Nearly 4 years later, Steam still won’t close to the tray icon on Linux without workarounds

Update: They have now fixed it.

In January 2017 it will be 4 years since a bug report was opened about Steam not closing to the tray on Linux. On Windows it works perfectly, but on Linux it has been left to gather dust like so many other issues.

Essentially, the way Steam is setup is that both the Minimize and Close buttons do the same thing: minimize the application. The close button should close it to the tray/indicator but it just minimizes it instead.

The issue is due to bugs that Valve discovered where the Steam application indicator didn’t work correctly, but indicators have worked really well for a long time now. I use plenty of applications that have them like itch, telegram, discord, dropbox and the list goes on. Steam does have a fully working indicator too, so there’s really no reason for Valve to continue to force the close button to minimize.

Why am I highlighting this now? It’s not really talked about anymore and some of you probably don’t even know you can force the expected behaviour by running Steam like so:
STEAM_FRAME_FORCE_CLOSE=1 steam
You can also edit shortcuts and so on to do it by default too.

Hopefully that little tidbit will help some of you out who also get annoyed by Steam’s behaviour.

A minor issue I admit, but still annoying.

Hopefully next year, this and many other lingering issues will be fixed. This is typical Valve style though, slow to react to change especially when it comes to Linux. That whole “Valve Time” thing really stinks sometimes.

I love Steam and what Valve have done for us, I just want a little more attention to the real niggling issues like this. Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.