Today's new Steam client update has just rolled out and with it comes the official launch of Steam Families. This is a vastly improved upgrade to the old Steam Family Sharing and Steam Family View features that are now depreciated in favor of this new system.
Steam Families allow you to create a Steam Family and invite up to five family members. You are able to manage this family from your Steam client, mobile device, or web browser. When you are a part of a Steam Family, you gain access to all of the shareable games available to other members in the family. These games that are shared with you appear under the "Steam Family" section of your library.
Unlike the old system, the new Steam Family system will let you play games from other members' libraries even if they are online and playing another game. You will also have your own saved games, earn your own Steam achievements, and have access to your own Workshop files and so forth.
The new parental controls for Steam Families will allow you to set some members as children. You can set limits on when and what the children accounts can play from your account. You can also view playtime reports, approve or deny requests for additional playtime, recover a child's account if the password is list, and more. Steam Families also includes a payment option where a child account can request from an in-family adult account to pay for their shopping cart. The adult can either approve or decline the request. If approved, the payment comes from the adult account and the games are added to the child account.
The full changelog for today's Steam client update can be found below.
General
- Steam Families is now available for all users. For more info about Steam Families, you can read our news post, check out our Support FAQ
- The friends list will now show a Steam Deck icon, instead of a gamepad icon, if the other user is playing on a Steam Deck
- Replaced the friends list VR icon with a new graphic that also matches the in-game or online friend state color
- Improved startup and library performance for users with large libraries
- Improved detection of Nintendo Switch Pro controller
- Improved reliability of "games in common" collections in library
- Rewrite of shortcut key binding in settings UI, including the ability to unbind a hotkey
- Fixed taking HDR screenshots on Windows
- Fixed collections based on friends not updating properly
- Fixed "Soundtracks" and "All Games" shelves on home page applying the app type filter from the top of the games list. This would lead to Soundtracks showing no items if Soundtracks was not selected at the top of the games list, as an example.
- Fixed collection names not being editable.
- Fixed formatting of links in news posts
- Redesigned the screenshots manager
- Added easier ways to share screenshots directly from Steam, including:
- Copy directly to your clipboard
- Send to friend or chat group via Steam chat
- Send to your phone via the Steam Mobile App
- Export as a new file on your computer
- Improved the ability to share multiple screenshots at once by multi-selecting from the grid view
- Improved the performance and reliability of the screenshots manager
- Added the ability to search within the app filter dropdown
- Pre-emptive work to provide future support for recordings and clips to integrate with the screenshots manager when Steam Game Recording releases out of beta
- Improved responsiveness of overlay on Windows
- User interface improvements to Steam IME
- New Clock app in the Steam Overlay that can optionally be pinned on top of games.
- Reduced latency of Steam Input API Action Set/Action Set Layer commands. If any input issues are noticed in Steam Input API games please report them in the forums
- Reduced latency of Steam Input API rumble/haptics commands
- Reduce CPU usage when using both Gyro and Joystick or Trackpad for mouse input
- Added Output Icons to all Mode/Behavior dropdown menus. These indicate if the mode (by default) generates OS Mouse output, XInput (controller) Output, Steam Input API Action Output, or is a remapping tool/Overlay Menu (Touch, Radial, Hotbar).
- Steam Input API Analog Actions that can have multiple modes i.e. "Camera | Camera as FlickStick" are now labelled as "... (via FlickStick)"
- Steam Input API Analog Actions can now optionally be used "... (via Gyro To Mouse)" (default is still "As Mouse" or "As Joystick Mouse" depending on source).
- Fixed Steam Input API issue where analog actions from other action sets incorrectly reporting as active. This affected some titles including Okami HD
- Fixed for SIAPI GetMotionData not returning any information on every controller but the first one plugged in
- Fix rare issue where Gyro Processing occurred before controller type is established.
- Fix for Track Pad as Button Behavior not displaying any glyphs.
- Fix "Gyro Calibration" Button appearing twice on Gyro config screen if there is a mode shift applied to the Gyro.
- Fixed a bug where PlayStation controllers connected over BT could be shown as connected over USB
- Fixed a rare crash when launching a game in VR Game Theater
- Fixed a rare crash when launching a VR game for streaming
- Improved system display scale detection to be compatible with more desktop environments.
- Fixed a crash in gldriverquery when using latest nvidia graphics card drivers
- Fixed a crash that could occur at exit while cleaning up websockets
- Fixed Disk Write Errors sometimes occurring when updating games on macOS 13+
- Fixed Steam Overlay crash in some games using Metal rendering
- Fixed some UI issues in user login
- Fixed issue preventing the hardware encoder enable setting from being honored
