The developers at Valve have just released a Steam Downloads and Storage update. In particular, the Downloads and Storage Manager screens got significant overhauls. For example, the revamped Downloads screen now lets you reorder your download queue simply via drag and drop. The changes in this update have really polished up those windows.
Valve didn’t just revamp the GUIs in the Downloads and Storage Manager windows, though. They also included a bunch of other minor changes and bug fixes throughout Steam. For example, game counts displayed on the Steam UI will no longer include tools unless the Tools filter is selected. However, the upcoming Steam Deck portable system runs its own version of Steam, known as Steam OS. As a result, it will get its own separate updates and will likely have a slightly different feature set.
Managing Steam Downloads
While reordering the queue is the biggest new feature in this part of the Steam Downloads and Storage update, it’s far from all there is. While a game downloads and updates, you’ll get full progress information for both processes. Before, it only displayed progress for downloading, but not installation. For games whose updates you’ve paused, it will show a grayed-out progress bar now. Consequently, you can now see how much progress has already been made for that title.
The context menu for the currently updating software item got a couple of new commands, too. From there, you can now tell Steam to start the game as soon as the update is done. If the software has non-game content included in the update, a new (i) icon will appear beside the title. It opens a tooltip that will tell you what types of content it contains, such as Steam Workshop content or DLC.
An official screenshot of the new Steam Downloads GUI in action.
Steam Storage Management
Unlike the Downloads window, the Steam Storage Manager got a whole new implementation in this update. It allows you to easily manage your Steam library, even across multiple hard drives. It shows you how much storage space your Steam content is using on each drive out of the total available. Users also get a simple breakdown of how much space each type of data is using, like Games vs DLC vs Workshop content and more.
Below that, the new Steam Storage Manager also gives you a list of installed Steam content. For each item, it displays the total storage space it is using on the hard drive. Additionally, you can also see when you last played it, and how much space it is using for other types of data like DLC. Users can select multiple items if desired, and uninstall or move them to a different drive. If your Steam library folder on a given drive is empty, you can also remove that from here. Finally, they also say you can mount a Steam library folder on a read-only drive.
An official screenshot of the new Storage Manager and its new GUI.
Overall, this is a very nice update that streamlines the experience of managing both your downloads and your installed Steam library content. It also enhances both of these features to be more robust.
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