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Ahead of the Steam Deck release, it seems the desktop client for Steam is getting a few handy UI changes too.

In one of the most recent upgrades to the opt-in Steam Client Beta, a small but very useful change came in to let you actually see the required space of a game on the Library page before downloading. It's such a small change, but a very welcome one for when you're quickly flicking through your thousands-strong library to pick something to install.

Not only that, another tweak was made to the Library UI to actually show the status of Steam Cloud sync now too. Showing if it's currently synced or if it's out of date, and clicking it will allow you to resync if there is an issue. So it will now look like the below:

Even more improvements also came along for the ride, like making Offline mode better, as Valve said they have removed "most instances of long timeouts" when trying to launch a game. Oh, and something about properly tracking "file changes for games which use AutoCloud when playing offline". They're going to need to ensure offline mode is as pristine as possible for the Steam Deck, especially since it's a portable it would not be a great look if after downloading a game that it couldn't run right away if you're offline.

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Tags: Apps, Beta, Misc, Steam
34 Likes
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8 comments

gradyvuckovic Feb 3, 2022
I'd be willing to bet some of these changes were probably the result of work they're doing on the Steam Deck's UIs. They probably thought, "Ya know, it'd be handy on the 64GB models particularly to be able to see how big a game is before you click install.", then someone else probably replied, "Actually, that'd be handy on Desktop too", and everyone probably looked at each other for a moment wondering why they only just thought of it.
Solitary Feb 3, 2022
Anyone thinking about using current beta client should be careful as it currently has nasty issue on certain distributions where the client only renders black content and buttons don't really work. Check issue link for possible workaround or stay on stable version.

https://github.com/ValveSoftware/steam-for-linux/issues/8373
BielFPs Feb 3, 2022
I would love if steam would let us choose which file we can send to the cloud, there are a lot of old games that either don't use cloud sync (Fallout 3 for example) or they didn't configure the sync function right (FEAR 3)
Philadelphus Feb 3, 2022
I'm really glad for that first tweak, that would've been really useful these past four months while I was moving and only had a crappy university-provided MacBook with ~10 GB free space to game on. Much easier than clicking on each of the (relatively small number of) games in my library that support MacOS and hitting Install to check how much space they'd take up.

Quoting: SolitaryAnyone thinking about using current beta client should be careful as it currently has nasty issue on certain distributions where the client only renders black content and buttons don't really work. Check issue link for possible workaround or stay on stable version.

https://github.com/ValveSoftware/steam-for-linux/issues/8373
Yeah, I had that issue starting with an update on Sunday. Switching back to stable fixed it, thankfully.
Phlebiac Feb 4, 2022
Quoting: Solitarythe client only renders black content

For me, it's all white rather than all black. Thanks for the link; I had previously found the workaround (from people talking about a previous bug on Windows, I think) but not the official bug report.
Thetargos Feb 4, 2022
Hopefully these small quality of life changes prompt some devs to fix their notoriously bad bugs with sync and cloud saves (yes I'm looking at you Metro: Exodus!)
Sojiro84 Feb 4, 2022
Quoting: SolitaryAnyone thinking about using current beta client should be careful as it currently has nasty issue on certain distributions where the client only renders black content and buttons don't really work. Check issue link for possible workaround or stay on stable version.

https://github.com/ValveSoftware/steam-for-linux/issues/8373

Strange, I am on the latest beta and no issues here (Arch).

But I do think I saw a issue like this before a few months ago. Also a black screen.

Don't we just love the new fancy slow web based user interfaces?


Last edited by Sojiro84 on 4 February 2022 at 12:25 pm UTC
buckysrevenge Feb 5, 2022
They just added another great update to the beta client today that downloads a proton game's shader cache immediately after it's installed rather than waiting until you actually launch the game. Another one of those "why didn't we think of this earlier" updates

https://steamcommunity.com/groups/SteamClientBeta/announcements/detail/3099041925828899322
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