Steam UI scaling should work even better in the latest Beta

Very nice

sadly it seems it doesnt work for below 1
i tried 0.5 and it doesnt make any difference.
Too bad, whould have liked things to be smaller on my 27" 1440p screen, but its not a huge problem as the new UI is already a bit smaller with fonts than the old one was, luckily

I am so glad for the UI scaling! That's a big win for me.

It is also possible to start steam with

steam -forcedesktopscaling 1.5

for the same effect, in case someone prefers command line arguments over environment variables for whatever reason.

Scaling? bwahahahaaha!!!

Farking thing is totally borked.

The scaling option does absolutely nada. turn on/off no change. nuttin.

Fonts/pics are GINORMOUS!! unusable.

I've got 2 HD monitors and a 4k one. 4k in the center, hd on each side.

1) steam always goes to the left monitor. (#1 in settings), open settings/anything in steam, goes to monitor 1.
2) I can't even tell what size the fonts are, but oh 32 or so? Icons are also huge. (same scale)
3) Where are the bloody borders? Oh, right, morons are doing it as if it was a touch screen. Um, where is my clue by 4?

btw, this doesn't happen under windows. (same box, dual boot) ... well, except for no borders, but you have an area to grab to move the thing, and it remember to go on monitor 3. (right hand one)

OH, this is a beta version, right.... um.. HELLO!!! I did not opt in to to it! Oh right, someone messed up and pushed it to everyone. (it's in the forums)

NO, I'm not happy about this version. Bugs are one thing, but dagnabbit, do NOT push a touchscreen interface onto the PC.
aka, console vs PC. (yes, it is a pet bugaboo of mine)

harrumph.

AND GIT OFF MA LAWN!!

;p

Unfortunately Steam stills runs through XWayland so mixed-scale display setups will still have a blurry Steam client. This change is nice of the default Steam client text is a bit too small for you, though.

If you're on Plasma Wayland and have just 1 display and it's scaled, then this paired with KDE's XWayland scaling option should mitigate any sizing issues.

I've set my scaling to 1.1 (1440p monitor), just enough to make reading "discussions" legible for these old eyes. Desperately needed!


Last edited by fabertawe on 17 June 2023 at 10:45 am UTC

I've set my scaling to 1.1 (1440p monitor), just enough to make reading "discussions" legible for these old eyes. Desperately needed!

Similar here, i couldn't stand the original new scaling, but I'm all fine with 1.2. :-D

needs to be a slider or dropdown selector.

I have set the environment variable with an export so that it's permanent, but Steam doesn't seem to use it. I does work when ran from the command line with:
steam -forcedesktopscaling 1.5
or
STEAM_FORCE_DESKTOPUI_SCALING=1.5 steam

Launching it from a Plasma shortcut or just having steam start on boot ignores the environment variable (at least on X11)

I have set the environment variable with an export so that it's permanent, but Steam doesn't seem to use it. I does work when ran from the command line with:
steam -forcedesktopscaling 1.5
or
STEAM_FORCE_DESKTOPUI_SCALING=1.5 steam

Launching it from a Plasma shortcut or just having steam start on boot ignores the environment variable (at least on X11)

How did you export it and how are you using steam? Exporting via your Desktop Environment should work better than in your .bashrc normal installations. If you use the flatpak, better use the local flatpak config (easiest in flatseal).


Last edited by minfaer on 19 June 2023 at 9:45 am UTC

If I set monitor scaling to 125%, then steam seems to be the right size.
Everything ELSE is too large though.

sigh (and the scaling button in steam does nothing)

I have set the environment variable with an export so that it's permanent, but Steam doesn't seem to use it. I does work when ran from the command line with:
steam -forcedesktopscaling 1.5
or
STEAM_FORCE_DESKTOPUI_SCALING=1.5 steam

Launching it from a Plasma shortcut or just having steam start on boot ignores the environment variable (at least on X11)

`export` only sets the variable for the current terminal session, to make it "permanent" you need to put it somewhere else like `~/.profile` or `~/.bashrc` (there's a hierarchy to it, but I can't remember ever since I made home-manager's nix sort it out for me).

As for setting env vars in shortcuts, you're best off using kate/kwrite to edit the .desktop file manually, and prepend `env VAR=value` in the `Exec=` field.

If I set monitor scaling to 125%, then steam seems to be the right size.
Everything ELSE is too large though.

sigh (and the scaling button in steam does nothing)

You can probably fool it for Steam by appending your desired scaling through env vars. AFAIK the env var related to scaling for GTK are either `GDK_SCALE` or `GDK_DPI_SCALE`, and for Qt I think it should be `QT_AUTO_SCREEN_SCALE_FACTOR` (checked with `env | grep -i scale`).

I've put the variable definition in file /etc/environment (as I am the only user on my machine) and it works as expected.

notice that drag/click zones are not functioning correct, seems that should be fixed some time for sanity reasons.

steam -forcedesktopscaling 1.25 and it works.

steam -forcedesktopscaling 1.5 and no change from just steam.

go figure.

Can anyone provide a guide on how to add it to the shortcut of steam in Gnome shell? Cant figure it out myself

The latest Steam Client (not the beta) has doubled the font size on my Linux system. I've been running Steam Client fine for years, and not had a problem like that before. I have a large 4K display and Nvidia graphics, so maybe those things are influencing the problem.

My solution has been this: Create a new script "run_steam" with the following in it:

 
#!/bin/bash
sh -c 'env STEAM_FORCE_DESKTOPUI_SCALING=1.1 steam %U'

And I also created a new "steam2.desktop" shortcut inside /usr/share/applications which points to the new script.

Clicking on the "Steam2" desktop icon will now run my script, which launches a reasonably-sized Steam Client. Clicking on the original "steam.desktop" launches Steam Client with ridiculously large fonts.

I hope Valve gets around to fixing this!

I don't understand. High resolution monitors are available for years and are now becoming a standard. Any new computer or laptop will have high resolution display. I recently switched to a laptop with 1444p monitor and Steam UI is very small. Setting to scale UI doesn't work. The variable given here does work, but why is it so troublesome? Why isn't it working automatically, or at least with a setting in UI? I just can't comprehend it. What is the issue here?