Now that the dust has settled on the new Steam Library design, along with various other UI overhauls like the Properties page for games (and the recent SteamPal console leaks) - Valve will be fixing up the Steam Downloads page now too.
The Downloads page in the Steam client hasn't really been touched for a long time. It does the job, sure but it could be a lot more useful. That's set to change, although we don't know when, you can test it yourself right now if you go to "steam://nav/library/downloads".
It seems it's supposed to look something like this (thanks to Pavel Djundik of SteamDB on Twitter):
Weirdly though, it's not the same for everyone.
Trying it myself sort-of gives me it, but not quite and this was tested across both the Stable and Beta versions of Steam. So they're clearly not quite ready to roll it out just yet. This is what I see which has a few adjustments but not quite the overhaul as seen above:
Hopefully Valve will finally add a "Download All" button, so we don't have to keep pressing download on individual items to queue them up. Although, that might only be an issue for people like me, who set Steam to only download between super-late hours to prevent it just auto updating everything all the time. As that seems like the only way to have a bit of control over downloads.
Apparently they're also working on a new settings page too, although not easily accessed.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Philadelphus May 26, 2021
This looks horrible.
Valve could just display the small informations (downloaded, total download size, ETA) below each thumbnails alongside controls like (download / pause, cancel).
That way you could stuff as many game thumbnails close to each other like in the library page.
Those thumbnails could be sorted as above ; active, queued, scheduled, completed.
Edit: nvm, it's xPaw who's teasing me :D
Last edited by Scrumplex on 26 May 2021 at 9:46 am UTC
Quoting: AciDThe wasted space indeed.
This looks horrible.
Valve could just display the small informations (downloaded, total download size, ETA) below each thumbnails alongside controls like (download / pause, cancel).
That way you could stuff as many game thumbnails close to each other like in the library page.
Those thumbnails could be sorted as above ; active, queued, scheduled, completed.
I never had more than half a dozen games to download, and if I would, I wouldn't care to watch them downloading..
QuoteAlthough, that might only be an issue for people like me
No, no Liam there are others
But Epic, Uplay, Origin, EA Desktop, Battlenet, Amazon Games, MS Store + Xbox PC, even GOG Galaxy? I'd say Battlenet is the least awful of those, but we're talking king of the poo-pile among that bunch.
Of all of them together, the only one I never have problems with updating, pausing, stopping, altering queue order at all, installing, verifying, is Steam. Just these basic functions. I could break down my problems with every one of these clients, and it's amazing how the industry has settled where it has.
Honestly I have strong suspicions as to why, being adjacent over the years to a bunch of devs of different ages but not being one myself, and I don't see the trend getting better any time soon; It truly is an industry thing.
Schattenspiegel May 26, 2021
Maybe one of these days they try to fix something that could actually be useful like the crackling of their build in voice-chat or the resource wastefulness of their new design.
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