Do i have to be signed in to share my games on another computer?

[Umi]

i gave my brother my 2 year old laptop and bought a new one but i wanted to allow him to use my steam games since i dont really play much. Do i have to be singed in to my old laptop to allow him to play or no? I don't necessarily want him to have access to my account or notifications to said account.

[ShelLuser]

For family sharing to work you should not be signed in at all, then they can play those games.

[Ogami]

You have to login to your Steam account on the old laptop once, then authorize Family Share for that system in the client settings.
Also make sure that your brother has a account too that he at least logged in once on that laptop.
Your brothers account then should appear in your Family Share list in the client.
Mark his account as authorized and then you can permanently log out of the account and your brother can switch to his account.
All the games that can be shared will appear in his library on the laptop.

[Quint the Alligator Snapper]

There's two different kinds of restrictions you can put.

You could get him his own Steam account, and use Family Sharing the games to his account. Then, he'd be playing as himself, though there are some odd things that happen to shared games, starting with how you can't play any of your games if he's playing any other games in your library, and then other oddities involving DLC other aspects.

https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?s=326fddb7cd1076d7fc0783951caabfe8&ref=3784-QLBM-5731

Alternatively, you could let him use your account but put a Family View restriction on it. It's basically a way for you to choose what games and other features are restricted on the account, until you put in a Family View password. For example, you could set it so that he can't use chat or make purchases or even play certain games.

You'd still not be able to play your own games if he's playing them, but you also don't need to make a separate account.

https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=5149-EOPC-9918

I've done the latter before, and you can easily check out the features yourself.

For example, you can choose to restrict the following:

Steam store
Community-generated content
Friends, chat and groups
My online profile, screenshots, and achievements

I'd just restrict all of them, by not selecting any of them to allow.

[Unphenomenal]

Thanks, you actually completely answered my question.

[Steve]

This thread was quite old before the recent post, so we're locking it to prevent confusion.