Today's Steam Client Beta update includes a few improvements that give you more control over when Steam will download updates for your installed games.

When downloading game updates, Steam continues to try to strike a balance between keeping your games ready to play and efficiently using your bandwidth. For games you recently played, Steam will download game updates shortly after they are released. For games that you haven't played in a while, Steam might wait a few days to bundle multiple updates together or choose to download the update while you are asleep.

While this default behavior works in most cases, there are times when you need more control of when updates are applied. Some users might want to delay updating a 200GB game until they are ready to play it again in a few months, especially if they are on metered connections or have monthly bandwidth caps. For others who play the same game every night, they might want updates downloaded as soon as they are available.

We've added a new section to control the default behavior for when game updates are applied, under "Downloads" in the Steam Client settings. You can set the default to: let Steam decide when to update the game (based on factors like when you last played the game, bandwidth availability, etc.) or wait to update until the game is launched.




To set specific game overrides, go to Library > Game> Game Properties (the gear icon). The options remain the same, with cleaned up descriptions.




To see which games have specific overrides, head back to the Steam Client "Downloads" settings and click "Manage Exceptions".




These new settings join a robust set of existing download options that can be found under "Downloads" in the Steam Client settings. Head there to limit your download speed, pause downloads while you play or stream a game, and more. If there is a setting you would like to see and can't find, please let us know!.

Learn how to opt into the Steam Client Beta to help test new features like these.

What is your favorite kind of game? They're on sale. Second favorite? Those too. Mid? Yep. AND THOSE!

The Steam Autumn Sale is on from now through December 4th at 10am PST, and it's a big one: thousands of games, of all sorts of genres and themes, are on sale. Plus, collect free stickers as you look through your Discovery Queue, and keep track of your progress on the item collection page.



Oh! The Steam Autumn Sale is also the time to get your nominations in for our annual Steam Awards . Make your choices for best game in each of the 11 categories for 2024, and get those nominations in by the end of the Autumn Sale.

Oh OH! Select Steam Deck LCD units (512GB and 64GB) are joining the Autumn Sale where supplies remain:

• In the EU: 64GB are 15% off
  
• In the U.S. and Canada: 512GB are 25% off

The Steam Autumn Sale (and nominations for the Steam Awards!) are on now through December 4th at 10am PST.

What's the recipe for fun? A full week of discounts and demos on games that cook! Steam's Cooking Fest is on now through November 18th at 10am PT.

There are so many kinds of games with cooking themes: Running a restaurant, running food trucks, grilling with friends, racing against time as a line cook, cooking monsters, running a diner on a island, surviving a party; the list goes on.

So we tried to come up with an equally long list of bad cooking puns to describe this fest:

• Piping-hot deals right out of the oven
  
• Slice and dice your way through this fest of cooking games
  
• A gaming casserole of an event, filled with deals
  
• What a buffet of fun!
  
• Grill your friends about what they're doing this week, because they should be at Steam Cooking Fest

Actually wait. We could have just said "This fest is Steam-y." (Why didn't we start with that one?!)

Steam Cooking Fest, on now through November 18th at 10am PT!

Steam Game Recording

Steam Game Recording is now available to all users! It's a new built-in system for creating and sharing your gameplay footage, which runs in the background so you never miss a moment.

There are many ways to use this all-new set of features, from capturing your highlights to documenting entire campaigns. It's easy to find, clip, and share your gameplay.

For more info, visit the Game Recording website.


Windows

This version of the Steam client will no longer run on Windows 7 or Windows 8. Users on these OS versions will not automatically update to this new version of the Steam Client. See the Windows 7 and Windows 8 Support FAQ for additional details.


macOS

This version of the Steam client will no longer run on macOS 10.13 or 10.14. Users on these OS versions will not automatically update to this new version of the Steam Client. See the Steam macOS 10.13 and 10.14 Support FAQ for additional details.


General

• Updated embedded Chromium build in Steam to 126.0.6478.183.
  
• Fixed issue where drag-and-drop of text into a chat would send the text immediately instead of dropping it into the edit area.
  
• Re-enabled remote install from Steam client via the streaming dropdown.
  
• Improved detection of other computers for streaming and peer downloading when using a secondary wireless interface.
  
• Fixed progress bar not updating during game update and move operations involving large files.
  
• Fixed overlay hanging in some games on macOS and Linux after a game restarts itself.
  
• Fixed the names of manually added or removed games not appearing in the collection filter header if the game had been removed from the user's library.
  
• Fixed steamwebhelper deleting temp directories that it may not have previously created.
  
• Fixed a bug that could prevent Offline Mode login on the first restart after installing an update.

Remote Play

• Added support for AV1 video streaming on high end systems.
  
• Fixed the cursor being too small when streaming from a PC with desktop scaling enabled.
  
• Fixed using software encoding instead of hardware H.264 when HEVC is enabled and unavailable.
  
• Fixed black screen when streaming HEVC from Steam Deck.

Steam Overlay

• Fixed crash in some games using D3D9.

Steam Input

• Fixed crash occurring when querying community controller configurations in the configurator.
  
• Added support for wired XBox controllers on macOS Sequoia.
  
• Fixed the "Turn off Controller" action causing Steam to launch BPM if the main window was focused.
  
• Increased maximum sensitivity of Joystick Mouse mode.
  
• Mode Shifts now support D-Pad directions and Right Joystick.
  
• Mode Shifts now support Track Pad Touch on DualSense/Edge, DualShock, SteamController and SteamDeck.
  
• SIAPI Glyphs for Playstation Dualsense are now monochrome to match Icons in Big Picture Mode.
  
• Fixed an issue where bindings that were present from converting a configuration from one controller type to another could be active but not removable due to being filtered out of the binding interface.
  
• Always show the controller tab in app properties for non-Steam shortcuts.
  
• Added Invert X and Invert Y to Mouse Regions.
  
• Scroll Wheel mode can now be chosen from the dropdown in SIAPI games (Inside of Edit Loadout, not Quick Settings).
  
• Fixed an issue where using a Steam/QAM button chord in a non-Steam game could leave the desktop config loaded instead of the game's config.

Linux

• Fixed some miscellaneous common crashes.
  
• Fixed slow startup on systems where the reverse hostname lookup for the loopback interface is not localhost.
  
• Detecting and passing commands to an already running Steam client is significantly faster.
  
• Added a -disable-screensaver-inhibit command line option to prevent Steam from inhibiting the screen saver when activity is detected.
  
• Fixed Linux crash launching steamwebhelper occurring with some system configurations.
  
• Steam developers can now select which Steam for Linux runtime to use for native titles. Please consult the partner site for more details.
  
• Native titles will execute in 'Steam for Linux runtime 1.0 (scout)' by default, instead of the legacy runtime environment.
  This behavior is consistent with Steam Deck and promotes better compatibility across all Linux desktop distributions.
  Note that this new feature can be turned off globally with "-compat-force-slr off" on the Steam client command line.
  
• Always allow the Steam client to fallback to X11 when SDL_VIDEODRIVER/SDL_VIDERO_DRIVER is set to wayland.
  
• Removed the UI toggle to disable Steam Play globally, correctly reflecting that Steam Play is always enabled on Linux. Steam Play was always partially active even when set to off in the UI as it is a requirement for Steam client operation.
  
• Fixed a case where the wrong DPI scaling factor would be used for systems using a non-gnome based session with an active gnome-desktop-portal service.
  
• Extended recent Steam Play fixes to third party compatibility tools.

Discovery Queue

• Fixed the Discovery Queue presentation so that the elements around the videos show correctly.
  
• Improved the animation when scrolling through the discovery queue.

Big Picture Mode

• Fixed keyboard input dialog in-game failing to close/re-open properly if Steam Overlay is toggled while visible.
  
• Fixed multi-line mode support in the dialog shown by the ShowGamepadTextInput API call in Steamworks.
  
• Fixed the on-screen keyboard not immediately popping up when games invoke the text entry dialog.
  
• Fixed a case where the text entry dialog could lose focus and require moving focus to the buttons and back to the text entry.

Note: The client was updated again at 5pm PST to fix a few bugs that were discovered shortly after release.

Love playing games on the scary side? The horror side? The SPOOKY side? This is the Steam event for you! From October 28th – November 4th, scare up your Steam library by grabbing deals on all kinds of spookily-themed games.

Horror games? Check. Spooky and psychologically scary? Check and check. But also vampires, ghosts, werewolves, witches, and other supernatural creatures? Check, check, check, check. Check!

Steam Scream 3 (we threw in a 3D as a nod to the scary stylings of the olden days... and to add an extra dimension of fear) is on now through November 4th. See you soon, boos.