1k+ games in your library: How do you manage on Steam Deck?

[makeoutchampion]

For people with literally thousands of games in your Steam library, how do you keep your titles organized on Deck?

On desktop, it defaults to this handy list of titles (mostly) by the date they were added to the library. But on Deck, it's pretty much chaos beyond the "view more in library" button. There are a bunch of other sorting options, but AFAIK no way to replicate how it works on desktop. "Last Played" may come the closest to this, but that isn't a sorting solution.

What does everyone else do? What solutions have you found?

Had written to Steam Support about this, which agreed on this being lacking in terms of quality of life. They also said the Deck team at Valve views the forums, so. hoping this can be surfaced to be patched in as a way to sort, or other QoL options...

[Mahjik]

Dynamic collections

[Taktloss]

Imo at some point its just waste of time to get the Library organized no matter on what platform ^^
I personally only use the dynamic collection "feature".

[Mahjik]

BTW, if you want to keep your "collections" clean, you still need some manual work within the Dynamic Collections. A game may get added to multiple collections when maybe you don't agree with all of them. When new games are added to my Steam library, I always review the collections it's added in right off the bat.

Full manual collections are a pain to maintain.

[CJM]

Talking about not agreeing, Spider-Man: Remastered is in the "Casual" tag,... Meanwhile Galaga is not?

At least we agree on Plants vs Zombies...

Originally posted by makeoutchampion:

On desktop, it defaults to this handy list of titles (mostly) by the date they were added to the library. But on Deck, it's pretty much chaos beyond the "view more in library" button. There are a bunch of other sorting options, but AFAIK no way to replicate how it works on desktop. "Last Played" may come the closest to this, but that isn't a sorting solution...

Wait, what?

Are you talking about "Shelfs"? Otherwise I'm not sure what feature the Desktop has that the Deck is missing.

Press "X" and then click advanced settings, or click "Y" for sorting when in your "Library" on the Deck. What is wrong with that?

[Clone303]

same as on Steam almost

[Canadian Gamer]

The games I plan on one day finishing, I tag "Finish". Once I beat a game, I tag it "Finished".
Games that I know I'll never finish, but still want to play(Tetris Effect, etc) I just tag as a Favourite. Multiplayer games are tagged, same with local co-op.

Yeah, it takes time but once you do it, it works well.

[RPG Gamer Man]

Originally posted by Canadian Gamer:

The games I plan on one day finishing, I tag "Finish". Once I beat a game, I tag it "Finished".
Games that I know I'll never finish, but still want to play(Tetris Effect, etc) I just tag as a Favourite. Multiplayer games are tagged, same with local co-op.

Yeah, it takes time but once you do it, it works well.

I got something like that on my steam library. I name them beaten games though..lol.

[Mantis]

Historically, I have always used Depressurizer to do this. But it's feeling more and more pointless on Steam Deck. While Depressurizer offers some really useful features like categories based on HLTB times, there is a Decky loader plugin that displays HLTB times on the game view screen and an upcoming plugin called TabMaster which should allow you to display multiple categories in a custom library tab. (Multiple category (or "collection") filtering is sadly absent from SteamOS which is just stupid, but yet it's in the old-style Big Picture mode.)

As well as having different categories for the various game genres, I have created backlog-specific collections. These handle that entire side of managing what I'm going to play. They are as follows:

Backlog: Pending
Backlog: Playing
Backlog: Completed
Backlog: Stalled
Backlog: Dropped

Keeping these updated has made everything so much easier.

Only downside to all these categories/collections is Valve's bad implementation of them in the interface. The collection thumbnails render very slowly because of some unnecessary fancy effects. Especially on a 4K television and even more so if some of your games have animated game cover art.

[PopinFRESH]

Originally posted by Mantis:

Historically, I have always used Depressurizer to do this. But it's feeling more and more pointless on Steam Deck. While Depressurizer offers some really useful features like categories based on HLTB times, there is a Decky loader plugin that displays HLTB times on the game view screen and an upcoming plugin called TabMaster which should allow you to display multiple categories in a custom library tab. (Multiple category (or "collection") filtering is sadly absent from SteamOS which is just stupid, but yet it's in the old-style Big Picture mode.)

As well as having different categories for the various game genres, I have created backlog-specific collections. These handle that entire side of managing what I'm going to play. They are as follows:

Backlog: Pending
Backlog: Playing
Backlog: Completed
Backlog: Stalled
Backlog: Dropped

Keeping these updated has made everything so much easier.

Only downside to all these categories/collections is Valve's bad implementation of them in the interface. The collection thumbnails render very slowly because of some unnecessary fancy effects. Especially on a 4K television and even more so if some of your games have animated game cover art.

What games have animated cover art? I didn't realize the library capsules could be animated?

Also just as some constructive feedback, when using jargon / abbreviations that haven't been discussed previously and people might not be familiar with its useful to spell out the first instance of the abbreviation such as How Long To Beat (HLTB).

Interesting methods none the less.

[Mantis]

Originally posted by PopinFRESH:

Originally posted by Mantis:

Historically, I have always used Depressurizer to do this. But it's feeling more and more pointless on Steam Deck. While Depressurizer offers some really useful features like categories based on HLTB times, there is a Decky loader plugin that displays HLTB times on the game view screen and an upcoming plugin called TabMaster which should allow you to display multiple categories in a custom library tab. (Multiple category (or "collection") filtering is sadly absent from SteamOS which is just stupid, but yet it's in the old-style Big Picture mode.)

As well as having different categories for the various game genres, I have created backlog-specific collections. These handle that entire side of managing what I'm going to play. They are as follows:

Backlog: Pending
Backlog: Playing
Backlog: Completed
Backlog: Stalled
Backlog: Dropped

Keeping these updated has made everything so much easier.

Only downside to all these categories/collections is Valve's bad implementation of them in the interface. The collection thumbnails render very slowly because of some unnecessary fancy effects. Especially on a 4K television and even more so if some of your games have animated game cover art.

What games have animated cover art? I didn't realize the library capsules could be animated?

Also just as some constructive feedback, when using jargon / abbreviations that haven't been discussed previously and people might not be familiar with its useful to spell out the first instance of the abbreviation such as How Long To Beat (HLTB).

Interesting methods none the less.

Fair point. Honestly forgot about the people who don't know what HLTB is. (But if they have a big Steam library they really should find out!)

Yeah, you can get animated covers. What you need to do is install Decky loader (there's a one-click installer now) and then install the SteamGridDB plugin from Decky's plugin store. This will let you replace game art assets in your library with ones from SteamGridDB, which in some cases includes animated ones.

There's so many other useful plugins you can get via Decky. Look it up on YouTube. I consider it essential.

[⍟Tex]

I usually group my games in basic collections. Then I use desktop mode to install them, so I can let the device screen dim while downloading. I barely use gaming mode to manage my games. I just visit the "installed" tab while I'm in gaming mode.

[class101 [OLED deck]]

Here I 'm just using a "2PLAY" simple collection where I bump 20-30 games of interest

Most are installed, set to only update at launch and then I filter out uninstalled games with the "Play" button filter showing in the library

[PopinFRESH]

Originally posted by Mantis:

Originally posted by PopinFRESH:

What games have animated cover art? I didn't realize the library capsules could be animated?

Also just as some constructive feedback, when using jargon / abbreviations that haven't been discussed previously and people might not be familiar with its useful to spell out the first instance of the abbreviation such as How Long To Beat (HLTB).

Interesting methods none the less.

Fair point. Honestly forgot about the people who don't know what HLTB is. (But if they have a big Steam library they really should find out!)

Yeah, you can get animated covers. What you need to do is install Decky loader (there's a one-click installer now) and then install the SteamGridDB plugin from Decky's plugin store. This will let you replace game art assets in your library with ones from SteamGridDB, which in some cases includes animated ones.

There's so many other useful plugins you can get via Decky. Look it up on YouTube. I consider it essential.

Ahh ok, you're using 3rd party animated art being injected into the capsules. That makes more sense now. I use SteamGridDB for my emulator/rom collection but I don't really care to modify the library art for games I have from Steam. Thanks for the clarification.

[CJM]

Originally posted by class101 deck:

Here I 'm just using a "2PLAY" simple collection where I bump 20-30 games of interest

Most are installed, set to only update at launch and then I filter out uninstalled games with the "Play" button filter showing in the library

Same here, except I use "Next Up", and limit it to 5. Steam sales are disruptive, though. Works great as a Shelf on Desktop mode.

Lately I've taken to hiding games I don't plan on playing, keep the library lean. The search on the deck shows all including hidden.

[Mahjik]

Originally posted by CJM:

Originally posted by class101 deck:

Here I 'm just using a "2PLAY" simple collection where I bump 20-30 games of interest

Most are installed, set to only update at launch and then I filter out uninstalled games with the "Play" button filter showing in the library

Same here, except I use "Next Up", and limit it to 5. Steam sales are disruptive, though. Works great as a Shelf on Desktop mode.

Lately I've taken to hiding games I don't plan on playing, keep the library lean. The search on the deck shows all including hidden.

I do something similar. I don't hide them, but I have two manual categories for "Won't Play" or "Don't Work".