list or thumbnails that we'd had for 15+ years.
If you like Steam the way it is, great!
If you don't like Steam the way it is, then tough luck because Valve won't let you disable or opt-out of any of the guff like what's new, badges, Steam level, items, booster packs, trading cards. Complaints against unrequested and unnecessary feature-creep/product bloat like that will remain valid until they stop forcing it on customers.
I have set up the font size scaling to 125% in "Ease of Access" > "Make text bigger", so that must be the culprit. The new Steam UI is now either doubling the scaling (adding +25% twice), or cancelling the Windows setting completely, so there's no middle ground (might act different for the "Scale and layout" setting, but I don't like how it makes everything bigger, so I'm not going to even try it out just for Steam's sake).
I remember that Firefox did the same thing after some major update (v100 or v110), where it not only scaled along with the Windows settings, but added additional 25% and made the text giant, but at least in Firefox, you can access the advance settings and disable that new feature.Well, Epic has always added ~30W-35W for me, lol, so it's still better, even if it was not possible to fix it on your system, especially considering how much more stuff is packed onto Steam vs EGS.
So with all that in mind, why would it even matter to you? Even if they did offer a lightweight version without all the frills, by your own description, you still wouldnt use it even as a friends list and you wouldnt download it because you dont like digital libraries. Either way, Steam doesnt suit your needs. And thats fine.
You just find Steam an inconvenience for whatever reason so your post is moot.
However I then downloaded a game update on the new version, and at gigabit speeds it almost fully stretched my 9900k lol, 79% cpu usage across all cores. It seems to be doing something a bit whacked on game updates, but it might have been just that game as I know some games now patch live as you download.