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Here's a rather useful feature Valve just added to a recent release of the Steam Beta Client. You can now filter your Steam Library based on what you and your Steam Friends own.

So you can create a collection, let's say to match up games that offer co-op with a certain friend so you can easily pick things to play together. Honestly, that's pretty fantastic. Here's an example:

I'm for sure going to be making great use of this. Since you can use it with dynamic collections, you'll always be up to date with people you pick to keep track of what to play.

Full changelog:

Games to Play Together

  • You can now add Friends as a filter under Advanced Filtering in your Library. It will show games you have in common.
  • Right-click on any user in Chat or your Friends List to Find Games to Play Together and it will auto-populate your filter while also applying the Multiplayer tag.
  • Right-click a Group Chat header to do the same with smaller group chats or voice channels (8 members or less).

Steam Overlay

  • Fixed web browser crash when loading certain blank URL's.

macOS

  • Fixed incorrect placement of "Restore Window" button when client window is maximized.

Sign In Dialog

  • Fixed incorrect icon placement when signing in using a QR code.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Tags: Apps, Beta, Misc, Steam, Valve
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Philadelphus Sep 21, 2022
That looks incredibly useful! Now, er, for those of us who've never set up a collection before, maybe a quick step-by-step would be nice?
Termy Sep 21, 2022
Woohoo - about time :D
Anza Sep 21, 2022
Quoting: PhiladelphusThat looks incredibly useful! Now, er, for those of us who've never set up a collection before, maybe a quick step-by-step would be nice?

There seems to be such guides already: https://www.thegamer.com/steam-how-to-sort-your-games-into-genres-and-tags/

Collections are great.

I use mix of static and dynamic collections. While dynamic collections have lot of options, they don't have everything. For example I have static collection for games I would like to finish.

I have few collections visible in library home page and sometimes I change sorting of the collection to keep things bit more fresh. Usually they're sorted by last played.
StoneColdSpider Sep 21, 2022
The only problem is that you need to have friends for this to work........
BlackBloodRum Sep 22, 2022
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I tried collections with using genre tags a while ago. It was cool up until the point a game had two matching tags. Then it'll duplicate that game in your list and you have to manually remove one of the games from one of the new "automatic" collections.

That got annoying fast.

So back to manually organizing by genre with no duplicates it was

Quoting: StoneColdSpiderThe only problem is that you need to have friends for this to work........
The tux community is the most friendly community around!

Well.. unless you happen to have a disagreement.. then it can get nasty fast, in a full on "My distro is better than your distro" argument.

But aside from that, I'm sure there's people here who'll be your friend!
audiopathik Sep 22, 2022
I've made that suggestion in the Steam forums several times and just again recently in the Steam Mobile Beta discussions where they might finally have taken notice of it.

I've also suggested to make library shelves/collections shareable and subscribable like gamepad mappings in Big Picture mode, so that I could for example create and share a collection of games supported by GeForce NOW or a collection of programming games and others can subscribe to it and I can keep updating it. It will appear in each users library as one of their collections with only those that they own and perhaps those they dont but greyed out.

I've made a lot more suggestions I hope they will have a look at, such as a place in the Community Hub for hosting public Remote Play Together sessions, like Parsecs Arcade. Currently you can only invite friends directly to your game, it would be cool if there was a place like the Broadcasts where anybody who likes could make their Remote Play Together-capable game open for anyone to join.
Anza Sep 22, 2022
Quoting: BlackBloodRumI tried collections with using genre tags a while ago. It was cool up until the point a game had two matching tags. Then it'll duplicate that game in your list and you have to manually remove one of the games from one of the new "automatic" collections.

That got annoying fast.

So back to manually organizing by genre with no duplicates it was


That's interesting. I haven't noticed that though and I have collection that matches three tags: adventure, point & click and story rich. Either the problem has been fixed or the problem might be bit more complicated than that.
BlackBloodRum Sep 22, 2022
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Quoting: Anza
Quoting: BlackBloodRumI tried collections with using genre tags a while ago. It was cool up until the point a game had two matching tags. Then it'll duplicate that game in your list and you have to manually remove one of the games from one of the new "automatic" collections.

That got annoying fast.

So back to manually organizing by genre with no duplicates it was


That's interesting. I haven't noticed that though and I have collection that matches three tags: adventure, point & click and story rich. Either the problem has been fixed or the problem might be bit more complicated than that.

Yeah.. just tried it, it's still a thing

If you create a category that matches only tag "Survival", another that matches only tag "stealth", and finally one that only matches tag "RTS", you game list will look like this:





Last edited by BlackBloodRum on 22 September 2022 at 4:44 pm UTC
Anza Sep 22, 2022
Quoting: BlackBloodRum
Quoting: Anza
Quoting: BlackBloodRumI tried collections with using genre tags a while ago. It was cool up until the point a game had two matching tags. Then it'll duplicate that game in your list and you have to manually remove one of the games from one of the new "automatic" collections.

That got annoying fast.

So back to manually organizing by genre with no duplicates it was


That's interesting. I haven't noticed that though and I have collection that matches three tags: adventure, point & click and story rich. Either the problem has been fixed or the problem might be bit more complicated than that.

Yeah.. just tried it, it's still a thing

If you create a category that matches only tag "Survival", another that matches only tag "stealth", and finally one that only matches tag "RTS", you game list will look like this:



That explains it better. I guess my solution has been to use the side panel only for searching.
audiopathik Sep 22, 2022
Quoting: BlackBloodRum
Quoting: Anza
Quoting: BlackBloodRumI tried collections with using genre tags a while ago. It was cool up until the point a game had two matching tags. Then it'll duplicate that game in your list and you have to manually remove one of the games from one of the new "automatic" collections.

That got annoying fast.

So back to manually organizing by genre with no duplicates it was


That's interesting. I haven't noticed that though and I have collection that matches three tags: adventure, point & click and story rich. Either the problem has been fixed or the problem might be bit more complicated than that.

Yeah.. just tried it, it's still a thing

If you create a category that matches only tag "Survival", another that matches only tag "stealth", and finally one that only matches tag "RTS", you game list will look like this:



That's because you've made them seperate collections, if you make one single collection with all those tags, each game will be included only once.

However, it is an AND operation, which means only games that have Survival AND Stealth AND Strategy tags will be included then, I assume you want (N)OR.
This is why I and many others made the suggestion to provide NOR and NOT operators to the tags.
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