An Experienced User’s Guide to the Most Useful Additional Steam Features

Steam is a true PC gaming giant. Although everyone knows that it is perfectly suited to manage your game library and obtain better deals , hiding plenty of powerful tools under the surface. Here are some of the best.

There are many additional features on Steam that make it more than just a game manager, such as home streaming and Big Picture Mode . You may have heard of them, but there are tons of others lurking under the surface that may not be easy to find.

Listen to tunes while playing with your music library

The music you listen to as you play sets the mood for your gaming session. This is why Steam created its own music player . You can add MP3 files to your Steam library and play them through the client. The player works on the desktop, but once you enter the game, you can also access the controls through the same Steam overlay that you can use to access your chat, friends list, or the Steam browser.

If you’ve switched to a subscription service, you may not have tons of MP3s on hand. Luckily, Steam offers several albums that you can add directly to your library, including many free soundtracks for games like Portal or Half-Life. You can often find free soundtracks in DLC packs. Unsurprisingly, music choices are limited to video game music, but that’s enough to give you the option to play while you play.

To import your music library, follow these steps:

1. On Steam, click on the “Steam” menu and select “Settings”.
2. Select “Music” from the left sidebar.
3. Add any folders where you store your music. At the moment, Steam only supports MP3.
4. After adding all the sources, click “Scan Now”. (You can also go back and click on it again if you’re adding soundtracks via Steam that aren’t in your library.)
5. Click OK.

Once the scan is complete, you should be able to find your music in your Steam library. Hover over the Library tab on Steam and select Music from the drop-down list. Here you will see all the albums you added. Double-click a song and it will start playing in a separate window. If you want to access the control in the middle of the game, just press Shift-Tab.

Let your friends watch you play with the stream

Even casual gamers have heard of Twitch, a service that lets you stream your gameplay live to people on the Internet. However, Twitch requires dedicated software to stream your games and is generally designed for performances or artists. Steam, on the other hand, can stream your game without any special software directly to all your friends on Steam.

You can set up Steam Streams so that only your friends or anyone on Steam can ask to watch. Until someone starts watching, you won’t actually be streaming anything, so there will be no unnecessary resource leakage. As soon as someone starts watching, the broadcast starts without any problems. The only downside is that you cannot record games to watch later, but this feature is very useful for sharing with friends.

First, you need to enable broadcast. To do this, follow these steps:

1. Open “Settings” from the Steam menu.
2. Select the Broadcasting tab in the sidebar.
3. In the “Privacy Settings” section, select the option you want. You can allow Friends to request permission to View, Public Stream for Friends, or Public Stream for any Steam user.
4. Adjust the settings according to your needs. You can limit the download bandwidth if resources are insufficient.

By default, streaming will only include video and audio from your game. You can turn on the sound from the microphone or also broadcast other applications on your computer. After you enable streaming, other users will be able to watch your game according to your privacy settings. You can also manually invite other online players to come and watch while you’re in the game.

Open your game library to others with Family Sharing

Console players have been able to quite easily exchange games with each other since the advent of cartridges. Perhaps Steam introduced Family Sharing so that they have one less thing than they could dominate over us. With Family Sharing, you can give your computer access to your entire library of games. Provided, of course, that you are not playing them at the same time.

To share your library, all you have to do is log in to the computer that you want to authorize your library to use. Once you authorize an account, they can install and play any of your games. As if they bought it at their own expense. The only exception is that once you start playing one of your own games, all of your games are no longer available to anyone you share with. So, no, you can’t play different games at the same time, but it’s still a good middle ground.

To allow someone else’s computer to use your library, follow these steps:

1. Log in to your account on the computer you want to authorize.
2. Open “Settings” from the Steam menu.
3. Select Family in the sidebar.
4. Click Authorize This Computer.
5. Log out of your account and log back in to the computer owner’s account.

Once a computer is authorized, any Steam account on that computer can access your game library. All games will be placed in a separate section with the name of the user who owns the games. You can authorize up to 10 devices and 5 accounts .

Protect your games with backup and restore

Video games take up a lot of space. As such, it is not uncommon to add, modify, or remove hard drives on a gaming PC. While you may need additional software for full backups , Steam allows you to back up and restore games directly . This is especially useful if you need to move games to a folder other than the default after they have already been installed.

To back up your games, follow these steps:

1. From the Steam menu, select Game Backup & Restore.
2. Select “Back up installed programs”.
3. Select the games you want to back up from the list of check boxes. Click Next.
4. Select a destination for the backup. Click Next.
5. Give the backup a name and click Next.

After the backup is complete, you can move or copy it wherever you like. To restore a backup, use the same dialog, but instead select “Restore Previous Backup” in step 2.

Get help with community-created game guides

Back in the day, if you didn’t know how to do something in a video game, you would just roam the field of Hyrule for three days in a row, because seriously, the entrance to Zora’s Domain is so well hidden, how could I find it ?! … Um. However, with the advent of the Internet, game guides have provided information on how to achieve any goal. Steam has created its own community of game guides.

You can access the game guides in several ways from Steam:

• While playing, press Shift-Tab to access the Steam overlay. The corresponding game guides will appear in one of the provided crates.
• Select a game in your library. From the list of links on the right, select Community Guides.

Look around and you will probably find the guide you need.

Keep your video drivers up to date

Your video drivers are an important part of your game customization. They are also very difficult to update. Windows may recognize that it needs to update drivers, but sometimes it won’t. Often you will have to search for drivers directly on the company’s website. Steam makes this much easier by allowing you to update your video drivers with a single button. Just click Steam> Check for Video Driver Updates.

Keep track of your favorite servers with Server Manager

Finding a good server to play is like finding a good bar. It can take a few tries and you will probably run into some failed attempts, but when you find one that you like it may feel like a second home to you. At least I’ve heard. Steam’s built-in server manager lets you view servers even when you’re not in a game. You can mark some of them as favorites and even keep a list of all the servers on your local network. This is a very convenient way to stay on top of all the places where you love to play your games.

To access your Steam servers, follow these steps:

1. From the View menu, select Servers.
2. You will see several tabs:
3. The “Internet” can show you a list of active online servers. Click Change Filters to search for them.
4. Favorites will contain a list of all servers that you have saved in-game or outside of the game.
5. “LAN” can let you control whatever servers you create for local gaming.

The server list is a little clunky, but if you need to manage a lot of servers this might help.

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