Steam gets new a Downloads page, new Steam Library manager and Linux improvements

A fresh Beta update is available for the Steam Client and this time it's a big one. Overhauling the Downloads page, and the Steam Library manager is finally more useful.

Valve say the new Downloads area is a "minimal and more focused design with stronger CTAs (Calls to Action)", and the style overall much better matches the new Steam Library too. The new colouring is also supposed to help the visually impaired, which is always nice to see more of a focus on. Updates downloading will show the total progression completed instead of just the download progress, where it previously did not have the disk allocation as part of it which it now does.

Another nice little addition: drag and drop. No more needing to tap the tiny little icon, just drop updates into the queue - very useful and a change I'm going to enjoying using since I have tons installed that always seem to want to update. If a game update includes more than just normal game content, there will also be an (i) icon to give a tooltip of what's in it.

The Steam Library manager also saw a big overhaul. It's no longer just a plan box with a list of drives setup. Now, it's a proper interface for seeing what games are on each drive. Giving you the ability to quickly switch between them to see how much space each Steam Library setup is taking total on the drive, plus individual details for each game - including when you last played them - making it easier to purge those you no longer actually play too.

A lot of this is probably helpful for the Steam Deck, so the new Big Picture UI can also hook into these changes. Overall though, Valve just continues to try and make Steam a better client. Can't argue against the changes done here, they all seem to be much better than what came before.

Steam Input, their API for hooking into gamepads also saw some nice upgrades to reduce CPU usage and add support for the current set of PowerA Xbox Series X controllers.

On the Linux side we also saw multiple improvements:

• update scout LD_* and container runtime to 0.20210721.1:
• library pinning process is significantly faster at startup after runtime updates
• update soldier container runtime to 0.20210723.18:
• Restore compatibility with NixOS (steam-runtime#431)
• Make /usr/share/nvidia available to the container if using the NVIDIA proprietary driver, so that app-specific profiles can be applied (steam-runtime-tools#73)
• Silence most LD_PRELOAD warnings