How To Sort Steam Games By Size

As promised, Valve pushed the new Steam Library Update into open beta this morning. Quick admission to your recently played games! More than detailed "Details" pages! Better library search and filtering tools! Drag-and-driblet! No bezels on the left and right edges! All the modern conveniences and quality of life upgrades that (if we're honest) probably should've been in Steam already. But damn, they're nice to accept now.

You tin read our detailed breakdown of the Library Update and all its features—or you can only install it for yourself. If yous're great on a refreshed Steam and don't mind the potential for a few bugs along the fashion, all it takes is an opt-in to get into the beta.

It's pretty easy. You tin can go click the large "Join The Beta" button if you want to feel official, simply actually all you need to do is open up Steam, go to the Settings menu (under "Steam"), and look for a section on the Account page that says "Beta Participation." Click "Change," and so on the drop-down carte du jour choose Steam Beta Update.

Restart Steam, and yous're in. You'll know it worked immediately, because the familiar Store screen will now stretch all the way to the left and right edges of the window, no bezel. Most of the cardinal features are over on the Library tab though. That's where yous'll exist greeted by the new Domicile page, the redesigned sidebar, and then forth.

Change is good, sometimes. Having lived through hundreds of interface changes across countless programs, I feared the worst. Valve'due south PAX demo assuaged those fears somewhat, but yous never really know what will annoy you lot until you've tested it yourself.

So far I'1000 very impressed though. The new interface is clean and reactive, and I'm finding the new organizational tools fun to mess effectually with. I'm not going to spend a ton of time recapping because, every bit I said, you tin read most everything at length in our longer (admitting hands-off) impressions.

Just there are a few smaller features I hadn't noticed in Valve's demo. I like for instance that y'all can rapidly toggle Collections (which used to exist Categories) on and off, flipping between your organized library and a simpler alphabetical list of games. There'southward also a "Ready to Play" push in the top-left that will speedily omit any uninstalled games from the list. And even with more than than ii,000 games in my library, these sorting changes are snappy.

I also like the "Sort by Contempo Activity" button, which gives you a month-past-month breakdown of the games you've played this year, and then a yearly breakdown later that. It goes dorsum ages, also. Curious what you were playing in 2014? Steam tin can now testify you.

That said, there are a few weird issues. You can't—or at to the lowest degree I can't detect a manner—to sort past size anymore, which is a problem in an era where game sizes are apace ballooning. I used to change to Steam's old list view and sort by install size every year or so to do some housecleaning, uninstall that 100GB game I was never going to finish. The loss of that functionality is pretty painful.

[UPDATE: I institute the "Size on Disk" sorting characteristic. It's subconscious on the Dwelling house page, if y'all curlicue down to the list of all your games, there's a drop-down "Sort By" menu. "Size on Deejay" is under that. However, it's still a bit less useful than the old method every bit there's no way to separate games out by the drive they're installed on. For those of you with Steam libraries that span multiple drives, you'll now need to correct-click your largest games, go to "Properties," and run across where each is installed individually. Fleck of a hurting, though at least some of the sorting functionality is intact.]

And it's a beta. I've definitely seen some behind-the-scenes code today as I've clicked around, with trading menu messages especially susceptible to breaking. Valve'due south likewise transitioning to new box fine art for every game in your library, but old games? Ones that will probably never be updated? They get that Vaseline-smear above and beneath, the same frosted window wait people use when uploading vertical video to a horizontal aspect ratio site like YouTube. It looks kind-of ugly.

Still, I can't see any reason not to update. Steam'due south been brackish for ages now. It'due south refreshing to see big-scale library changes, peculiarly since that's ane of the areas where Valve has a clear lead over the competing Ballsy Games Store. As someone who'south clustered thousands of games on Steam, it's a relief to finally accept some control over my backlog—or at to the lowest degree the illusion of command.