The latest Steam Client Beta for Desktop and Steam Deck has been released, and Valve have given us new options for managing game updates and there's a new downloader style.
For some reason, Valve still won't just give us a "download all" button to then instantly queue everything up to begin downloading. What did we get this time then? It's still quite nice though.
Now in the main settings you get a global option to swap between letting Steam decide when to run updates, or only running them when you go to launch the game. If you just let Steam decide it will update your regular games shortly after they're released, and schedule others for later.
This can be tweaked globally and per-game too. So if there's a game that often has huge updates, you can now prevent those updates until you launch it. Or if it's a regular game you may want updates to be done right away.
A fun little detail is the new section "Updates to installed games" which will give the example based on what you last set to download. In my case, the Command & Conquer Remastered Collection.
On top of that the active download in the Steam client has an overhauled style to it. Left shot is the old one, right shot is the new one:
It's nice that they've made the installing files section a bit clearer, which will help prevent some confusion when people seem to think it's not doing anything at times for bigger games, a question I've seen come up here and there.
The full Desktop Beta changelog:
GeneralLibrary
- Added a global setting for improved management of game updates.
- Added a panel to manage per-game exceptions to the global setting.
- Added keyboard controls for dropdown lists in the client.
- Updated layout of downloads page for the active item.
- Fixed Steam Client exiting instead of showing a refresh login dialog if another client session starts playing a game or resumes from suspend in a game session.
- Fixed Steam Client exiting while running a game if a Steam Deck is resumed while running a non-Steam app.
Game Recording
- Fixed friends showing multiple times in the "In-Game" section if they also had the game on their wishlist.
Steam Overlay
- Improved error messages for limited accounts sharing messages in chat or via the share menu.
Remote Play
- Added support for bookmarks saved per game in the overlay browser.
- Improved reliability of saving for notes.
- Fixed scroll position, selection, and undo history getting lost when switching between notes.
Big Picture Mode
- Fixed Remote Play Together session not fully starting for some games running on macOS host systems.
macOS
- Fixed several issues where navigation could get stuck behind menus or dialogs.
- Fixed an issue where the guide button would open the menu in the main steam window instead of in the game overlay.
Linux
- Added "End of Life" alert for macOS 10.15 ("Catalina"). Steam Client support for these operating systems will end on February 15th, 2025 at 10am. See here for additional details.
Steam Input
- Fixed a case where Steam could permanently inhibit the screensaver if it crashed while holding the screensaver lock.
- Fixed potential crash when exiting a game if Game Recording is enabled on systems with recent versions of pipewire.
- Reduced overhead/latency of controller input in Big Picture Mode and Virtual Menus
- Slightly reduced steady-state CPU usage of Steam Input overall
- Fixed some Linux-specific crashes
- Fixed a crash at startup when certain analog keyboards are connected.
- Fixed not being able to use "Export Layout->Save New Layout" when using a "Sharable Personal Layout".
And the Steam Deck changelog:
GeneralArticle taken from GamingOnLinux.com.Game Recording
- Fixed desktop Steam Clients exiting while running a game if a Steam Deck is resumed while running a non-Steam app.
- Fixed several issues where navigation could get stuck behind menus or dialogs.
- Fixed the WiFi auto connect setting being forgotten after a system restart.
- Fixed a case where the WiFi connection dialog would not show a password prompt for networks that only support WPA3.
- Updated layout of downloads page for the active item.
Remote Play
- Improved error messages for limited accounts sharing messages in chat or via the share menu.
Steam Input
- Fixed Remote Play Together session not fully starting for some games running on macOS host systems.
- Reduced overhead/latency of controller input in Big Picture Mode and Virtual Menus
- Slightly reduced steady-state CPU usage of Steam Input overall
- Fixed some Linux-specific crashes
- Fixed not being able to use "Export Layout->Save New Layout" when using a "Sharable Personal Layout".
They also removed the ability to quickly navigate to the library page for the game currently being downloaded as you can't click the cover art for it as you could before, and still can with the games that are in queue, or already finished...
Quoting: ZetymWhile it's nice that they've separated the progress bar for download vs updating/installing files, but it's annoying that they removed the numbers for how much data needs to be processed by the update/install.Oh yeah, I just noticed that, looks like a slight woops there. You can right click it for all sorts of options, but no option to go to the library page for it until it's finished now or your drag it out of the download.
They also removed the ability to quickly navigate to the library page for the game currently being downloaded as you can't click the cover art for it as you could before, and still can with the games that are in queue, or already finished...
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