We've made a number of updates to the Steam Trailer Player to improve usability, quality, and bandwidth usage. Read on for the highlights from this update.

A refreshed trailer player interface that is easier to use and more responsive to your input.

The user interface of the trailer player now adapts intelligently no matter how you are using it: on a desktop computer, a mobile device (it even works well on iPhones now); and on Steam Deck or in Steam Big Picture Mode.

As you mouse over or scrub your finger over the player timeline, you'll now see preview images of where you are about to jump to in the video.

Thanks to a change in the underlying video technology, you should see fewer pauses and hitches when jumping forward or backward in a video. You will also see seamless transitions when pressing that full-screen button.

When we reprocessed each video to work with our new trailer player, we also generated up to four sizes (360p, 480p, 720p, and 1080p), which our trailer player dynamically switches between depending on your network conditions and the size of the trailer player.

The new trailer player now handles any aspect ratio of video, properly scaling, centering, and letterboxing as necessary.

Q. How many trailers are there in the Steam store?

A. As it turns out.... a LOT. In order to update the streaming technology, we had to re-encode every trailer that appears or could appear on the Steam store. That ended up being around 400,000 video files.

Q. Why are some older videos so low resolution?

A. Some trailers were uploaded a long time ago and we no longer have the original files within the Steam system. Yes, we're still trying to find our stash of tape backups so we can get the originals of the Portal trailer...

Just as the Steam Store has changed with the addition of new features in past few years, the ways users browse the store have changed too. Today's Steam Client Beta features a new store menu that is designed to provide easier access to the places Steam users most frequently visit.

As part of our ongoing efforts to help users find new and exciting games to play on Steam, we're eager for you to try out the new menu and to read your feedback. To help test the menu and other in-progress Steam features, join the Steam Client Beta.

Combined Left Column & Blue Bar

We’ve combined the left column of links and blue menu bar into one cohesive menu, bringing all your essential links into a more unified and reorganized space. Many of these items were in both places, and it was hard to anticipate where to find what you needed.

Plus, search and the menu are now available on more pages across the Store. While the menu bar will stay out of your way, it will reappear if you scroll up slightly. 

Enhanced Search Panel

We’ve taken search to the next level. Not only can you search for what you need, but the search panel now offers even more options, including:

• Popular Searches: See what others are searching for right now

• Recently Viewed: An easy way to jump back to games you've previously looked at

• More than just games: Search for categories/tags, publishers, and more

• Advanced Search link: For those who want to refine their game search even further, we’ve made it easier than ever to access the advanced search page with a variety of filters.

Browse - Easier Access to Top Destinations

Not looking for anything specific? We all enjoy seeing what's new on the front of the Store, but sometimes we want a more narrow set of games to browse. The Browse tab offers a variety of ways to find games based on popularity, release date, price and discount. These are the tried and true ways to find the games the community is talking about. 

Recommendations - All in One Place

We’ve organized recommendations into one convenient section, so you can explore new games and content without having to sift through multiple areas. Whether you’re looking for games based on your playtime, what you've purchased, or recommendations from people you trust — you can find them now grouped together in one spot.

Categories & Tags - Personalized for You

The categories tab is now fully personalized for you, making it easier than ever to find games based on aspects of the games you play. Featured here are hubs (with access to thousands more games) for your top genres and tags across the games you play. You might even learn something new about yourself! 

And more!

With these changes, we’re aiming to make your experience smoother and more tailored to your needs. We've been hearing from players, and experiencing ourselves, that some of the most commonly visited areas of Steam were hard to get to. So whether you’re a frequent shopper or a looking to build your game library, this new layout is designed to get you where you want to go with less effort.

About the beta

We're constantly looking to make Steam better, and we make decisions based on data and the feedback we receive. Even here in the office, we browse the Steam Store in different ways. So it's important that you tell us what you think. The Steam Client Beta is a great way to test features that are in-progress and provide impactful feedback.

Not participating in the Steam Client Beta? Here's how to join. Try out the new menu and let us know what you think.

Don't let the title fool you; these games have a way of sneaking up on you and getting you to spend hours building stuff (in a fun way, of course)! Steam's Automation Fest features discounts on games featuring heavy automation, and the deals are on from now through July 21st at 10am Pacific.

Whether you're building the ultimate car production line, designing kitchens of the future, or designing and constructing railroads, you'll find all sorts of themes-with-the-theme. Just check out our trailer above for a taste!

The Steam Automation Fest is here, with discounts and demos awaiting you from now through July 21st. Head on over there now!

Today's Steam Client update makes available a new performance monitor that Steam can render over your game. This feature is designed to help you understand how your PC is performing and how it is impacting your game's performance.

The new performance overlay will show you frame rate values, similar to the old FPS counter, but it can also break out generated frames from DLSS or FSR vs actual game frame rate. It can show you min/max single frame values and a graph of frame rate over time. Additionally, it will show you CPU performance information, GPU performance information, and system memory usage information. These pieces of data can be useful to understand the causes of bad game performance whether that be a slow CPU, GPU, or too high graphics settings that are over subscribing your video or system ram.

The new performance monitor gives you four levels of detail: Single FPS Value; FPS Details; FPS Details, CPU & GPU Utilization; and FPS, CPU, GPU & RAM Full Details.

You can keep the display small with a single FPS value, or you can expand to the full details when debugging a performance issue. These details can be adjusted live in-game. You can also adjust color saturation, text size, and background opacity to make this as prominent (as seen below), or as subtle and fading into the background of the game as you'd like. You can optionally show a graph of FPS over time, and you can optionally show a graph of CPU utilization per-core.

Learn much more about the individual numbers we show, how we calculate them, and how to think about them here in our support FAQ.

To enable the new performance overlay, adjust it's size and position, set a hot-key, and more, go to Settings->In Game and find the new Performance Overlay section as pictured below.

Today's update is a first step towards helping Steam users more easily understand their game and system performance. We have plans to add some additional pieces of data to the performance overlay going forward, to detect certain common bad hardware performance scenarios, and to show a larger summary of your games performance in the overlay itself when you hit shift-tab.

This first version also focuses on Windows users and on the most common GPU hardware. If you are on a non-Windows platform, or on an uncommon or older GPU, you may not see the full set of data today.

We hope today's update is useful to you, and we'd love to hear from you about what else you'd like to see us improve in this area.

Surf's up, dudes and dudettes: The Steam Summer Sale is a full TWO WEEKS of sales on games of all kinds (peep our trailer above for a taste).

From now until July 10th at 10am Pacific, load up your Steam library with games you've had your eye on; games your friends seem to play a lot that you keep meaning to try; or browse around and grab something that catches your interest!

One fun way to browse: your Discovery Queue! You can earn three stickers each time you go through it (up to three times during the sale for a potential total of 9 stickers)!

Head on over to the Steam Summer Sale, on now through July 10th at 10am Pacific.