The UI overhaul is now stable.

  • thingsiplay@kbin.social
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    0
    ·
    1 year ago

    There are a few settings you can set, to make it more light. I use it, because my computer is a bit old now. Open Steam Settings > Library and tick ON “Low Bandwidth Mode”, “Low Performance Mode”, “Disable Community Content” and disable “Show game icons in the left column”.

    Depending on your system, either enable or disable the setting at Steam Settings > Interface > “Enable GPU accelerated renderin in web views” and “Enable hardware video decoding, if supported”.

    These tweaks should help with an older system. And Steam has a very small mode too. In the main user interface menu at top, click View > Small Mode.

      • thingsiplay@kbin.social
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        0
        ·
        1 year ago

        Oh you are right, that makes totally sense. I was so focused on the performance side. In the past Steam allowed for custom skins, but they never looked great in my opinion or functioned well. If the UI is flexible enough, hopefully the custom skins will make a return. I would like to build my own custom client based on the official client.

        • Boabab@kbin.social
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          1 year ago

          JSYK for if you want extra performance: Steam also has a hidden “mini mode”, which you can run by adding this as a launchoption to a steam shortcut (or in a terminal) steam://open/minigameslist.

          Additionally, you can add the -no-browser launch option to completely disable the built-in webbrowser.

          I can’t find any official documentation about these options, but they are certainly there!

          • thingsiplay@kbin.social
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            1
            ·
            1 year ago

            @Boabab Thanks for the suggestions! I am well aware of these options for years (but appreciate the suggestions nonetheless): https://gist.github.com/davispuh/6600880

            The Mini mode is very limited and won’t stay mini and switches back to normal when doing anything else than starting a game. no browser mode will also break a lot of functionality of Steam. So these options aren’t what I am looking for (have tried them in the past). But overall I am fine with it at the moment. Just mentioned above suggestions to reduce some load for older systems, without losing functionality.

            I wish the UI itself would be open source, that connects to the proprietary Steam service. That would be acceptable. It would allow us to write any user interface we need or want (like 100% CLI only ui, I don’t mean just starting a game with a shortcut, I would love that).

            • Boabab@kbin.social
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              0
              ·
              1 year ago

              You’re welcome! And I agree, a ligtweight Open Source front end would be amazing! I know there is a CLI version of Steam (SteamCMD), but I’m not sure how much of the regular Steam functionality is built into that

              • thingsiplay@kbin.social
                link
                fedilink
                arrow-up
                1
                ·
                1 year ago

                Unfortunately, as good as it sounds first, SteamCMD is not what we are looking for. It is just for dedicated servers that use a special Steam API/service. Its needed to install some server applications for those games I think, for developers guess (not sure). Don’t completely understand either… But not something we need or can use for regular gaming.